Recommendations based on "How to Live - A Handbook of Stoic Philosophy Discourses and the Enchiridion"

The lessons monks learn are profound but often abstract. Shetty transforms them into advice and exercises we can all apply to reduce stress, improve focus, improve relationships, identify our hidden abilities, increase self-discipline and give the gifts we find in ourselves to the world.

You have within you unlimited capacities for love, for joy, for communion with life, and for unshakable freedom—and here is how to awaken them. In The Wise Heart, one of the leading spiritual teachers of our time offers the most accessible and illuminating guide to Buddhism’s transformational psychology ever published in the West.Trained as a monk in Thailand, Burma, and India, Jack Kornfield experienced at first hand the life-changing power of Buddhist teachings: the emphasis on the nobility and sacredness of the human spirit, the fine-grained analysis of emotion and thought, the precise techniques for healing, training, and transforming the mind and heart. In contrast to the medical orientation of most Western psychology and psychiatry, here is a vision of radiant human dignity, and a practical path for realizing it in our own lives.The Wise Heart is the fruit of a life’s work that includes such classics as A Path with Heart and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry. Filled with stories from Kornfield’s Buddhist psychotherapy practice and portraits of remarkable teachers, it also includes a moving account of his own recovery from a violence-filled childhood. For meditators and mental health professionals, Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, The Wise Heart offers an extraordinary journey from the roots of consciousness to the highest expression of human possibility.

The Zen master and one of the world's most beloved teachers returns with a concise, practical guide to understanding and developing our most powerful inner resource—silence—to help us find happiness, purpose, and peace.Many people embark on a seemingly futile search for happiness, running as if there is somewhere else to get to, when the world they live in is full of wonder. To be alive is a miracle. Beauty calls to us every day, yet we rarely are in the position to listen. To hear the call of beauty and respond to it, we need silence.Silence shows us how to find and maintain our equanimity amid the barrage of noise. Thich Nhat Hanh guides us on a path to cultivate calm even in the most chaotic places. This gift of silence doesn't require hours upon hours of silent meditation or an existing practice of any kind. Through careful breathing and mindfulness techniques he teaches us how to become truly present in the moment, to recognize the beauty surrounding us, and to find harmony. With mindfulness comes stillness—and the silence we need to come back to ourselves and discover who we are and what we truly want, the keys to happiness and well-being.

"We are wellness. We are consciousness. That is our natural state. Disease is an imposter."As one of the world's only female experts on the ancient Indian tradition of Ayurvedic medicine, renowned teacher Bri. Maya Tiwari has devoted her heart and soul to sharing the philosophy and methods that saved her from terminal cancer and redirected her life. Now, in The Path of Practice, she offers a short course in healing and living and reveals how she has gone back to the sources of Ayurvedic wisdom to reclaim time-honored, natural, and spiritual techniques for contemporary life.Diagnosed with ovarian cancer at twenty-three, Bri. Maya was given two months to live. Her doctors' advice: die painlessly with heavy dosages of morphine. Instead, in the middle of winter, she left her career as a popular fashion designer in New York City and began several months of intensive meditation and holistic nutrition alone in a remote Vermont cabin. By Spring, her health and vitality had been restored. Inspired by dramatic visions and dreams of her family and ancestors, Bri. Maya became a student of one of India's few living masters of the traditional Vedas. Today, healthy in body and spirit, she devotes herself to teaching the wisdom practices of the Vedas to help others heal emotional and spiritual discomfort, dis-ease, and physical illness.In The Path of Practice, Bri. Maya's gentle, compassionate voice instructs you in living life consciously in the present moment, so that you can recover your natural rhythms and align yourself and your inner cycles with the universe. With particular emphasis on using the primordial feminine healing power of shakti--which everyone possesses--Bri. Maya leads you through the daily practice, or sadhana, of a three-part wellness program that includes nutrition and cooking with whole foods, breath work and meditation, and chanting with healing sounds. Encouraged by the inspirational stories of Bri. Maya's life and those of others who have made these simple but powerful practices an integral part of their lives, you will learn how to take charge of your own health. Through Bri. Maya's unique philosophy and practice of "cosmic memory," you will discover your personal, body wisdom and intuition, your singular mission in the world, and your connection to the divine within you and around you.Filled with illuminating insights, easy-to-follow recipes, and meditations and exercises that can be adapted to different lifestyles and traditions, The Path of Practice is one of the only holistic programs designed for women by a woman. Imbued with the spiritual strength and centeredness of its remarkable author, here is a practical and profound book you will turn to time and time again for instruction, wisdom, and peace of mind.

In our current times of global crises and spiking collective anxiety, Tara Brach’s transformative practice of Radical Acceptance offers a pathway to inner freedom and a more compassionate world. This classic work now features an insightful new introduction, an exclusive bonus chapter, and additional guided meditations. “Radical Acceptance offers us an invitation to embrace ourselves with all our pain, fear, and anxieties, and to step lightly yet firmly on the path of understanding and compassion.”—Thich Nhat Hanh   “Believing that something is wrong with us is a deep and tenacious suffering,” says Tara Brach at the start of this illuminating book. This suffering emerges in crippling self-judgments and conflicts in our relationships, in addictions and perfectionism, in loneliness and overwork—all the forces that keep our lives constricted and unfulfilled. Radical Acceptance offers a path to freedom, including the day-to-day practical guidance developed over Dr. Brach’s forty years of work with therapy clients and Buddhist students.   Writing with great warmth and clarity, Tara Brach brings her teachings alive through personal stories and case histories, fresh interpretations of Buddhist tales, and guided meditations. Step by step, she shows us how we can stop being at war with ourselves and begin to live fully every precious moment of our lives.

