 Practices for Difficult Times
In this sampling of writings from the pages of the Shambhala Sun, you'll find practical and profound Buddhist guidance for transforming difficulties into opportunities to live a more awakened life.
Featured contributors include Pema Chödrön, Thich Nhat Hanh, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Geshe Tenzin Wangyal, Cyndi Lee, Darlene Cohen, Ezra Bayda and more.
Just click any article's title to start reading.
Meditation for Difficult Times
Pema Chödrön on four ways that meditation helps us deal with difficulty.
What Matters Most
When
Elizabeth Hamilton is diagnosed with breast cancer, she and her husband
Ezra Bayda learn the real value of life, love, and holding our
attachments lightly. Here, both Zen teachers recount their experiences
of Hamilton’s illness and recovery.
How to Live a Genuine Life
We'll always be conditioned beings living in
a conditioned world. But, says Ezra Bayda, we can learn to see the clouds of conditioning
as just clouds in the context of the sky. To do this we need the
precision of practice.
Pema Chödrön on how to awaken bodhichitta—enlightened heart and mind—the essence of all Buddhist practice.
A teaching on practices to generate bodhichitta by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Thich Nhat Hanh teaches that by looking
deeply we develop insight into impermanence and no self. These are the
keys to the door of reality.
Geshe Tenzin Wangyal tells us how to turn our daily challenges into meditation practice.
The key to the treasure of unconditional compassion, says Aura Glaser, is the three-step practice of equanimity.
Even
while we suffer, says Darlene Cohen, we can experience joy in life by
opening up fully to our experience, not closing down. Drawing on her
training as a Zen teacher and her own long experience with chronic
pain, she offers an awareness approach to living well with suffering.
Traleg
Rinpoche, Glenn Wallis, and Phillip Moffitt explain why anxiety and
dissatisfaction are the means by which we can truly begin the practice
of inner transformation.
Buddhism’s
mind-training slogans help us work with all the challenges of life,
from the upheavals of our own emotions to the inevitable losses and
disappointments of this imperfect world. Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche
explains how obstacles can be brought to the spiritual path and become
opportunities for awakening.
We
base our lives on seeking happiness and avoiding suffering, but the
best thing we can do for ourselves—and for the planet—is to turn this
whole way of thinking upside down. Pema Chödrön shows us Buddhism’s
radical side. Times of chaos and
challenge can be the most spiritually powerful . . . if we are brave
enough to rest in their space of uncertainty. Pema Chödrön describes three ways to use our problems as the path to awakening and joy.
"Your shoulders, arms, neck and ribs can," says Cyndi Lee, "either be a restrictive cage for your heart or an undulating, comforting protector."
The key to health and happiness, says Tulku Thondup,
is a mind that is peaceful and positive. This respected Buddhist
teacher and author offers insights and meditations to help us access
the natural healing power of mind.
A meditation instruction by Tulku Thondup.
Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön and novelist
Alice Walker on how tonglen meditation practice opens our heart,
expands our vision, and plants the seeds of love in our lives.
Does awareness suffer? Does it feel pain or sadness? According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, Mindfulness-based
Stress Reduction teaches us how to discover a mind of freedom and
awareness even in the midst of stress and suffering. We can meet our
pain with openness, strength, and clarity, and our relationship to it
is transformed.
Pema Chödrön on four ways to hold our minds steady and hearts open when facing difficult people or circumstances.
Pema Chödrön's commentary on Atisha's
famed mind-training slogans that use our difficulties and problems to
awaken our hearts.
RELATED WEB EXCLUSIVE:
Here are some of the finest examples of Buddhist wisdom for difficult times, from the names you've come to trust — all from the pages of the Shambhala Sun and Buddhadharma. Includes pieces by Pema Chödrön, Sylvia Boorstein, John Tarrant, Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche, and more.
Edited
by the Shambhala Sun's Barry Boyce and being released to coincide with
the Urban Retreat, this new book features the greatest contemporary
Buddhist teachers and writers—people
renowned for addressing precisely the problems we’re facing
today—including the Dalai Lama, Pema Chödrön, Thich Nhat Hanh, Chögyam
Trungpa, Sylvia Boorstein, Jack Kornfield, Norman Fischer, Jon
Kabat-Zinn, Sharon Salzberg, and many others.
Click to order In the Face of Fear
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In the Face of Fear: Buddhist Wisdom for Challenging Times