World-renowned Zen master, spiritual leader, and author Thich Nhat Hanh shows us how to make positive use of the very situations that usually pressure and antagonize us. For him a ringing telephone can be a signal to call us back to our true selves. Dirty dishes, red lights, and traffic jams are spiritual friends on the path to mindfulness--the process of keeping our consciousness alive to our present experience and reality. The most profound satisfactions, the deepest feelings of joy and completeness lie as close at hand as our next aware breath and the smile we can form right now.

Lucidly and beautifully written, Peace Is Every Step contains commentaries and meditations, personal anecdotes and stories from Nhat Hanh's experiences as a peace activist, teacher, and community leader. It begins where the reader already is--in the kitchen, office, driving a car, walking a part--and shows how deep meditative presence is available now. Nhat Hanh provides exercises to increase our awareness of our own body and mind through conscious breathing, which can bring immediate joy and peace. Nhat Hanh also shows how to be aware of relationships with others and of the world around us, its beauty and also its pollution and injustices. The deceptively simple practices of Peace Is Every Step encourage the reader to work for peace in the world as he or she continues to work on sustaining inner peace by turning the mindless into the mindFUL.

The brain can only assume its proper behavior when consciousness is doing what it is designed for: not writhing and whirling to get out of present experience, but being effortlessly aware of it.

Alan Watts draws on the wisdom of Eastern philosophy and religion in this timeless and classic guide to living a more fulfilling life. His central insight is more relevant now than ever: when we spend all of our time worrying about the future and lamenting the past, we are unable to enjoy the present moment--the only one we are actually able to inhabit.

Watts offers the liberating message that true certitude and security come only from understanding that impermanence and insecurity are the essence of our existence. He highlights the futility of endlessly chasing moving goalposts, whether they consist of financial success, stability, or escape from pain, and shows that it is only by acknowledging what we do not know that we can learn anything truly worth knowing.

In The Wisdom of Insecurity, Watts explains complex concepts in beautifully simple terms, making this the kind of book you can return to again and again for comfort and insight in challenging times.

Perhaps the foremost interpreter of Eastern disciplines for the contemporary West, Watts had the rare gift of 'writing beautifully the unwritable.' --Los Angeles Times

Thich Nhat Hanh acknowledges that because suffering can feel so bad, we try to run away from it or cover it up by consuming. We find something to eat or turn on the television. But unless we're able to face our suffering, we can't be present and available to life, and happiness will continue to elude us.

Nhat Hanh shares how the practices of stopping, mindful breathing, and deep concentration can generate the energy of mindfulness within our daily lives. With that energy, we can embrace pain and calm it down, instantly bringing a measure of freedom and a clearer mind.

No Mud, No Lotus introduces ways to be in touch with suffering without being overwhelmed by it. When we know how to suffer, Nhat Hanh says, we suffer much, much less. With his signature clarity and sense of joy, Thich Nhat Hanh helps us recognize the wonders inside us and around us that we tend to take for granted and teaches us the art of happiness.

A 50th Anniversary edition of the bestselling Zen classic on meditation, maintaining a curious and open mind, and living with simplicity.

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few.

So begins this most beloved of all American Zen books. Seldom has such a small handful of words provided a teaching as rich as has this famous opening line. In a single stroke, the simple sentence cuts through the pervasive tendency students have of getting so close to Zen as to completely miss what it's all about. It is an instant teaching on the first page--and that's just the beginning.

In the fifty years since its original publication, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind has become one of the great modern spiritual classics, much beloved, much reread, and much recommended as the best first book to read on Zen. Suzuki Roshi presents the basics--from the details of posture and breathing in zazen to the perception of nonduality--in a way that is not only remarkably clear, but that also resonates with the joy of insight from the first to the last page.

In this eye-opening guide, Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh offers timeless insight into the nature of real love. With simplicity, warmth, and directness, he explores the four key aspects of love as described in the Buddhist tradition: lovingkindness, compassion, joy, and freedom--explaining how to experience them in our day-to-day lives. He also emphasizes that in order to love in a real way, we must first learn how to be fully present in our lives, and he offers simple techniques from the Buddhist tradition that anyone can use to establish the conditions of love.

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, is an internationally known author, poet, scholar, and peace activist who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King Jr.

In this book, Thich Nhat Hanh--Zen monk, author, and meditation master--distills the essence of Buddhist thought and practice, emphasizing the power of mindfulness to transform our lives. But true mindfulness, Hanh explains, is not an escape. It is being in the present moment, totally alive and free.

Based on a retreat that Thich Nhat Hanh led for Westerners, You Are Here offers a range of effective practices for cultivating mindfulness and staying in the present moment--including awareness of breathing and walking, deep listening, and skillful speech. These teachings will empower you to witness the wonder of life and transform your suffering, both within and outside you, into compassion, tenderness, and peace. As Thich Nhat Hanh declares, the energy of mindfulness is the energy of the Buddha, and it can be produced by anybody. It is as simple as breathing in and breathing out.

