The Competitive Buddha


Book Description

Buddha Can Improve Your Sports Performance and Life “No other person has had more influence on my thirty-six years of coaching than Jerry Lynch.”—Missy Foote, Head women's lacrosse coach, Middlebury College #1 New Release in Coaching Hockey, Tennis The Competitive Buddha is about mastery, leadership, spirituality, and the Kobe Bryant Mamba Mentality. Discover how people from all parts of the world have brought together the Buddha and athletics for greater fun, enjoyment, and pleasure during their performances. Connect spirituality to sports. Learn what you need to keep, what you need to discard, and what you need to add to your mental, emotional, and spiritual skill set as an athlete, coach, leader, parent, CEO, or any other performer in life. Understand how Buddhism can help you to be better prepared for sports and life, and how sports and life can teach you about Buddhism. On the court, field, and beyond. Dr. Lynch is an avid runner and biker and he has coached athletes at the high school and AAU level. He earned his doctorate in psychology at Penn State University and has done extensive post-doctoral work in the area of philosophy, Taoist and Buddhist thought, comparative religions, leadership development, and performance enhancement. Dr. Jerry Lynch demonstrates how certain timeless core Buddha values inspire you to embrace and navigate unchartered waters and understand the Buddha-mind and the Kobe Bryant Mamba Mentality. Become a master coach of your own life. When it comes to leadership and coaching, The Competitive Buddha teaches how the best coaches today use the ancient methods for our modern times. Learn specific strategies and techniques for implementing this special way to guide and lead. The Competitive Buddha teaches: • Leadership Skills • How to use Buddhism as an approach to competition • How to master athletics and life Readers who enjoyed Win the Day, Mamba Mentality, or Relentless Optimism will love The Competitive Buddha.




Buddha's Brain


Book Description

Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Gandhi, and the Buddha all had brains built essentially like anyone else's, yet they were able to harness their thoughts and shape their patterns of thinking in ways that changed history. With new breakthroughs in modern neuroscience and the wisdom of thousands of years of contemplative practice, it is possible for us to shape our own thoughts in a similar way for greater happiness, love, compassion, and wisdom. Buddha's Brain joins the forces of modern neuroscience with ancient contemplative teachings to show readers how they can work toward greater emotional well-being, healthier relationships, more effective actions, and deepened religious and spiritual understanding. This book will explain how the core elements of both psychological well-being and religious or spiritual life-virtue, mindfulness, and wisdom--are based in the core functions of the brain: regulating, learning, and valuing. Readers will also learn practical ways to apply this information, as the book offers many exercises they can do to tap the unused potential of the brain and rewire it over time for greater peace and well-being.




A Cup of Buddha


Book Description

A Cup of Buddha: reflections on truth discusses how to take the journey toward inner peace, toward truth in entertaining, simple language beyond the abstract and mystical concepts typically found in eastern philosophy books. The book applies eastern philosophy to western living utilizing pop culture and music metaphors to explore dense topics in an easy to digest format. Individuals are restless, and unhappy. We search for the water to put out our fire of discontent filling this space with self help books, food, new cars, relationships, and more, all with short term satisfaction but our fire still burns. We look outward, we look to others, yet the fire rages. A Cup of Buddha: reflections on truth addresses this fire within each of us, exploring the actual journey toward truth, understanding that each moment in life is everything, and we alone ultimately make this choice toward happiness.




Summary of Jerry Lynch's The Competitive Buddha


Book Description

Title: Summary of Jerry Lynch's The Competitive Buddha Metadata: Get the summary from Jerry Lynch's The Competitive Buddha Sample: #1 The author opens with an astute observation from American sports icon Michael Jordan, who stated that the Buddhist practices he follows work. #2 Many athletes have turned to Buddhism to aid them in their training and competition. #3 Meditation and mindfulness have been shown to help athletes perform better, and have been proven to help people in general be more confident and mentally tough.




Thinking Body, Dancing Mind


Book Description

Why fight your way to the top when you can rise to it? Let go of the obsession to win—and you will be victorious. Acknowledge your vulnerabilities—and turn them into strengths. Find the courage to risk failure—and begin your journey to success. That is the secret of the TaoAthlete, and in this remarkable book t'ai chi expert Chungliang Al Huang and renowned professional and Olympic sports psychologist Jerry Lynch teach you the time-honored principles of successful performance—whether on the playing field, in the office, or in your relationships. By mastering the unique strategies and mental exercises of the TaoAthelete, you'll unlock the extraordinary powers of body, mind, and spirit that will lead you to victory in any field of endeavor. Praise for Thinking Body, Dancing Mind “This gives you a positive mental perspective and provides good focus for your mind—unconscious and conscious.”—Phil Jackson, coach of the Los Angeles Lakers “Warning: If you're completely content with your life, don't read this book. But if you'd like to break through to higher levels of performance, understanding, and happiness . . . this book is magic.”—Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Meaning & Medicine and Healing Words “In six months my level of performance has grown more than in the previous ten years of athletic training. Using Taoist principles of performance has pushed me to levels I never dreamed possible.”—Steven Gottlieb, all-American 1989 NCAA Tennis Division III champion “Bringing Eastern thought to the Western world of sport really works. . . . My game has improved immensely.”—Vince Stroth, offensive guard, Houston Oilers, NFL “The Tao is responsible for me turning my life around, athletically and personally. I am now able to believe in myself and perform to my capability.”—Regina Jacobs, U.S. Olympic Track Team




