Both Buddhism and the Christian gospel promise the ending of suffering. However, each defines and interprets morality, compassion, proof, and truth according to starkly different worldviews. This is why adjudicating rival claims between these religions has proven so difficult. Two alternate approaches have emerged: treating religious claims as mere personal opinions, or postulating some higher standard outside of religion to which each religion much submit. However, both of these approaches to comparative religious research implicitly deny that any religion can present a story about the totality of reality, including ultimate standards for proof and truth. This book takes a different approach entirely, demonstrating a way that religions can self-critically engage one another using their own respective standards. Within this framework, early Buddhist philosophy and the Christian faith enter into philosophical dialogue. In the process, To End All Suffering pointedly demonstrates that on its own terms, Buddhism cannot account for the very doctrines necessary to show that the Buddha's teachings end suffering. Written primarily for Christians and Buddhists interested in interreligious dialogue, To End All Suffering is a course book suitable for individual study or for college or seminary courses in comparative philosophy or religion.

An End to Suffering is a deeply original and provocative book about the Buddha's life and his influence throughout history, told in the form of the author's search to understand the Buddha's relevance in a world where class oppression and religious violence are rife, and where poverty and terrorism cast a long, constant shadow. Mishra describes his restless journeys into India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, among Islamists and the emerging Hindu middle class, looking for this most enigmatic of religious figures, exploring the myths and places of the Buddha's life, and discussing Western explorers' "discovery" of Buddhism in the nineteenth century. He also considers the impact of Buddhist ideas on such modern politicians as Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. As he reflects on his travels and on his own past, Mishra shows how the Buddha wrestled with problems of personal identity, alienation, and suffering in his own, no less bewildering, times. In the process Mishra discovers the living meaning of the Buddha's teaching, in the world and for himself. The result is the most three-dimensional, convincing book on the Buddha that we have.

Powerful Buddhist teachings, demystified—from the spiritual mentor of Jon Kabat-Zinn, Sharon Salzberg, and Jack Kornfield Previous books by Ajahn Chah have consisted of collections of short teachings on a wide variety of subjects. This new book focuses on the theme of impermanence, offering powerful remedies for overcoming our deep-seated fear of change, including guidance on letting go of attachments, living in the present, and taking up the practice of meditation. Everything Arises, Everything Falls Away also contains stories and anecdotes about this beloved master's life and his interactions with students, from his youth as a struggling monk to his last years when American students were coming to study with him in significant numbers. These stories help to convey Ajahn Chah's unique spirit and teaching style, allowing readers to know him both through his words and the way in which he lived his life.

Originally published in India as: The path of Tibetan Buddhism.

The secret to happiness is to acknowledge and transform suffering, not to run away from it. Here, Thich Nhat Hanh offers practices and inspiration transforming suffering and finding true joy. Thich Nhat Hanh acknowledges that because suffering can feel so bad, we try to run away from it or cover it up by consuming. We find something to eat or turn on the television. But unless we’re able to face our suffering, we can’t be present and available to life, and happiness will continue to elude us. Nhat Hanh shares how the practices of stopping, mindful breathing, and deep concentration can generate the energy of mindfulness within our daily lives. With that energy, we can embrace pain and calm it down, instantly bringing a measure of freedom and a clearer mind. No Mud, No Lotus introduces ways to be in touch with suffering without being overwhelmed by it. "When we know how to suffer," Nhat Hanh says, "we suffer much, much less." With his signature clarity and sense of joy, Thich Nhat Hanh helps us recognize the wonders inside us and around us that we tend to take for granted and teaches us the art of happiness.

This book examines the early teachings of Buddhism associated with the life of the Buddha, Siddhatta Gotama. In these teachings, the Buddha put forward his famous Four Noble Truths concerning the nature of suffering, its causes, the Truth that it can be overcome, and a pathway to end suffering. The suffering experienced in the contemporary coronavirus pandemic may seem to be very distant from the Buddhas message delivered over two thousand years ago, but the teaching of the Four Noble Truths is as relevant today as it was all that time ago. So this book melds the two, occasionally with discrete treatment of past and present but ever cognizant of the ways in which the teachings of the past inform the present crisis. To understand coronaviruses, the book examines the nature of viruses, their origins, causes and the ways in which they are both friends and enemies of humankind. Importantly and crucially, the book investigates how far humanity itself is the cause of its own suffering in the pandemics that arise no less in the coronaviruses that have emerged in the twenty-first century. Chapters include: The Buddha; Viruses: Friends and Enemies; The Noble Truth of Suffering; The Second Noble Truth of the Cause of Suffering; The Third Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering; The Fourth Noble Truth: The Noble Eightfold Path; The Noble Eightfold Path: Mindfulness and Concentration; The Brahma-vihara: Love: Compassion: Sympathetic Joy: Equanimity.

This spiritual inquiry into the nature of truth draws on Buddhism and quantum physics to liberate us from limited understandings of ourselves and others. The hopeful teaching of this book is that while everybody suffers, most of this suffering is unnecessary—it can be overcome. The belief that things must be either true or untrue leads us to think in terms of polarities: good or evil, right or wrong. This friend-or-foe approach may seem to make life easier, but in The End of Suffering, Russell Targ and J. J. Hurtak assert that this worldview only increases our experience of suffering. In an effort to overcome the polarity of opposites and the accompanying suffering, Targ and Hurtak combine the wisdom of the East with the findings of quantum physics, uncovering a middle ground that shows opposing sides are really the same. Buddha taught us to live a helpful and compassionate life and to surrender our ego to the peace of spaciousness. The middle path of Buddhism also shows that things may be neither true nor not true, or both true and untrue. The End of Suffering puts the perceived opposites of Buddhism and physics together, showing step-by-step how we can learn to surrender the story of who we think we are and experience an end to our suffering.