In his widely praised book, award-winning psychologist Jonathan Haidt examines the world's philosophical wisdom through the lens of psychological science, showing how a deeper understanding of enduring maxims-like Do unto others as you would have others do unto you, or What doesn't kill you makes you stronger-can enrich and even transform our lives.

Meditation instructor, Deepak Chopra protégé, director of Meditation Wanderlust Hollywood, and Lululemon ambassador Megan Monahan presents a no-nonsense guide to meditation for everyday soul-searchers.This modern guide to meditation from instructor Megan Monahan takes readers beyond empty Instagram truisms to the simple yet effective ways to "meditate their way through the bad shit and into the good shit." With a fresh voice and perspective, Monahan presents a set of tools grounded in a meditation technique that is impossible to screw up. With her help, you'll unpack the five spiritual mindsets (Presence, Acceptance, Intention, Nonjudgment, and Trust, aka PAINT) that are key to moving out of constriction and fear and into a more expansive space within yourself and your life. Ultimately, you will quickly notice, at any triggering moment, where you're getting stuck and how to more consciously move through it. The good news? This process is applicable to everything in your life, from missing a flight to seeing your ex's engagement photo on social media to losing your job. Wouldn't it be nice to not be completely leveled by any of those occurrences? Plot twist: After reading this book, taking the quizzes, and doing the themed meditations . . . you won't be!

Why is it so hard to live well amidst the chaos and noise? While you might think this is a problem of the modern world, it's a timeless issue. 2000 years ago, the ancient Stoics talked about the exact same challenges we're facing today, like: How can we find inner peace? What does it take to be happy? Can we become more resilient? The answers can be found in the philosophy of Stoicism. I've used the philosophy since 2014 to change my life and career. Focus on What Matters is a collection of 70 letters/essays I wrote about different aspects of life, from happiness, wealth, health to relationships and much more. These letters, inspired by the original works of the Stoic philosopher Seneca, serve as reminders to focus on the right things in our chaotic lives.

DO YOU WANT YOUR LIFE TO BE PERFECT? We're all laboring under our own and society's expectations to be perfect in every way-to look younger, to make more money, to be happy all the time. But according to Tal Ben-Shahar, the New York Times bestselling author of Happier, the pursuit of perfect may actually be the number-one internal obstacle to finding happiness. OR DO YOU WANT TO BE HAPPY? Applying cutting-edge research in the field of positive psychology-the scientific principles taught in his wildly popular course at Harvard University-Ben-Shahar takes us off the impossible pursuit of perfection and directs us to the way to happiness, richness, and true fulfillment. He shows us the freedom derived from not trying to do it all right all the time and the real lessons that failure and painful emotions can teach us. YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE PERFECT TO BE PERFECTLY HAPPY! In The Pursuit of Perfect, Tal Ben-Shahar offers an optimal way of thinking about failure and success--and the very way we live. He provides exercises for self reflection, meditations, and “Time-Ins” to help you rediscover what you really want out of life. Praise for Tal Ben-Shahar's Happier: “This fine book shimmers with a rare brand of good sense that is embedded in scientific knowledge about how to increase happiness. It is easy to see how this is the backbone of the most popular course at Harvard today.” -Martin E. P. Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness

A beautiful edition of one of the twentieth century’s most powerful and intriguing works on how to use the manifesting powers of your mind. Features the bonus book, Awakened Imagination. Here is a signature volume of one of the most quietly impactful and radical works ever written on the creative potentialities of human thought, The Power of Awareness. In this book, author Neville presents a concise, unforgettable statement of his core philosophy: that the world around you is a picture in your mind’s eye, created by your thinking, and susceptible to change by altering your thoughts and feelings. Originally published in 1952, The Power of Awareness not only prefigured the revolution in mind-power metaphysics, but surpassed it. Before the public had heard about quantum physics experiments (popularized in our own time through movies such as The Secret and What the Bleep Do We Know!?), Neville was conveying the unheard-of message that reality is directly impacted by the perspective and consciousness of the observer himself. Moreover, he wrote, each of us is ultimately responsible for, and capable of reshaping, the outer circumstances we perceive. Neville’s authorial genius is his ability to deliver these ideas in an immensely readable and enjoyable way. Like few other metaphysical figures of his era, Neville captured complexities in simple stories, memorable examples, and practical advice. His books are unfailingly brief and easy to read, because his command of his material is so masterly and complete. The Power of Awareness also includes a special bonus work, Awakened Imagination, originally published in 1954. This two-in-one volume forms a brilliant introduction and user’s guide to the practical philosophy of a great spiritual thinker.