Cultivating Stillness

Author: Eva Wong
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 0834823780
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 187

Book Description
A principal part of the Taoist canon for many centuries, this Lao-Tzu classic is an essential overview of the Taoist practice of internal alchemy, or qigong Equanimity, good health, peace of mind, and long life are the goals of the ancient Taoist tradition known as “internal alchemy,” of which Cultivating Stillness is a key text. Written between the second and fifth centuries, the book is attributed to T’ai Shang Lao-chun—the legendary figure more widely known as Lao-Tzu, author of the Tao-te Ching. The accompanying commentary, written in the nineteenth century by Shui-ch’ing Tzu, explains the alchemical symbolism of the text and the methods for cultivating internal stillness of body and mind. A key text in the Taoist canon, Cultivating Stillness is still the first book studied by Taoist initiates today.

Simply Wait

Author: Pamela C. Hawkins
Publisher: Upper Room Books
ISBN: 0835817571
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 109

Book Description
What if it really wasn't that hard to find more peace, more quiet, more room in your heart for the Christ child to be born? Hawkins will guide you—calmly and simply—through the busy season of Advent, and you'll come out of the four weeks more centered, rested, and spiritually renewed. "The idea for this book arose from my own experience of contemplative prayer, prayer that finds its home, not in busy doing or speaking, but in becoming, in being," writes Hawkins. Some Advent titles promise reflective simplicity but actually require a lot of time or reading; Simply Wait is the exception. The exercises are very doable and focus on anticipation, hope, patience, and obedience. Questions and journal space are provided to help you contemplate more fully. This is an ideal individual or small-group study; a guide for groups is included. Instead of doing more and moving faster, find a way to reflect more, worry less, and connect authentically to the season with the grace-filled wisdom of Simply Wait.

Samyama - Cultivating Stillness in Action, Siddhis and Miracles

Author: Yogani
Publisher: AYP Publishing
ISBN: 097864963X
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 113

Book Description
Samyama - Stillness in Action, Siddhis and Miracles covers a powerful yoga practice that has been shrouded in mystery for centuries. Yet, it is as close to us as our most immediate hopes and dreams, for it is the principles of Samyama that are operating behind everything good that is happening in our life. The key methods of Samyama are covered here, simplified to enable anyone to engage in daily practice leading to profound results. Our deepest desires can be enlivened by systematically letting go into our inner silence. Whatever we surrender will come back to us a thousand-fold, purified in a divine outpouring. This is Stillness in Action. Yogani is the author of two landmark books on the world's most effective spiritual practices: Advanced Yoga Practices - Easy Lessons for Ecstatic Living, a comprehensive user-friendly textbook, and The Secrets of Wilder, a powerful spiritual novel. The AYP Enlightenment Series makes these profound practices available for the first time in a series of concise instruction books. Samyama is the fifth book in the series, preceded by Asanas, Mudras and Bandhas, Tantra, Spinal Breathing Pranayama, and Deep Meditation.

Stillness Is the Key

Author: Ryan Holiday
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525538585
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller & Wall Street Journal Bestseller In The Obstacle Is the Way and Ego Is the Enemy, bestselling author Ryan Holiday made ancient wisdom wildly popular with a new generation of leaders in sports, politics, and technology. In his new book, Stillness Is the Key, Holiday draws on timeless Stoic and Buddhist philosophy to show why slowing down is the secret weapon for those charging ahead. All great leaders, thinkers, artists, athletes, and visionaries share one indelible quality. It enables them to conquer their tempers. To avoid distraction and discover great insights. To achieve happiness and do the right thing. Ryan Holiday calls it stillness--to be steady while the world spins around you. In this book, he outlines a path for achieving this ancient, but urgently necessary way of living. Drawing on a wide range of history's greatest thinkers, from Confucius to Seneca, Marcus Aurelius to Thich Nhat Hanh, John Stuart Mill to Nietzsche, he argues that stillness is not mere inactivity, but the doorway to self-mastery, discipline, and focus. Holiday also examines figures who exemplified the power of stillness: baseball player Sadaharu Oh, whose study of Zen made him the greatest home run hitter of all time; Winston Churchill, who in balancing his busy public life with time spent laying bricks and painting at his Chartwell estate managed to save the world from annihilation in the process; Fred Rogers, who taught generations of children to see what was invisible to the eye; Anne Frank, whose journaling and love of nature guided her through unimaginable adversity. More than ever, people are overwhelmed. They face obstacles and egos and competition. Stillness Is the Key offers a simple but inspiring antidote to the stress of 24/7 news and social media. The stillness that we all seek is the path to meaning, contentment, and excellence in a world that needs more of it than ever.

The Great Stillness

Author: Bruce Kumar Frantzis
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
ISBN: 9781556434082
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Book Description
This is the second volume of a two-book series that peels away the metaphors and explains the living traditions of Lao Tse's water method of Taoist meditation. The main focus of the book is to explain 'inner dissolving, ' its major mediation technique that helps people overcome deeply bound negative emotions, deepen their spiritual and psychic development, and develop balance and compassion. "The Great Stillness" is one of the few books that discusses the Taoist traditions of sexual chi gung and meditation. It is the only book that includes detailed instructions and illustrations for the moving meditation practice called Circle Walking that was developed in Taoist monasteries over 4000 years ago. This volume advances the breathing lessons taught in volume one: "Relaxing Into Your Being,"

