Here are 18 books that Breakfast with Buddha fans have personally recommended once you finish the Breakfast with Buddha series.
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Born into an atheist family and a psychiatrist by background, I identified as a Christian in mid-life then became an interfaith minister. I believe everyone has a birthright to discover their own personal nature and purpose and although religion can help, it’s probably only a phase through which a properly evolved consciousness passes. You can read all the non-fiction and sacred texts you like, but I find spiritual fiction to be the best medium to explore and share fundamentals like this.
A cynical and brilliant exposé of an apparent holy man who goes from tour guide to guru in a way that, although a work of fiction, reminds me of so many religious people I’ve come across who pretend to be something they’re not. It also has a big sense of humor and made me laugh out loud several times.
Published in 1959, it was very ahead of its time and is still the best spiritual fiction novel to come out of India.
Raju's first stop after his release from prison is the barber's shop Then he decides to take refuge in an abandoned temple. Raju used to be India's most corrupt tourist guide - but now a peasant mistakes him for a holy man. Gradually, almost grudgingly, he begins to play the part. He succeeds so well that God himself intervenes to put Raju's new holiness to the test.
Born into an atheist family and a psychiatrist by background, I identified as a Christian in mid-life then became an interfaith minister. I believe everyone has a birthright to discover their own personal nature and purpose and although religion can help, it’s probably only a phase through which a properly evolved consciousness passes. You can read all the non-fiction and sacred texts you like, but I find spiritual fiction to be the best medium to explore and share fundamentals like this.
A complete classic from 1923, it contains so much wisdom that I almost use it as a reference book. There’s no plot as such, the central character forming a mouthpiece for short bursts of poetic prose that cover many of life’s biggest issues.
I adore the beauty of the metaphors and the whimsical nature of the advice, and I’ve quoted it in both formal and informal moments more times than I can remember.
One of the most beloved classics of our time—a collection of poetic essays that are philosophical, spiritual, and, above all, inspirational. Published in 1923, Gibran's masterpiece has been translated into more than twenty languages.
Gibran’s musings are divided into twenty-eight chapters covering such sprawling topics as love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, housing, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.
Each essay reveals deep insights into the impulses of the human heart and mind. The…
Nearly 20 years ago, I awkwardly stumbled into a yoga class after a therapist informed me that I needed to do something about my anxiety issues (“Take your pick,” she said, “I’ll prescribe pills or you can try yoga.”) From the very first class, I was drawn not only to the physical practice, but to the sense that yoga could lead me deeper into my own heart and soul. I wrote a memoir about my journey—and about how yoga helped me later face and conquer breast cancer. I now teach yoga, and I love reading about how yoga changes lives—as it almost always does.
I really liked this book because beautiful, blonde, former model Saidman Yee (wife of the popular yoga teacher Rodney Yee) seems so perfect on the outside that one couldn’t imagine she’d ever have had a notable problem—let alone a seizure disorder or substance abuse issues. Growing up in Indiana, one of seven kids, the author ended up posing for glamour shots and making a name for herself in the fashion world. But inside she experienced anxiety and fear of failure. Saidman Yee’s vulnerability and authenticity shine in this candid story of how yoga helped her go within and honor her true self. Wonderful yoga sequences designed by Saidman Yee are included.
The very first time Saidman Yee took a yoga class, she left feeling inexplicably different-something inside had shifted. She felt alive-so alive that yoga became the center of her life, helping her come to terms with her insecurities and find her true identity and voice. From learning to cope with a frightening seizure disorder to navigating marriages and divorces to becoming a mother, finding the right life partner, and grieving a beloved parent, Saidman Yee has been through it all-and has found that yoga holds the answers to life's greatest challenges.
Approachable, sympathetic, funny, and candid, Saidman Yee shares personal…
Nearly 20 years ago, I awkwardly stumbled into a yoga class after a therapist informed me that I needed to do something about my anxiety issues (“Take your pick,” she said, “I’ll prescribe pills or you can try yoga.”) From the very first class, I was drawn not only to the physical practice, but to the sense that yoga could lead me deeper into my own heart and soul. I wrote a memoir about my journey—and about how yoga helped me later face and conquer breast cancer. I now teach yoga, and I love reading about how yoga changes lives—as it almost always does.