End the constant cycle of stress and anxiety, stop worrying about the future, and start thriving in the present--A moving guide to a more mindful life from bestselling author Thich Nhat Hanh

Most of us live in a constant state of fear--of failure, of our past, of illness and aging, of losing the things we treasure most, and of never discovering our most authentic self. But it doesn't have to be this way, promises renowned Zen master and Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Drawing on a lifetime of mindfulness in action, Hanh shows us how to use the practice of living in the present to acknowledge and embrace our fears, recognize their origins, and render them powerless.

By offering mantras, meditations, breathing exercises, and ancient wisdom, Fear guides us through practical exercises for:

- Transforming crippling uncertainty into clarity

- Acknowledging and harnessing emotions while relinquishing their control

- Communicating with compassion and understanding

- Utilizing the immense power of community during times of struggle and hardship

- Trusting the spiritual process and reconnecting with our internal guiding light

The worries of the past and the anxiety of the future disappear as we discover the power of the present moment. Restore balance, find lasting happiness, and take control of your own journey by live freely and fearlessly.

In the thirty years since its original publication, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind has become one of the great modern Zen classics, much beloved, much re-read, and much recommended as the best first book to read on Zen. Suzuki Roshi presents the basics--from the details of posture and breathing in zazen to the perception of nonduality--in a way that is not only remarkably clear, but that also resonates with the joy of insight from the first to the last page. It's a book to come back to time and time again as an inspiration to practice.

When Buddha was asked to sum up his teaching in a single world, he said, Awareness. The Buddha taught how to see directly into the nature of experience. His observations and insights are comprehensible, practical, and down-to-earth, and they deal exclusively with the present.

The longtime teacher of Buddhism Steve Hagan presents the Buddha's uncluttered, original teachings in everyday, accessible language unencumbered by religious ritual, tradition, or belief.

​​Barbara Rhodes (Zen Master Soeng Hyang) offers the core Korean Zen teaching of don't-know mind as an antidote to the over-thinking, overly stimulating modern world that is the cause of so much suffering. In this collection of essays, Rhodes shows us that there are ways we can work with, or compost, whatever we've got in front of us, digest it into energy that can get us through the rough times, and cultivate a satisfying life.
Don't-know mind, Korean Zen's foremost teaching, points to our clear enlightened mind before suffering arises based on concepts and judgments of like and dislike. While simple, it is a lifelong exercise, with immediate benefits that get deeper with practice. By applying don't-know mind to meditation, everyday existence, and life's challenges, readers will learn to work with their own mind's reactions to things; trust their intuition; perceive situations clearly; and act with natural courage, compassion, and enthusiasm.
Rhodes offers fascinating insights from her professional life as a nurse; her commitment to engaged Buddhism; her life experience as a member of the LGBTQ community; her use of psychedelics on her spiritual path; and more. Readers will appreciate her down-to-earth wisdom, compassion, enthusiasm, and faith in the power of this practice.
This book includes an afterword by Dae Bong Sunim, a guiding teacher at Musangsa Monastery in Korea.

In order to love in a real way, Thich Nhat Hanh explains, we need to learn how to be fully present in our lives. In True Love he offers readers the technique of conscious breathing as a method for synchronizing the mind and body to establish the conditions of love. He goes on to offer a mantra practice for generating love that consists of expressing four key statements or intentions in our relationships. These include: Dear one, I am really there for you; Dear one, I know that you are there, and I am really happy about it; Dear one, I know that you are suffering, and that is why I am here for you; and Dear one, I am suffering, please help me.

In the concluding section of the book, Thich Nhat Hanh explains how love can help us to heal our own pain, fear, and negativity. He explains that we must not regard negative emotions as bad and repress them. We must recognize them as part of us and allow them into our consciousness, where they can be cared for by the loving mother of mindfulness.

Since Thich Nhat Hanh's exile from his native Vietnam in 1966, this Zen Buddhist monk has gone on to become one of the most influential and beloved spiritual masters of our age. The seeming simplicity of his words belies the power of this teaching to touch the heart and mind and to inspire spiritual practice. These selections, taken from his many published works, together make up a concise introduction to all his major themes and distill his teachings on the transformation of individuals, relationships, and society.

This book is part of the Shambhala Pocket Library series.

The Shambhala Pocket Library is a collection of short, portable teachings from notable figures across religious traditions and classic texts. The covers in this series are rendered by Colorado artist Robert Spellman. The books in this collection distill the wisdom and heart of the work Shambhala Publications has published over 50 years into a compact format that is collectible, reader-friendly, and applicable to everyday life.

When Jack Kerouac wrote his novel Dharma Bums, his views on Zen Buddhism echoed the sentiments of the Beat Generation, who found in Zen a way of life unencumbered by the limits of square society. And it was the philosopher Alan Watts who first wrote and spoke about Zen and Eastern culture in terms accessible to mainstream Western audiences. Watts was an engaging speaker and an icon of America's Beat and Counterculture movements who named among his friends Aldous Huxley, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, John Cage, and Joseph Campbell.

