The Library

A short Kashmiri text, more than a thousand years old, offering 112 methods of attention. Three versions serve three kinds of reader. Lorin Roche’s The Radiance Sutras is vivid, embodied, and the easiest way in; it is a poet’s interpretation, so read it beside a closer translation. Jaideva Singh’s Vijñānabhairava or Divine Consciousness gives the Sanskrit, a careful translation, and notes drawn from the traditional commentaries, and it is a standard scholarly translation. Vijnana Bhairava: The Practice of Centring Awareness records the spoken teaching of Swami Lakshmanjoo, the twentieth-century Kashmiri master often called the last holder of the tradition’s living oral lineage.

A clear, thorough map of the tradition the Vijnana Bhairava belongs to, covering its history, its philosophy, and its practice, written by a scholar who is also a practitioner. It is long, and it rewards the effort. Read it once the looking practices have become familiar, and it will show you where they came from.

A distillation of the vast Yoga Vasishta, and the source of the verses on this desk. The English used here follows the edition published by Sri Ramanasramam (opens in a new tab), which can be read Free online. For a taste of the full work, with its stories nested inside stories, read Swami Venkatesananda’s The Concise Yoga Vasistha.

The Gita teaches karma yoga, action offered without grasping at its results, and its voice runs through The Marketplace. The Upanishads hold some of the oldest statements of the question at the heart of Coherence: what is the self? Easwaran’s versions are clear and carefully introduced, the work of a translator who taught meditation for nearly forty years.

The two great Daoist classics, and the classic sources for wu wei, the effortless action of The Sovereign Act. Chan, the Buddhism of the Shaolin Temple, grew up in conversation with them. Le Guin’s Tao Te Ching is a novelist’s rendering, spare and alive, made with the help of the scholar J. P. Seaton. Watson’s Zhuangzi: Basic Writings is funny, strange, and wise, and it is where the butterfly dream of The Dream and the Dreamer comes from.

Who Am I? is a few pages long, Free, and the root of the inquiry in Coherence. Be As You Are gathers Ramana’s answers to the people who came to him, arranged by theme, and it is a fine companion to the shorter text.

Conversations with a Bombay shopkeeper who became one of the clearest teachers of the last century, recorded and translated by Maurice Frydman. Plain, fierce, and endlessly patient on the question of who you are before you invent yourself.

The Shaolin master who leads Shaolin Temple Europe in Germany, and the living voice closest to the spirit of this desk. He speaks plainly: self-mastery is built through patient, daily training of body, breath, and mind, and through an honest look at whatever stands in the way. Read Shaolin Spirit: The Way to Self-Mastery. Then watch his TEDx talk (opens in a new tab) on the five hindrances to self-mastery, a good short introduction to his teaching, and his long conversation with Steven Bartlett on The Diary of a CEO. The Shaolin Temple Europe channel on YouTube has much more.

A teacher trained for decades in the Tibetan tradition, equally at home with advanced practice and plain fundamentals, who insists that practice has to show up in ordinary life. Reverse Meditation turns the usual direction of meditation around: instead of settling away from pain and difficult emotion, you turn toward them and let them become the practice. Go gradually, and only as far as you can stay steady. I’m Mindful, Now What? is for people who have learned to sit and sense there is further to go. Preparing to Die is a clear-eyed guide to the end of life, for the reader ready to look at it directly. His podcast, Edge of Mind (opens in a new tab), is a long series of conversations with contemplatives and scientists, and his book on dream yoga appears with Coherence, below.

An American-born Buddhist nun in the Tibetan tradition who writes about fear, failure, and tenderness with rare honesty. Taking the Leap is her short book on shenpa, the hook that catches before you can think. The Places That Scare You works through the four boundless qualities that shape The Open Heart. When Things Fall Apart is for the days when nothing is working.

A former Buddhist monk, trained in Thailand, Burma, and India, who helped bring Insight Meditation to the West. A Path with Heart is a humane guide to a lifetime of practice, and wise about teachers, communities, and the difficulties of the path. After the Ecstasy, the Laundry is about what remains after awakening: the habits, the wounds, the dishes.

The Transcendental Meditation tradition holds that consciousness is the fundamental reality, and that an effortless mantra practice lets the mind settle back into its source. Tony Nader, a physician and neuroscientist who now leads the TM movement worldwide, makes the full case in Consciousness Is All There Is. Bob Roth’s Strength in Stillness is the plain, practical introduction. For the source, read Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Science of Being and Art of Living. TM itself is learned from a certified teacher; the books describe it.

A contemporary teacher of the direct path who points, with great patience and precision, to awareness as the one thing always present, and as what you most truly are. Being Aware of Being Aware is short and practical. The Nature of Consciousness is the fuller argument, for readers who want the reasoning as well as the practice.

A practical case for taking your attention back from the phone, with a thirty-day reset that suits the first weeks of the Waking Hour.

The private notebook of a Roman emperor, written for himself alone. Hays’s English is clean and modern. A working book for staying decent in a loud room.

An average human life lasts about four thousand weeks. This book is about time, limits, and the relief of accepting that you will never get everything done.

How ordinary breathing went wrong, and what can be trained back. Some of the methods it describes, such as long breath holds and forceful breathing, should be learned from a qualified teacher, if at all; the desk teaches slow, gentle breathing.