Taoism

Author: Eva Wong
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 1590308824
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Book Description
A leading scholar feng shui master presents the great depth and diversity of Taoist philosophy, practices, and history in this accessible manual to the oft-misunderstood spiritual tradition. Millions of readers have come to the philosophy of Taoism thanks to the classics Tao Te Ching and the I Ching, or through the practices of t'ai chi and feng-shui, but the Tao is less known for its unique traditions of meditation, physical training, magical practice, and internal alchemy. Eva Wong, a leading Taoist practitioner and translator, provides a solid introduction to the Way. All of Taoism’s most important texts, figures, and events are covered, as well as its extraordinarily rich history and remarkable variety of practice. Sections include: • The History of Taoism traces the development of the tradition from the shamans of prehistoric China through the classical period (including the teachings of the famous sage Lao-tzu), the beginnings of Taoism as a religion, the rise of mystical and alchemical Taoism, and the synthesis of Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. • Systems of Taoism explores magical sects, divination practices, devotional ceremonies, internal alchemy, and the way of right action. • Taoist Practices discusses meditation, techniques of cultivating the body, and rites of purification, ceremony, and talismanic magic. This roadmap to the spiritual landscape of Taoism not only introduces the important events in the history of Taoism, the sages who wrote the Taoist texts, and the various schools of Taoist thinking, but also gives readers a feel for what it means to practice Taoism today. A comprehensive bibliography for further study completes this valuable reference work.

Cultivating the Energy of Life

Author: Liu Hua-Yang
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 1570623422
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 121

Book Description
A modern translation of Hui-ming Ching, the classic Taoist manual on cultivating and conserving energy as a means of achieving greater health, longevity, and inner peace To live a healthy and long life, to be tranquil and untouched by the dust of the mundane world, and to become one with the life-giving energy of the Tao—these are the goals of the practitioner of Taoist spirituality. The classic Chinese text Hui-ming ching (“Treatise on Cultivating Life”) is one of the most important Taoist classics on the arts of longevity and a major inspiration for many techniques of Qigong. Even two hundred years after its initial publication, it is still one of the most accessible works on a branch of Taoist practice that has been heretofore shrouded in mystery. Abandoning the symbolic language typically used in the ancient classics, it discusses the practices of the Microcosmic and Macrocosmic Orbits, the role of breath in circulating energy, and the conservation of procreative energy in a straightforward and concrete way. Now, in this new, complete translation, a foremost translator of Taoist texts clarifies and elucidates the Taoist methods of conserving and cultivating energy for the attainment of health, longevity, and inner peace.

Depth Over Time

Author: Swami Khecaranatha
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1452016275
Category : Kuṇḍalinī
Languages : en
Pages : 318

Book Description
Depth Over Time offers a vision of the freedom and liberation available to anyone who is willing to make spiritual growth the primary focus of their life. Much more than just a discussion of philosophy, the book provides readers with the tools to undertake a profound spiritual transformation within themselves, to gain the direct realization that "God dwells within you, as yourself." Depth Over Time covers the most important aspects of the practice of Kundalini MahaYoga. Discussions include the topics of Grace and individual effort, our relationship with God, the wish to grow, the teacher-student relationship, selfless service, surrender, cultivating stillness, and the critical need to consciously choose spirituality, moment by moment. Throughout the book, Swami Khecaranatha reiterates that spiritual practice does not just happen during formal, closed-eye meditation. Swami Khecaranatha explains the philosophy and practices of this Tantric tradition in terms that Western students can readily understand, yet his message conveys the essence of the highest teachings of the ancient Kashmiri Shaivite tradition. He makes it clear that attaining liberation and living in Divine Presence is not just the purview of saints, but a real possibility for anyone willing to devote his or her life to the pursuit of unconditional freedom.

Insomniac City

Author: Bill Hayes
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1620404958
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
Amazon's Best Biographies and Memoirs of the Year List A moving celebration of what Bill Hayes calls "the evanescent, the eavesdropped, the unexpected" of life in New York City, and an intimate glimpse of his relationship with the late Oliver Sacks. "A beautifully written once-in-a-lifetime book, about love, about life, soul, and the wonderful loving genius Oliver Sacks, and New York, and laughter and all of creation."--Anne Lamott Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city's incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera. And he unexpectedly fell in love again, with his friend and neighbor, the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose exuberance--"I don't so much fear death as I do wasting life," he tells Hayes early on--is captured in funny and touching vignettes throughout. What emerges is a portrait of Sacks at his most personal and endearing, from falling in love for the first time at age seventy-five to facing illness and death (Sacks died of cancer in August 2015). Insomniac City is both a meditation on grief and a celebration of life. Filled with Hayes's distinctive street photos of everyday New Yorkers, the book is a love song to the city and to all who have felt the particular magic and solace it offers.

Cultivating Perfection

Author: Louis Komjathy
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047421736
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 576

Book Description
This important work focuses on early Quanzhen (Complete Perfection) Daoism, a twelfth-century Daoist religious movement and subsequent monastic order. Emphasis in this first study to approach Quanzhen from a comparative religious studies perspective is placed on the complex interplay among views of self, specific training regimens, and the types of experiences that were expected to follow from dedicated praxis. On the basis of historical contextualization and textual analysis it is demonstrated that in its formative and incipient organized phases Quanzhen was a Daoist religious community consisting of a few renunciants dedicated to religious praxis. The study proper is followed by a complete annotated translation of a text attributed to the founder, which represents one of only two early Quanzhen texts translated to date. Subsequent appendices address issues of dating and contents of the early textual corpus as well as technical Quanzhen religious terminology.