One Breath at a Time


Book Description

Merging Buddhist mindfulness practices with the Twelve Step program, this updated edition of the bestselling recovery guide One Breath at a Time will inspire and enlighten you to live a better, healthier life. Many in recovery turn to the Twelve Steps to overcome their addictions, but struggle with the spiritual program. But what they might not realize is that Buddhist teachings are intrinsically intertwined with the lessons of the Twelve Steps, and offer time-tested methods for addressing the challenges of sobriety. In what is considered the cornerstone of the most significant recovery movement of the 21st century, Kevin Griffin shares his own extraordinary journey to sobriety and how he integrated the Twelve Steps of recovery with Buddhist mindfulness practices. With a new foreword by William Alexander, the author of Ordinary Recovery, One Breath at a Time takes you on a journey through the Steps, examining critical ideas like Powerlessness, Higher Power, and Moral Inventory through the lens of the core concepts of Buddhism—the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, mindfulness, loving-kindness, and more. The result is a book that presents techniques and meditations for finding clarity and awareness in your life, just as it has for thousands of addicts and alcoholics.




Contemplative Science


Book Description

Science has long treated religion as a set of personal beliefs that have little to do with a rational understanding of the mind and the universe. This work attempts to bridge this gap by launching an unbiased investigation into the history and practices of science and Buddhist contemplative disciplines.




The Buddha Pill


Book Description

Millions of people meditate daily but can meditative practices really make us ‘better’ people? In The Buddha Pill, pioneering psychologists Dr Miguel Farias and Catherine Wikholm put meditation and mindfulness under the microscope. Separating fact from fiction, they reveal what scientific research – including their groundbreaking study on yoga and meditation with prisoners – tells us about the benefits and limitations of these techniques for improving our lives. As well as illuminating the potential, the authors argue that these practices may have unexpected consequences, and that peace and happiness may not always be the end result. Offering a compelling examination of research on transcendental meditation to recent brain-imaging studies on the effects of mindfulness and yoga, and with fascinating contributions from spiritual teachers and therapists, Farias and Wikholm weave together a unique story about the science and the delusions of personal change.




Being a Buddhist Nun


Book Description

They may shave their heads, don simple robes, and renounce materialism and worldly desires. But the women seeking enlightenment in a Buddhist nunnery high in the folds of Himalayan Kashmir invariably find themselves subject to the tyrannies of subsistence, subordination, and sexuality. Ultimately, Buddhist monasticism reflects the very world it is supposed to renounce. Butter and barley prove to be as critical to monastic life as merit and meditation. Kim Gutschow lived for more than three years among these women, collecting their stories, observing their ways, studying their lives. Her book offers the first ethnography of Tibetan Buddhist society from the perspective of its nuns. Gutschow depicts a gender hierarchy where nuns serve and monks direct, where monks bless the fields and kitchens while nuns toil in them. Monasteries may retain historical endowments and significant political and social power, yet global flows of capitalism, tourism, and feminism have begun to erode the balance of power between monks and nuns. Despite the obstacles of being considered impure and inferior, nuns engage in everyday forms of resistance to pursue their ascetic and personal goals. A richly textured picture of the little known culture of a Buddhist nunnery, the book offers moving narratives of nuns struggling with the Buddhist discipline of detachment. Its analysis of the way in which gender and sexuality construct ritual and social power provides valuable insight into the relationship between women and religion in South Asia today.




Radical Acceptance


Book Description

In our current times of global crises and spiking collective anxiety, Tara Brach’s transformative practice of Radical Acceptance offers a pathway to inner freedom and a more compassionate world. This classic work now features an insightful new introduction, an exclusive bonus chapter, and additional guided meditations. “Radical Acceptance offers us an invitation to embrace ourselves with all our pain, fear, and anxieties, and to step lightly yet firmly on the path of understanding and compassion.”—Thich Nhat Hanh “Believing that something is wrong with us is a deep and tenacious suffering,” says Tara Brach at the start of this illuminating book. This suffering emerges in crippling self-judgments and conflicts in our relationships, in addictions and perfectionism, in loneliness and overwork—all the forces that keep our lives constricted and unfulfilled. Radical Acceptance offers a path to freedom, including the day-to-day practical guidance developed over Dr. Brach’s forty years of work with therapy clients and Buddhist students. Writing with great warmth and clarity, Tara Brach brings her teachings alive through personal stories and case histories, fresh interpretations of Buddhist tales, and guided meditations. Step by step, she shows us how we can stop being at war with ourselves and begin to live fully every precious moment of our lives.




Recent Books