What does Shakespeare have to teach us about mindfulness? What Eastern spiritual views about death, love, and presence are reflected in the writings of The Bard? The Buddha and the Bard reveals the surprising connections between the 2,500-year-old spiritual leader and the most compelling writer of all time. “Shufran’s compelling juxtapositions will encourage the reader to ask the deepest questions of themselves while delighting in the play of resonances across a cultural and historical divide.” – YOGA Magazine Shakespeare understood and represented the human condition better than any writer of his time. As for the Buddha, he saw how to liberate us from that condition. Author Lauren Shufran explores the fascinating interplay of Western drama and Eastern philosophy by pairing quotes from Shakespeare with the tenets of an Eastern spiritual practice, sparking a compelling dialogue between the two. There’s a remarkable interchange of echoes between Shakespeare’s conception of “the inward man” and Buddhist approaches to recognizing, honoring, and working with our humanness as we play out our roles on the “stage” of our lives. The Buddha and the Bard synthesizes literature and scripture, embodied drama and transcendent practice, to shape a multifaceted lyric that we can apply as mindful practice in our own lives. Shufran’s compelling juxtapositions will encourage the reader to ask the deepest questions of themselves while delighting in the play of resonances across a cultural and historical divide.

With poems from spiritual teachers to jazz musicians, from the monastery to the street, What Book!? brings together a boad range of verse, expressions of living in an awakened way. " A poet once located poetry as somewhere before or after words take place. Mindfulness is the practice of finding that realm, dwelling there, and cultivating the ability to live completely in the present, deeply aware and appreciative of life." - from the author's Preface. "This enigmatically titled anthology offers numerous delights and valuable evidence that great poetic variety, from haiku and witty two liners to page-long discourses, has by now given distinct expression to Western Buddhism." - Publisher’s Weekly.

The most prominent expert on Buddhism in the West presents his most importantteaching and meditation practice for everyday life.

The Buddha taught his followers to transcend the cycle of birth and death by doing no harm, training the mind, and benefiting others. Shakespeare wrote plays about romantic love, sex, war, royal power, betrayal, jealousy, murder and revenge. What can these two figures, separated by 2000 years and living in such different societies, possibly have in common? More than you might think. Both recognized that our thoughts shape our experience. Both were concerned with suffering and its causes. Both embraced qualities that counter suffering, including love, compassion, joy, and equanimity. Both were concerned with impermanence and death. Both understood the illusory nature of existence. Both believed that ill-intentioned actions bring bad consequences for the actor. And both realized that the self to which we cling has no enduring reality. Our book explores each of these areas, drawing on passages from Buddhist teachings and passages from many of Shakespeare's works. Through our exploration we will find that Shakespeare's mirror-like mind reflected universal wisdom that resonates with the some of the Buddha's basic teachings.

An Instruction Manual for Clear Communication The most well known Buddhist teachers on the planet all have something in common: they are excellent communicators. This is not by accident, as the Buddha taught what are called the four elements of right speech over 2,600 years ago. In this one-of-a-kind book, certified meditation and mindfulness instructor Cynthia Kane has taken the four elements of right speech and developed them into a modern practice based on mindful listening, mindful speech, and mindful silence. Beginning with an illuminating self-test to assess your current communication style, this book will take you through the author's own five-step practice that is designed to help you: Listen to yourself (your internal and external words) Listen to others Speak consciously, concisely, and clearly Regard silence as a part of speech Meditate to enhance your communication skills If you have ever felt misheard, have trouble stating how you feel, or long to have more meaningful and genuine conversations, this book can help. The simple steps outlined in this book will have a huge effect on how you communicate with others and yourself. Communication is essential to being human, and when you become better at it, your personal truth becomes clearer, your relationships improve, and the result is that you experience more peace and harmony in your life. Fans of Thich Nhat Hanh will appreciate the simple, clear instructions for how to transform everyday communication into “right speech.”

Becoming the Buddha is the first book-length study of a key ritual of Buddhist practice in Asia: the consecration of a Buddha image or "new Buddha," a ceremony by which the Buddha becomes present or alive. Through a richly detailed, accessible exploration of this ritual in northern Thailand, an exploration that stands apart from standard text-based or anthropological approaches, Donald Swearer makes a major contribution to our understanding of the Buddha image, its role in Buddhist devotional life, and its relationship to the veneration of Buddha relics. Blending ethnography, analysis, and Buddhist texts related to this mimetic reenactment of the night of the Buddha's enlightenment, he demonstrates that the image becomes the Buddha's surrogate by being invested with the Buddha's story and charged with the extraordinary power of Buddhahood. The process by which this transformation occurs through chant, sermon, meditation, and the presence of charismatic monks is at the heart of this book. Known as "opening the eyes of the Buddha," image consecration traditions throughout Buddhist Asia share much in common. Within the cultural context of northern Thailand, Becoming the Buddha illuminates scriptural accounts of the making of the first Buddha image; looks at debates over the ritual's historical origin, at Buddhological insights achieved, and at the hermeneutics of absence and presence; and provides a thematic comparison of several Buddhist traditions.

Early Buddhist Narrative Art is a pictorial journey through the transmission of the narrative cycle based on the life of the historical Buddha. Karetzky, while demonstrating the various evolutions that the image of the Buddha underwent, maintains that there is an underlying homogeneity of the tradition in the cultures of India, Central Asia, China and Japan. The author, while focusing on the visual representation of the Buddhist narrative, goes into some detail regarding the importance of scriptures in each society, and how the written tradition informed the pictorial. Over seventy photos fill this book, which will be of interest to scholars of art history, Eastern religion and Buddhism in particular.