The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology [Kindle Edition]
Author: Jack Kornfield | Language: English | ISBN: B0013TPVU6 | Format: PDF, EPUB
The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology
Download electronic versions of selected books The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology for everyone book mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link You have within you unlimited capacities for love, for joy, for communion with life, and for unshakable freedom—and here is how to awaken them. In The Wise Heart, one of the leading spiritual teachers of our time offers the most accessible and illuminating guide to Buddhism’s transformational psychology ever published in the West.
Trained as a monk in Thailand, Burma, and India, Jack Kornfield experienced at first hand the life-changing power of Buddhist teachings: the emphasis on the nobility and sacredness of the human spirit, the fine-grained analysis of emotion and thought, the precise techniques for healing, training, and transforming the mind and heart. In contrast to the medical orientation of most Western psychology and psychiatry, here is a vision of radiant human dignity, and a practical path for realizing it in our own lives.
The Wise Heart is the fruit of a life’s work that includes such classics as A Path with Heart and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry. Filled with stories from Kornfield’s Buddhist psychotherapy practice and portraits of remarkable teachers, it also includes a moving account of his own recovery from a violence-filled childhood. For meditators and mental health professionals, Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, The Wise Heart offers an extraordinary journey from the roots of consciousness to the highest expression of human possibility.
From the Hardcover edition. Direct download links available for The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology
Download electronic versions of selected books The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology for everyone book mediafire, rapishare, and mirror link You have within you unlimited capacities for love, for joy, for communion with life, and for unshakable freedom—and here is how to awaken them. In The Wise Heart, one of the leading spiritual teachers of our time offers the most accessible and illuminating guide to Buddhism’s transformational psychology ever published in the West.
Trained as a monk in Thailand, Burma, and India, Jack Kornfield experienced at first hand the life-changing power of Buddhist teachings: the emphasis on the nobility and sacredness of the human spirit, the fine-grained analysis of emotion and thought, the precise techniques for healing, training, and transforming the mind and heart. In contrast to the medical orientation of most Western psychology and psychiatry, here is a vision of radiant human dignity, and a practical path for realizing it in our own lives.
The Wise Heart is the fruit of a life’s work that includes such classics as A Path with Heart and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry. Filled with stories from Kornfield’s Buddhist psychotherapy practice and portraits of remarkable teachers, it also includes a moving account of his own recovery from a violence-filled childhood. For meditators and mental health professionals, Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, The Wise Heart offers an extraordinary journey from the roots of consciousness to the highest expression of human possibility.
From the Hardcover edition. Direct download links available for The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology
- File Size: 787 KB
- Print Length: 439 pages
- Publisher: Bantam (April 29, 2008)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B0013TPVU6
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #33,658 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #4 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies & Reference > Psychology
- #9 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Psychology
- #15 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Religion & Spirituality > Buddhism > Rituals & Practice
I see that there are something like 32 reviews of this book, each one giving it 5 stars. It is a very nice book. A reasonable introduction to Buddhism for many people, an invitation to practice and learn. But let us have a slightly deeper look, OK? IMHO. For me, a relatively intense (in terms of time on retreats, reading material, study and daily practice) Buddhist practitioner of about 9 years, this books skims the surface. It skims a wide and useful surface and this can be quite a good thing in terms of a place to start. I acknowledge that it is very difficult to find good introductory texts, places to start. I will recommend this book to friends - BUT. There is also something a bit trite and monotonous about the structure of the book - for example: Introduce a concept, enlarge and expound a bit and then tell the story of Aleesha, James, Mitch, Kyle, on and on (no disrespect to these people or to those whose true experience contributed to these little blurb/stories). Jack gives them a practice or two "I encourage her to continually ground herself in her body" and then, magically, everything unfolds and soon they are crying or dancing or laughing or reconciling, recognizing their early childhood abuse, volunteering at literacy programs for immigrants, and so forth. It is too cookbook, too simplistic, slightly melodramatic and, unfair. Unfair because, while we can have many wonderful periods of clarity, healing, insight, etc. in our practice, it takes a lot of time for these things to unfold, a lot of right-effort and tremendous patience - many, many, many, many breaths! And typically this unfolding is very gradual, over years of practice.
There's an irony that at times Buddhists can become stuck in ideology, clinging to their ideas of what they believe the Buddha intended as THE right way. Jack Kornfield avoids this. He has the soft touch, open heart and discerning wisdom that comes from his own struggles and decades of meditation, practicing therapy, and teaching. He knows there is no such thing as a formula for happiness. Kornfield generously quotes from a wide range of thinkers, mystics and disciplines, knowing Buddhists don't have a lock on insight.
Still, Kornfield is steeped in and dedicated to Buddhist practices; his goal is to transmit what may at times be difficult to discern insights from Buddhist psychology to a wide audience. As he writes:
"At this moment, a winter rainstorm is drenching my simple writer's cabin in the woods above Spirit Rock.On my desk are classic texts from many of the major historic schools of Buddhism: the Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma, the eight-thousand-verse "large version" of the Heart Sutra, with its teachings on form and emptiness, and a Tibetan text on consciousness by Longchenpa.
Over time, I have learned to treasure these texts and know that they are filled with jewels of wisdom. Yet the Abhidhamma (or Abhidharma in Sanskrit), considered the masterwork of the early Theravada tradition and the ultimate compendium of Buddhist psychology, is also one of the most impenetrable books ever written. What are we to make of passages such as, "The inseparable material phenomena constitute the pure octad; leading to the dodecad of bodily intimation and the lightness triad; all as material groups originating from consciousness"?
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