The Satipatthana Sutta, the classic early discourse on mindfulness of the body, of feeling, of the mind, and of the qualities of mind, among them the five hindrances and the seven factors of awakening. Free on SuttaCentral (opens in a new tab). Read it slowly, beside Goldstein.

A thorough, modern walk through that discourse by one of the most respected teachers of Insight Meditation.

A clear, illustrated guide to zhan zhuang, standing like a tree, the still posture at the root of much Chinese internal training. Begin with a few minutes.

Short talks on sitting, by the Japanese teacher who founded the San Francisco Zen Center. “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” Zen grew from the Chan of Shaolin.

The RAIN practice (recognize, allow, investigate, nurture) taught in full by the teacher who made it widely known.

A psychiatrist’s account of the camps, and of the last human freedom, which no one can take: the freedom to choose your attitude.

The Metta Sutta, the early teaching quoted in Loving-Kindness: as a mother would protect her only child, so cultivate a boundless heart toward all beings. Free on SuttaCentral (opens in a new tab).

A classic modern guide to the four boundless qualities, loving-kindness, compassion, joy in others’ joy, and equanimity, which form the spine of The Open Heart.

The fourfold path behind Forgiveness, from Desmond Tutu, who chaired South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and his daughter, Mpho Tutu. Its last step is a choice: to renew the relationship, or to release it.

Grief as an act of love, and as an apprenticeship with sorrow that our culture has largely forgotten. Weller’s five gates of grief shape Grief.

Four steps for speaking in conflict without attack: what you observe, what you feel, what you need, and what you ask.

A psychologist’s study of everyday wonder: what it is, where to find it, and what it does to the self.

A short, wise Jungian book on the parts of yourself you have disowned, and on the strengths that are often hidden there with them.

A modern, step-by-step form of the Tibetan practice of Chöd, in which what torments you is fed rather than fought.

John Welwood, the psychotherapist who coined the term spiritual bypassing, on why meditation and psychological work need each other.

Each chapter takes a popular spiritual idea that sounds wise and quietly misleads, and sets it beside the truth it imitates.

On the ego’s habit of dressing itself in spiritual clothes. A useful check if the practice begins to feel like an identity. Trungpa’s own conduct as a teacher, including heavy drinking and sexual relationships with students, has been widely criticized. Take the book’s warning as applying to teachers too, and read it beside Choosing a Teacher.

A short primer on nonduality, drawing on Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta, and blunt and funny about how absurd the self’s story becomes once you look at it closely.

Two sixteenth-century Spanish mystics with maps of the inner path: Teresa’s seven dwelling places of the soul, and John’s dark night, in which every familiar consolation falls away. Both read well beyond their Christian setting.

Two guides to the practice of the night, one compact and rooted in Tibet’s Bön tradition, the other modern and thorough.

On the helper who quietly needs to be needed, and on service that leaves the other person stronger.

Read the chapter “Buddhist Economics,” a short and still startling case that work exists to develop the worker and to join people in a common task, as well as to produce what we need.

The Upaddha Sutta, a very short discourse in which the Buddha tells Ananda that good friendship is the whole of the holy life. Free on SuttaCentral (opens in a new tab).

A short, luminous book on the Sabbath as “a palace in time.” It speaks to anyone who needs a day set apart, whatever their tradition, or none.

What the dying teach the living, from a co-founder of the Zen Hospice Project.

Please forgive me. I forgive you. Thank you. I love you. A palliative care physician on saying them while there is still time.

Why meditation can sometimes deepen trauma instead of easing it, and how to adjust practice so that it stays safe. Written for teachers, and useful to anyone whose history makes sitting hard.

Essays gathered by the Grofs on crises in which a spiritual opening becomes overwhelming, and on telling them apart from illness that needs medical care. Their view is contested. Read it as one map, and if you are in trouble, speak to a clinician. This desk cannot make that call for you.

A psychiatrist’s account of how fear and trauma live on in the body. Some of its claims are debated by researchers, so read it as one clinician’s view, and as background.

The 2017 Brown University study, by Jared Lindahl, Willoughby Britton, and colleagues, of difficult experiences among Western Buddhist meditators. Free online. It shows that what you may be going through has been seen before, and that help exists.

A nonprofit, founded by the researcher Willoughby Britton, offering information, consultations, and support groups for people in meditation-related difficulty. Its information pages are Free.

A psychiatrist’s account of more than four decades of research into near-death experiences: what people report, how it changes the way they live, and what science can and cannot yet explain. Calm, careful, and free of hype, it is written as much for experiencers as for skeptics.

Begun in 1978 by a small group of researchers, Bruce Greyson among them, IANDS supports experiencers and the people close to them, publishes research, and runs a network of local groups across the United States where an experience like yours can be spoken aloud among people who understand.

Hundreds of talks on fear, self-compassion, and awakening, with guided meditations, Free as a podcast and on her website (opens in a new tab).

A Free archive of thousands of talks by teachers of Insight Meditation, Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield among them.

Most of these books can be heard as well as read. Libro.fm (opens in a new tab) sells audiobooks in partnership with independent bookstores, and your library’s apps lend them free.