This memoir and spiritual guide from an Austin, Texas cab driver is “the real deal: good taxi and straight dharma” (Jack Kornfield, bestselling author of The Wise Heart). Brian Haycock was a cabdriver—who happened to be a Buddhist. During the course of his career, he learned that each fare provided an opportunity to learn the life lessons of the Buddha. So, hop in and buckle up; we’re off on our journey to self-discovery, passing through the precepts, the four noble truths, taking a hard left to stop and get coffee—where we’ll learn a few breathing techniques to bolster our patience—all the while watching for ambulances and bikers, focusing our attention and awareness so that we can arrive at our destination in good time and in one piece. Here are stories from everyday life that demonstrate how we can all benefit from a little Buddhist philosophy. With each chapter focusing on a specific topic, readers will learn to coast their way to building a life routine, focusing the mind, calming themselves with breathing exercises, and much more. “Engagingly written.” —Stephen Batchelor, national bestselling author of Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist “Compassionate and entertaining.” —David Brazier (aka Dharmavidya), author of The Feeling Buddha “Amusing and wise.” —Arthur Jeon, author of City Dharma and Sex, Love, and Dharma: Finding Love Without Losing Your Way “Wise and witty and direct: very Zen. Also, fun to read.” —Sylvia Boorstein, national bestselling author of Happiness is an Inside Job and That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Buddhist

Queer critique, queer practice: embodied teachings for healing from trauma and social injustice. Jacoby Ballard provides an empowering and affirming guide to embodied healing through yoga and the dharma, grounded in the brilliance, resilience, and lived experiences of queer folks. Part I deconstructs the ways mainstream yoga perpetuates queer- and transphobia and other systemic oppressions, exploring the intersections of yoga, capitalism, cultural appropriation, and sexual violence. Ballard also addresses the trauma--complex, vicarious, historical, and collective--perpetuated against queer communities. In response, he offers tools for self-compassion, tonglen, lovingkindness, and grounding, and helps readers explore questions like: What is trauma? How is it a product of injustice--and how can healing it create justice? The world won't stop being homo- and transphobic, so how do I encounter that in a way that does the least harm? How do we love what is uniquely trans about us? What are affinity groups, and why do we need them? In part II, Ballard offers a queer-centered, fully embodied, and equity-rooted practice with meditations, practices, and sequences for processing and healing from trauma individually and in community. He explains concepts like lovingkindness, letting go, compassion, joy, forgiveness, and equanimity through a queer lens, and pairs each with corresponding meditations, practices, and beautiful line drawings of queer bodies. Enhanced with stories from Ballard's personal practice and professional experience teaching yoga in schools, prisons, conferences, and his weekly Queer and Trans Yoga class, A Queer Dharma is a guidebook, reclamation, and unapologetically queer heart offering for true healing and transformation.

Looks back at the author's past, when she lived on an Iowa communal farm and was called Snowbird, detailing her life as a hippie and her mother's more recent bout with skin cancer

Presents Jack Kerouac's novel "On the Road" along with four other of his autobiographical "road books" and journal entries related to "On the Road."

An engagingly contemporary approach to Buddhism—through the lens of an iconic film and its memorable characters Humorous yet spiritually rigorous in the tradition of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and The Tao of Pooh, drawing from pop culture and from personal experience, The Dharma of “The Princess Bride” teaches us how to understand and navigate our most important personal relationships from a twenty-first-century Buddhist perspective. Friendship. Romance. Family. These are the three areas Ethan Nichtern delves into, taking as departure points the indelible characters from Rob Reiner’s perennially popular film—Westley, Fezzik, Vizzini, Count Rugen, Princess Buttercup, and others—as he also draws lessons from his own life and his work as a meditation teacher. Nichtern devotes the first section of the book to exploring the dynamics of friendship. Why do people become friends? What can we learn from the sufferings of Inigo Montoya and Fezzik? Next, he leads us through all the phases of illusion and disillusion we encounter in our romantic pursuits, providing a healthy dose of lightheartedness along the way by sharing his own Princess Buttercup List and the vicissitudes of his dating life as he ponders how we idealize and objectify romantic love. Finally, Nichtern draws upon the demands of his own family history and the film’s character the Grandson to explore the dynamics of “the last frontier of awakening,” a reference to his teacher Chogyam Trungpa’s claim that it’s possible to be enlightened everywhere except around your family. With The Dharma of “The Princess Bride” in hand, we can set out on the path to contemporary Buddhist enlightenment with the most important relationships in our lives.

A case for friendship as a radical practice of love, courage, and trust, and seven strategies that pave the way for profound social change. Grounded in the Buddha’s teachings on spiritual friendship, Radical Friendship shares seven strategies to help us embody our deepest values in all of our relationships. Drawing on her experiences as a leading meditation teacher, as well as personal stories of growing up multiracial in a racist world, Kate Johnson brings a fresh take on time-honored wisdom to help us connect more authentically with ourselves, with our friends and family, and within our communities. The divides we experience within us and between us are not only a threat to our physical and emotional health—they are also the weapons and the outcomes of structural oppression. But through wise relationships, it is possible to transform the barriers created by societal injustice. Johnson leads us on a journey to becoming better friends by offering ways to show up for our own and each other’s liberation at every stage of a relationship. Each chapter ends with a meditation or reflection practice to help readers cultivate vibrant, harmonious, revolutionary friendships. Radical Friendship offers a path of depth and hope and shows us the importance of working toward collective wellbeing, one relationship at a time.

Seeking help with his basketball game, Shainberg embraced Zen Buddhism in 1951 and was catapulted on a life-long spiritual journey. Alternately comic and reverential, Ambivalent Zen chronicles the rewards and dangers of spiritual ambition and presents a poignant reflection of the experiences faced by many Americans involved in the Zen movement.