Two concise, comprehensive treatments of Mahamudra meditation have just be republished together. This is a practice manual. Study the fundamentals and let the richness of the teachings unfold in your practice.

Sufi insights into basic human processes such as knowing and learning define very clearly what works and doesn’t work in each of these areas. Read and study carefully and then look at your own life with “new eyes”.

Straightforward account of how to approach one’s life from the perspective of Zen practice. The simplicity of much Zen instruction belies its depth. Look carefully at how these instructions work internally and externally. When we approach practice as something special, we’ve already disconnected from our lives. When we sit, with no special ideas, we create the conditions in which we might just experience things as they are.

Compilation of short texts that describe various aspects of Dzogchen practice. A good collection for those who have had instruction and training in mahamudra or dzogchen and want to refresh their practice. These instructions are meant as guides to meditation practice and to ways of experiencing our lives all the time. Most of them are relatively straightforward to understand, but the important point is to develop these abilities. This takes patient practice, learning how to live with the coming and going of thoughts and sensations, not reacting to them, but letting them resolve themselves.

(This is a revised edition of the earlier Walking Through Walls). Gedun Lodro’s approach is similar to Jam-yang-shay-ba’s classic Great Exposition of the Concentrations and Formless Absorptions. See also the teachings in Lati Rinbochay’s Meditative States in Tibetan Buddhism. This text presents a methodical path for developing attention and insight. Quite technical and detailed, focus on the spirit of what is being presented. Rather than try to force your experience to conform to these descriptions, use the advice and guidelines to explore your experience in sitting with the breath and letting thoughts, feelings, and emotions resolve themselves.

Excellent introduction to how to sit and the importance of awareness of body sensations. Most thoughts are reactions to subtle sensations in the body. The thoughts dissipate attention so that we never experience those sensations. Following the instructions in this book, you will learn to sense the body directly, opening up ways to experience the emotional cores of the patterns that pull us out of presence in our lives.

Translations of and commentaries on two Kadampa texts, the Wheel-Weapon and the Poison-Destroying Peacock. Mind training involves cultivating a way of approaching and experiencing life that rubs against our ordinary self-centered attitudes. The key point here is to experience the friction, the tension between what is being presented and how we ordinarily view things. When we hold the two together, we see things differently and new possibilities open, internally and externally.

Rumi’s poetry always illuminates and inspires. Ecstatic, loving and devotional in tone, beautiful and inspiring for the heart and mind. Read a stanza or two. Then read it aloud. You will find that it often elicits an emotional response in you, or precipitates a gap in the conceptual mind. In either case, rest in that experience for a moment or two. When read this way, Rumi puts you in touch again and again with aspects of experience that can be known, but cannot be put into words.

Urgyen Tulku, even among Tibetans, had a special gift for leading people into the experience of mind and explaining in simple language how to practice deeply. In these two volumes, he describes traditional vajrayana teachings in terms of mind and mind nature. Read a chapter or a few pages carefully and then do some meditation. Experiment with the methods and find the ones that work for you. (Note: It can be hard to find without the ISBN: for Volume 1 is 9627341355; for Volume 2 it is 9627341398)

Classic discussion of the psychology of the fear of death, including the construction of social reality. Many people have found this detailed discussion highly illuminating, shedding light on many of the problems we create for ourselves when we endeavor to ignore the fact that life has an end. Read this to augment and deepen your practice and reflections on death and impermanence. You may also find this book helpful in questioning the way that we, as social animals, construct a reality and then find ourselves imprisoned by it.