Once a mover and shaker in the Kundalini yoga world, Dyson (aka Premka) was the right-hand woman to Yogi Bhajan, the fallen guru who brought Kundalini yoga to the west in the late 1960s. The memoir chronicles Dyson’s introduction to yoga, her rise within the Kundalini yoga community, her personal (and sexual) relationship with Bhajan, and the eventual realization that she’d been betrayed. For yogis venturing out on the path, Dyson’s story underscores what all true yogis know: The real guru resides within one’s own heart. As a Kundalini yoga teacher I found Dyson’s story riveting, but it will resonate with anyone who finds themselves seeking answers outside—rather than inside—one’s self.
Premka: White Bird in a Golden Cage is a compelling and beautifully unfolding tale, offering a haunting look into a teacher/student relationship. This intimate memoir, written by one of Yogi Bhajan’s prized teachers and exalted students, is full of devotion, love, dedication, betrayal, loss and the healing unification of the self. It also reads as a love letter to a unique time in history—the ‘60s in Los Angeles and New Mexico, where love, music, art, spiritual exploration, often led to self-transformation. As a historical treatise and a spiritual mystery, this book offers unique insight into the origins of the Western…
Nearly 20 years ago, I awkwardly stumbled into a yoga class after a therapist informed me that I needed to do something about my anxiety issues (“Take your pick,” she said, “I’ll prescribe pills or you can try yoga.”) From the very first class, I was drawn not only to the physical practice, but to the sense that yoga could lead me deeper into my own heart and soul. I wrote a memoir about my journey—and about how yoga helped me later face and conquer breast cancer. I now teach yoga, and I love reading about how yoga changes lives—as it almost always does.
This memoir follows the healing (both physical and ultimately spiritual) journey of a 13-year-old Iowan boy who is seriously injured in a car accident in which his father and sister are killed. Paralyzed from the chest down, Sanford recounts the excruciating challenge of restoring his mind/body connection. Though confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life he digs deep to locate hope and inner strength and even eventually becomes a yoga teacher. (I attended his inspiring class when he visited near my home so I can attest to the fact that this is a true story!) This is an unforgettable memoir of fortitude, love, and resilience.
Matt Sanford's life and body were irrevocably changed at age 13 on a snowy lowa road. On that day, his family's car skidded off an overpass, killing Matt's father and sister and leaving him paralyzed from the chest down and confined to a wheelchair. His mother and brother escaped from the accident unharmed but were left to pick up the pieces of their decimated family. This pivotal event set Matt off on a lifelong journey, from his intensive care experiences at the Mayo Clinic to becoming a paralyzed yoga teacher and founder of a non-profit organization. Forced to explore what…
One salient feature of my life has been integration: of the personal and professional, the inner and the outer, the spiritual and the material, the east and the west. Though I didn’t know it at the time, that template was set when I was in my twenties by the people I knew and the books I read. These five helped give me direction, meaning, and purpose, and to this day, they continue to inform and inspire. I sometimes refer to them explicitly in my writing, lectures, online courses, and counseling work; anytime I hear that someone read one because of me, it gives me enormous pleasure.
I first read this iconic memoir in 1970, and I still have the five-dollar hardcover I borrowed and never returned. I’ve read it many times now and teach courses on it, yet I find something new every time. Published in 1946, it’s more than a unique life story (in fact, Yogananda left out so much that I felt compelled to write a complete biography of him, The Life of Yogananda).
The book also offers a primer on Indian philosophy and yogic practices, profiles of extraordinary people, vivid glimpses of early 20th-century Indian culture, and eye-popping miracles and wonders, along with attempts to explain them rationally and scientifically. I never became a formal student of Yogananda, but I’ve learned an enormous amount from his seminal book.
Autobiography of a Yogi is at once a beautifully written account of an exceptional life and a profound introduction to the ancient science of Yoga and its time-honored tradition of meditation. Profoundly inspiring, it is at the same time vastly entertaining, warmly humorous and filled with extraordinary personages.
Self-Realization Fellowship's editions, and none others, include extensive material added by the author after the first edition was published, including a final chapter on the closing years of his life.
Selected as "One of the 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Twentieth Century", Autobiography of a Yogi has been translated into more…
Born into an atheist family and a psychiatrist by background, I identified as a Christian in mid-life then became an interfaith minister. I believe everyone has a birthright to discover their own personal nature and purpose and although religion can help, it’s probably only a phase through which a properly evolved consciousness passes. You can read all the non-fiction and sacred texts you like, but I find spiritual fiction to be the best medium to explore and share fundamentals like this.
