“M’lord, where have ye been since the ball last night? The whole servant staff has been looking for ye,” said a very worried servant of the young prince. “Robert, I was out with a maiden,” the prince said in a matter a fact-ly tone. He had come in very late in the afternoon the next day after the royal ball. He had a certain glow about him with his clothes wrinkled from lying on the floor for a good majority of the day while he was bedding a willing young woman.

One of the most beloved and trusted mindfulness teachers in America offers a lifeline for difficult times: the RAIN meditation, which awakens our courage and heart Tara Brach is an in-the-trenches teacher whose work counters today's ever-increasing onslaught of news, conflict, demands, and anxieties--stresses that leave us rushing around on auto-pilot and cut off from the presence and creativity that give our lives meaning. In this heartfelt and deeply practical book, she offers an antidote: an easy-to-learn four-step meditation that quickly loosens the grip of difficult emotions and limiting beliefs. Each step in the meditation practice (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) is brought to life by memorable stories shared by Tara and her students as they deal with feelings of overwhelm, loss, and self-aversion, with painful relationships, and past trauma--and as they discover step-by-step the sources of love, forgiveness, compassion, and deep wisdom alive within all of us.

Psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl said, "Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life." Yet some contemporary voices claim that increased knowledge of the material world must diminish our sense of meaning. Physicist Steven Weinberg said, "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless." Many people hold the material and meaningful perspectives separate in their minds, in a state of uneasy truce. The Heart of the Matter: A Case for Meaning in a Material World tells us that this split vision is not necessary, and shows us how the two views can be harmonized to give depth to our picture of the world. It looks at current scientific observations from astronomy, biology and physics, as well as insights from mathematics, philosophy, psychology and religion. We are left with a sense of wonder at both the mechanics and the values of the world, the "how" and the "why" of events. This book will appeal to everyone fascinated by how our world works, and especially to those who wonder how such marvelous mechanisms can leave room for the values and purpose that give meaning to our lives, and to our world.