For those of us in recovery from addiction, trauma or whatever else, music plays a central role in the healing process. Without music, most of us would be screwed in our ability to cope with life on life's terms. Rock-Covery, Not Your Mother's Meditation Book, is a collection of daily meditations, inspired by rock music, targeted to assist the rock stars of recovery who continue to show up even when it is difficult. The theme offered by rock and roll is our permission slip to feel messy as we continue to stay clean. Each page encourages us to address the difficulties we face with the reassurance that as challenging as life can be, we don't have to do it perfectly, and we don't have to do it alone! There is hope and healing available to us. Recovery imitates rock music in many ways. It can be hard hitting, chaotic and overpowering. But a life of recovery also mimics what is righteous about rock. It is hopeful, empowering, and despite the ugliness it sometimes exposes, beautiful. This book was created to remind us that however screwed up we might think we are, just like a great rock song, we are a beautiful mess!

This book points relentlessly to what is most obvious and impossible to avoid: the ever-present, ever-changing, nonconceptual actuality of the present moment that is effortlessly presenting itself right now. This book is an invitation to wake up from commonplace misconceptions and to see through the imaginary separate self at the root of our human suffering and confusion. Nothing to Grasp is a celebration of what is, exactly as it is.

As countless meditators have learned firsthand, meditation practice can positively transform the way we see and experience our lives. This practical, accessible guide to the fundamentals of Buddhist meditation introduces you to the practice, explains how it is approached in the main schools of Buddhism, and offers advice and inspiration from Buddhism’s most renowned and effective meditation teachers, including Pema Chödrön, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Sharon Salzberg, Norman Fischer, Ajahn Chah, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, Sylvia Boorstein, Noah Levine, Judy Lief, and many others. Topics include how to build excitement and energy to start a meditation routine and keep it going, setting up a meditation space, working with and through boredom, what to look for when seeking others to meditate with, how to know when it’s time to try doing a formal meditation retreat, how to bring the practice "off the cushion" with walking meditation and other practices, and much more.

The Mind and Its World 4 sourcebook presents the path and result of foundational Buddhism as found in the Vaibhāṣika and Sautrāntika philosophical traditions, based on The Gateway that Reveals the Philosophical Traditions to Fresh Minds root text. Talks by Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, Acharya Kelsang Wangdi, Acharya Sherab Gyaltsen, and Professor Phil Stanley bring clarity to the subjects discussed in the root text. Key topics include the meaning of the path, the four applications of mindfulness, personal identitylessness, dependent origination, the four realities of the noble ones, the thirty-seven branches of enlightenment, and the results of the path. Numerous charts and diagrams are included as aids to understanding the material.

Explains the author's meditation technique designed to relieve stress and enhance well-being, improve focus and cultivate compassion, all while deepening the connection between pack leaders and their pooches.

A root text written by Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, Āchārya Lama Tenpa Gyaltsen, and Āchārya Kelsang Wangdi. It presents the divisions and definitions of the Vaibhāṣika and Sautrāntika philosophical systems. Translated by Karl Brunnhölzl. 2024 eBook edition 2023 corrected edition (print)

In an increasingly diverse society, it is essential that medicine be aware of matters of difference. Medical humanities programs promote awareness of the social aspects of medicine, and the Association of American Medical Colleges has recently instituted cultural competencies for clinical interaction for the training of medical students. Yet these efforts to impart understanding of the cross-cultural aspects of medicine are still hindered by a significant limitation: within a medical system whose currency is diagnosis, difference is primarily defined through disease. This special issue of Literature and Medicine focuses on difference and identity in the context of disease and disability. The articles collected here explore the complex ways in which notions of disease, disability, and difference are related and in which bodies marked by gender, race, disability, sexuality, and ethnic identities experience disease in specific ways. The essays take a humanities-based approach to the subject and emphasize an awareness and sensitivity to difference through forms of symbolic representation such as metaphor and narrative. This volume provides a heuristic lens through which relationships between individual expressions of identity and communal experiences of difference can be considered. Each article speaks to the process whereby individual stories and strategies shape, and are in turn shaped by, the institutions they seek to transform. Literature and Medicine is devoted to exploring interfaces between literary and medical knowledge and understanding. The journal showcases the creative and critical work of renowned physician-writers, leading literary scholars, and medical humanists.

A passionate meditation on the consolations and disappointments of religion and poetry