Waking Up to What You Do: A Zen Practice for Meeting Every Situation with Intelligence and Compassion By Diane Eshin Rizzetto If you think of the Precepts as a sort of Buddhist Ten Commandments, Diane Rizzetto may change your view. She sees the precepts as, above all, a practice. Rather than keeping your behavior in

Voices of Insight, edited by Sharon Salzberg This book was actually put together as a benefit project-with the royalties to benefit Ram Dass to help pay his medical bills-but it turned out better than expected. It's basically a digest of American Insight Meditation teachers-some of them appearing in print for the first time before they

Beneath a Single Moon: Buddhism in Contemporary American Poetry, edited by Kent Johnson and Craig Paulenich Oh, just open this marvelous book sometime-anywhere-and fall into it. It's an anthology of the work of 45 poets who (at least around 1990, when this was published) practiced some form of Buddhism and had some idea that the

Dakini's Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism by Judith Simmer-Brown Dakinis-those semi-wrathful feminine figures of Tibetan Buddhist cosmology-get a bum rap today. They often end up serving as poster-girls for goddess-spirituality or as exemplars of the "shadow" for proponents of Jungian psychology. The reality is a lot more complex than that-and much more

In Buddha's Kitchen: Cooking, Being Cooked, and Other Adventures in a Meditation Center by Kimberley Snow Anyone who's ever sat a meditation retreat knows how that much time on the cushion can cause one's inner absurdities to spew like Mount Vesuvius. It can be agony when it's happening, but hilarious to recall later. Kimberley Snow's

Mountain Record of Zen Talks By John Daido Loori   This book, now more than a quarter-century old, is one of the best ways to get acquainted with the late esteemed Zen master John Daido Loori (1931-2009). He was a lineage holder in both Soto (a dharma heir of Taizan Maezumi) and Rinzai schools, and

Swampland Flowers: The Letters and Lectures of Zen Master Ta Hui Translated by J. C. Cleary   The writings of the twelfth-century Chan Buddhist master Ta Hui Tsung Kao are testimony to the timelessness of Zen teaching. His letters, sermons, and lectures, often addressed to laypeople, are utterly simple-and utterly effective in helping us to

The Practice of Lojong: Cultivating Compassion through Training the Mind, by Traleg Kyabgon The lojong slogans-those fabric-softeners of the heart-have been the focus of much attention in the West the past couple decades, with good reason. They're a particularly effective practice for disciplining the mind in a way that makes compassion bloom. But they're sometimes

Enso: Zen Circles of Enlightenment by Audrey Yoshiko Seo These circular brushstrokes have become a kind of Zen cliché. Here's a chance to look past your preconceived ideas about them and appreciate their original energy, whimsy, and beauty. Each is a work of art that's executed in a split second-but the actual work in fact

The Eight Gates of Zen: A Program of Zen Training by John Daido Loori   If you want to practice Zen but there's no zendo for miles around, this book may be the next best thing. It contains the complete, eight-phase program of training taught at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper, New York. It's a