Through his popular radio series Way Beyond the West, Alan Watts presented the practical side of Zen, which he described as a cure for education and culture. By the early sixties, his radio programs were renowned for their synthesis of Eastern wisdom and everyday life.

Watts' teachings during an era of turmoil and political strife are as timely today as they were over 50 years ago. The fascinating essays in this collection include:

• The Beat Way of Life How the Beats lived an uncomplicated Zen life and despite being denigrated as worthless slackers, like Eastern thinkers, they actively pursued an arduous course of spiritual and psychological discipline
• Return to the Forest How the popular works of the writer Joseph Campbell influenced the earliest Beat traditions by advocating the internal search for individual truth over learned schools of thought
• The Democratization of Buddhism How Buddhism is actually a religion of no-religion, that conveys the spiritual through the everyday and the ordinary and recognizes no division between the two

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.

Zen Buddhism is often said to be a practice of mind-to-mind transmission without reliance on texts--in fact, some great teachers forbid their students to read or write. But Buddhism has also inspired some of the greatest philosophical writings of any religion, and two such works lie at the center of Zen: The Heart Sutra, which monks recite all over the world, and The Diamond Sutra, said to contain answers to all questions of delusion and dualism.

This is the Buddhist teaching on the perfection of wisdom and cuts through all obstacles on the path of practice. As Red Pine explains: The Diamond Sutra may look like a book, but it's really the body of the Buddha. It's also your body, my body, all possible bodies. But it's a body with nothing inside and nothing outside. It doesn't exist in space or time. Nor is it a construct of the mind. It's no mind. And yet because it's no mind, it has room for compassion. This book is the offering of no mind, born of compassion for all suffering beings. Of all the sutras that teach this teaching, this is the diamond.

This is a book about awareness. It's about being awake and in touch with what is going on here and now. Practical and down-to-earth, it deals exclusively with the present, not with speculation, theory, or belief in some far off time and place. The teachings of the Buddha are plain and straightforward, and because they remain focused on the moment, they are just as relevant now as they have ever been. Buddhism Plain and Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day is the book for anyone wanting to discover, or rediscover, the essence of Buddhism.

Retold in Thich Nhat Hanh's inimitably beautiful style, this book traces the Buddha's life over the course of 80 years--partly through the eyes of Svasti, the buffalo boy, and partly through the eyes of the Buddha himself. Old Path White Clouds is a classic of religious literature.

I have not avoided including the various difficulties the Buddha encountered, both from his own disciples and in relation to the wider society. If the Buddha appears in this book as a man close to us, it is partly due to recounting such difficulties.
--Thich Nhat Hanh, from the Afterword

Practising the true spirit of Zen.

Not Always So is based on Shunryu Suzuki's lectures and is framed in his own inimitable, allusive, paradoxical style, rich with unexpected and off-centre insights. Suzuki knew he was dying at the time of the lectures, which gives his thoughts an urgency and focus even sharper than in the earlier book.

In Not Always So Suzuki once again voices Zen in everyday language with the vigour, sensitivity, and buoyancy of a true friend. Here is support and nourishment. Here is a mother and father lending a hand, but letting you find your own way. Here is guidance which empowers your freedom (or way-seeking mind), rather than pinning you down to directions and techniques. Here is teaching which encourages you to touch and know your true heart and to express yourself fully, teaching which is not teaching from outside, but a voice arising in your own being.

The essence of nonviolence is love, Thich Nhat Hanh says. Out of love and the willingness to act selflessly, strategies, tactics, and techniques for a nonviolent struggle arise naturally. Collecting essays written by Thich Nhat Hanh at crucial moments of social transformation, Love in Action is an important resource for anyone engaged in social work, community organizing, political action, and cause-oriented movements.

Reflecting on the devastation of war, Thich Nhat Hanh makes the strong argument that ethics and altruistic love based on mindfulness and insight are the only truly sustainable bases for political action. Having played a central role in the Buddhist nonviolent movement for peace in Vietnam during the 1960s and serving as Chair of the Buddhist Peace delegation to the Paris Peace Accords in 1973, Thich Nhat Hanh speaks with the voice of experience: There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.

Together with essays on the connections between outer engagement and the inner work for peace, this anthology also features poetry and the script of the hauntingly beautiful 1972 play, The Path of Return Continues the Journey. The play's characters are drawn from the author's own life, the young men and women of his School of Youth for Social Service--many of whom were killed for their social actions. At 12:30 a.m. on July 5, 1967, in the village of Binh Phuoc, Gia Dinh Province, a group of strangers abducted five young men, brought them to the bank of the Saigon River, and shot them, reports Thich Nhat Hanh. All five were volunteer workers in the School of Youth for Social Service, a nonviolent organization that sought only to heal the wounds of war and reconstruct the villages. An elegy and a prayer for peace, the script shows a less-known side of the young Thich Nhat Hanh: grieving, profoundly in touch with his sorrow and pain, and channeling his anguish into art, inspired by love.