This 1970 novella transported me into a world of seagulls, how they live and how they fly, and one, Jonathan, who decides to be different, to defy conformity, to go further and faster, like my own striving for something more, for experiences beyond the mundane.
I never thought I’d identify with a seagull, but this wonderful bird’s world view is exactly the same as that of anyone who sees more than what’s just in front of them.
This classic work is now available for the first time in paperback. Since 1951, when the last of the Witchcraft Acts was repealed, many books have been written about the reappearance of witchcraft and the development of a pagan theology. Churchmen have denounced it. Sociologists have wondered at it. Journalists have penned sensational stories about it. But until the publication of this book, no one had told the real story of it from the inside as frankly as it is told here.
Doreen Valiente, one of witchcraft's most widely known figures, was a close friend of the late Gerald Gardner,…
My search for meaning didn't come when I hit midlife. Ever since I was a kid, I gravitated toward books and movies that offered lessons about living, which I'd try to incorporate into admittedly limited childhood opportunities. As I grew older and gained more agency, I was able to apply what I learned to more significant decisions, which often led me down a very different path than my peers. I suppose, in hindsight, this accounts for why my first three books were released by a publisher in the personal transformation space. I'm happy to share the 5 books that have helped me on my journey toward living a better life...so far.
Siddhartha is the story of an epic journey of a man traveling through ancient India, with life lessons subtly woven through the narrative.
Ultimately, this book is about how all things are connected through nature, and more specifically, how attaching too much weight to individual events—good, bad, happy, sad—misses the totality of appreciating how those events work together to make a more joyful, meaningful life.
Here the spirituality of the East and the West have met in a novel that enfigures deep human wisdom with a rich and colorful imagination.
Written in a prose of almost biblical simplicity and beauty, it is the story of a soul's long quest in search of he ultimate answer to the enigma of man's role on this earth. As a youth, the young Indian Siddhartha meets the Buddha but cannot be content with a disciple's role: he must work out his own destiny and solve his own doubt-a tortuous road that carries him through the sensuality of a love…
My twenty novels tend to focus on characters who face great challenges, and I have a particular appreciation for beautiful prose. I don’t read for distraction or entertainment, but to be enlightened, moved, and made more compassionate about different kinds of people in different environments.
I speak Russian and spent several years working in the former USSR on cultural exchange exhibitions. I majored in Russian Language and Literature at Brown and have a Master’s in those subjects, also from Brown, and I love Turgenev even more than I love his great contemporaries, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.
In this short novel, Turgenev speaks to political differences across generations, something pertinent to the American political scene now and to the tension between activism and domestic life.
As a novelist, I’m also blown away by his ability to put so much into a very short piece of fiction. It’s helpful, but not essential, to have a bit of knowledge about pre-Revolutionary Russia, but like his masterful Sportsman’s Sketches, he is a genius at bringing characters, both real and imagined, to life.
Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons explores the ageless conflict between generations through a period in Russian history when a new generation of revolutionary intellectuals threatened the state. This Penguin Classics edition is translated from the Russian by Peter Carson, with an introduction by Rosamund Bartlett and an afterword by Tatyana Tolstaya.
Returning home after years away at university, Arkady is proud to introduce his clever friend Bazarov to his father and uncle. But their guest soon stirs up unrest on the quiet country estate - his outspoken nihilist views and his scathing criticisms of the older men expose the growing…
My twenty novels tend to focus on characters who face great challenges, and I have a particular appreciation for beautiful prose. I don’t read for distraction or entertainment, but to be enlightened, moved, and made more compassionate about different kinds of people in different environments.
I think Robert Stone was one of the greatest American novelists of the recent era, a man with a profound concern for how political situations affect the individual. I love Stone’s ability to delve into complex situations.
This is fiction, unlike the last two recommendations mentioned above, and takes place in Central America during the Seventies. I love books about political situations, and I love novels set in other countries. Stone is a master of both.
He was also a humble, good man, though maybe I’m not completely objective because he provided a generous blurb for my first novel. I had the pleasure of spending a little time with him after my novel was published, and I found him to be brilliant, funny, modest, and just a fun person to be around.
Like Dostoevsky, he was able to delve into deep matters by telling a great story with amazing characters.…
