Books like The Mindful Athlete

In this straightforward meditation manual, Bhante G. (as he is affectionately called) sets forth the hows and whys of mindfulness meditation. When I first learned to meditate, I found this simple but profound book the most accessible of the many books available. My husband and I were so impressed with Bhante’s wisdom that we brought him to Columbus, Ohio to teach a weekend retreat for our local mindfulness group. He was warm, caring, and funny. His personality comes across in this small, but mighty book.

I love this book and reread it often.

Why? Because it reassures me that I’m not alone in searching for greater peace of mind. Jon Kabat-Zinn combines stories from Buddhism and his own practice with humor and words of encouragement to remind me that it is up to me to wake up from the mindless rush of compulsive planning, worry, regret, and resentment that too often cycles through my mind like the voices on a talk radio station.

He also reminds me to be kind to myself, not to fall into shame or self-accusations, because mindfulness is an ongoing practice to become more centered, aware, and balanced.

I smile when I catch myself drifting away from being mindfully present, take a deep breath, and return to the here and now. And this process continues in my formal meditation practice each morning and my ongoing attempts to be more mindfully aware… show more.

I recommend this book not because the author runs, as do I, but because she connects the physical body with freedom and insight. She has felt the stillness during movement. You are fully in the moment and everything is one. I met Vanessa Zeuisei Goddard, by chance when my husband and I visited Zen Mountain Monastery where she was practicing and where Ed had practiced years before. The retreats were between sessions, on a break from silence, so she and I were able to talk. To speak with someone who is both on the meditative path and who meditates while she moves gave me the courage to move forward with my work on my own movement meditation book. I step into the lineage, a tradition her lovely volume follows.

I found Brad Stulberg’s latest book when I was researching my book and immediately toned down my prose to meet the challenge of distilling practices nearly impossible to explain in simple terms anyone can understand. Sound impossible? Brad makes it look effortless. There’s just enough science balanced by personal experience and other anecdotes that what could have been a PhD dissertation (was it?) reads with ease. The power and simplicity make it elegant and ever so useful.

There is nothing about this masterful book I don’t absolutely adore. This title, as well as her husband Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, are rooted in Buddhist psychology. However, one needn’t be a Buddhist to approach their works—I mean, I’m a Pagan Witch and American Hindu, for goodness’ sake!

We all have something to learn from this book. This book gets to the heart of the human emotional experience. I found that it presents “shadow work” in a manner that’s encouraging, not frightening, and teaches emotionally sensitive souls—whether or not they identify as empaths—how to successfully manage emotions, confront traumas, and put an end to negative behavioral cycles with kindness and wisdom prevail. This is one of the rare books I will regularly return to and forever treasure.

This was the absolute best book I have ever read that explains the spiritual path.

I love that this book is so balanced and whole. Jack Kornfield helped me understand spiritual growth early in my journey through simple but sophisticated psychology and deep nondual philosophy and experience.

He covers everything clearly, with amazing stories and a fantastic writing style that I found inspiring, challenging, and comforting all at once.

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the experts there are few" is one of hundreds of gems from this collection of talks by Shunryu Suzuki, founding teacher of the San Francisco Zen Center.

Living a meaningful and successful life requires cultivating a full-functioning mind and body. Here are simple and profound instructions for seeing through the world of greed, aversion, and delusion. Suzuki provides guidelines for redefining meaning and success, going way beyond the usual self-help realm and toward a way of transforming how you see and live in the world.

This is the very first book that started my personal journey into meditation and mindfulness back in high school. Every page in this wonderful book reads like gentle guidance from an old, wise, and sometimes funny man, sharing stories and practical tools to end the suffering we cause to ourselves.

The next one on my list of the top 5 spiritual books is The Book of Secrets by Osho. He is my favorite spiritual teacher, and although he never wrote any books, the texts from his speeches were published in several compilations. Everything you read from him can be useful, but this book stands above the rest in its length, depth and practicality.

This book is based on a 5000 year old tantric scripture consisting of 112 meditations to achieve liberation. What Osho basically does is that he adds commentaries and his own experiences to each of the techniques, thereby making them understandable and practical for the modern seeker. If I had to recommend any book on meditation, it would definitely be this one.

Did you know that today’s “mindfulness” movement—which promises everything from greater corporate productivity to more passion in the bedroom—originated in nineteenth-century resistance to the British Empire?

After the conquest of Burma, meditation—previously something mostly the domain of wilderness hermits—became a technique everyone could use to strengthen Buddhist Burmese society against cultural imperialism. Burmese teachers brought this practice to America, and Americans came to Burma to learn it directly.

It was fascinating to follow meditation’s journey in these pages from a tool of resistance against globalization to a technique brought around the world by globalization today. This book helped me appreciate the strange history of mindfulness meditation.