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Last year, as many of you know, we celebrated our fortieth anniversary as independent publishers. As we embark on this, our fifth decade, we thought it might be interesting to present you with a few of our favorite titles from the first four:
You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment The moment before us right now is the only place happiness is available, the only place from which we can learn and grow, the only place from which we can love and reach out to others. So why do we so regularly mentally inhabit the nonexistent realms of the past and the future? Because, Thich Nhat Hanh teaches, living in the present requires practice. “Fortunately,” he assures us, “being here is not a difficult thing to accomplish. It is enough to breathe and let go of thinking or planning. Just come back to yourself, concentrate on your breath, and smile. You are here, body and mind together. You are here, you are completely alive. That is a miracle.” He presents simple practices for accessing now through breathing, walking, listening, and speaking.
Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within A Zen teacher once asked Natalie Goldberg: “Why don’t you make writing your practice? If you go deep enough in writing,” he said, “it will take you everyplace.” The idea was intriguing enough that she tried it—and it revolutionized the way she wrote. Fortunately for us, Natalie shared what she learned from the path of Zen-writing in this book. From its first appearance in 1986, Bones has convinced many thousands of people to use written expression as a way to wisdom and insight—and to discover surprising new energy and authenticity in their writing as a welcome side effect.
Zen Mind, Beginnner’s Mind If you asked any English-speaking Zen practitioner which book they’d want with them on the proverbial desert island if they had to choose just one, my guess is most would pick Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. It’s that good. It’s not just that it contains all the basics of Zen teaching and practice—though it certainly does, from basic posture to the nature of enlightenment—it’s that it conveys the joy of Zen practice so remarkably well. Suzuki Roshi teaches you to practice and then inspires you to persevere in it.
A Brief History of Everything “It is flat-out strange that something—that anything—is happening at all. There was nothing, then a Big Bang, then here we all were. This is extremely weird.” Ah, Ken Wilber. Who else could express the wonder of the nature of the universe like that in three sentences and make you chuckle too? He’s got so many books in print now that it’s hard to know where to start if you want to get a handle on him. This is the book I usually recommend to folks as yet unacquainted with the originator of the Integral Approach. Prepare to have your head rearranged.
Breath by Breath: The Liberating Practice of Insight Meditation Following the breath is sometimes regarded as a “beginner’s” meditation practice, something to start with before you advance to other methods. Larry Rosenberg believes otherwise, and his belief is supported by the Buddha’s teaching in the Anapanasati Sutra—the “Sutra of the Full Awareness of Breathing”—for which he provides commentary in this, his most popular book. Larry shows how awareness of the breath is in fact a practice of great depth and subtlety, worthy of being worked with your whole life. Beginner’s practice? Remember what Suzuki Roshi said about beginner’s mind . . .
The Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali: A New Translation with Commentary This early-first-millennia text, made up of just 196 short aphorisms, is a kind of road map of human consciousness. With extraordinary economy, it expresses the truth about how we know what we know, why we suffer, and how we can discover the way out of suffering. Chip Hartranft is a Sanskritist and a yoga and meditation teacher who has worked with the text for many years, and this translation and commentary bear witness to his love for it. It comes with a feeling of attention to every detail, from the careful translation choices to the lucid and extensive explanation of every point. It’s a wonderful resource for anyone who practices yoga or meditation of just about any kind. Wait, I’m not finished! That’s the problem with naming favorites among our books. I have just a few hundred more . . . Happy New Year! |
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