A thoughtful, down-to-earth look at helpful
ways to lessen human suffering.
This book takes you on a lively, sometimes
light-hearted, journey through nine Buddhist practices that can
bring “blessed relief” to a wide range of human
suffering—and teaches you skills to reduce suffering in
the long term for yourself and others.
The practices help you:
- Loosen the grip of suffering
- Engage and question limiting views,
thoughts and opinions
- Deconstruct ten common assumptions
- Be present in each moment
- Survive emotional storms
- Develop peaceful communication
skills
- Deepen communication with your
partner
- Appreciate mortality and the
preciousness of life
- Cultivate compassion
As you read the chapters and engage in
each practice, you will work with your own stories of
suffering—stories in which you have felt abandoned,
deprived, subjugated, defective, excluded or
vulnerable—and you will learn how to release yourself
from suffering by investigating it with curiosity and kindness.
“A spiritual banquet ... to heal our
psyches and awaken our hearts. Helps us open to the
unconditional love that is intrinsic to both Christianity and
Buddhism.”
—Tara
Brach, clinical psychologist;
author, Radical Acceptance
“Both a moving personal story and a
source of valuable insight for all those who are wrestling with
questions of suffering in their lives. It is a serious book
that is also fun to read.”
—Phillip
Moffitt, founder and president of
the Life Balance Institute;
author, Dancing With Life
“Meets our contemporary struggles
with refreshing clarity and power. Peerman’s understated
humor in relating ordinary life encounters frequently had me
weeping with the laughter of self-recognition.”
—Marjorie
J. Thompson, author, Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian
Spiritual Life
“Exceptional…. With uncommon
vulnerability, engaging humor, and sure-footed counsel, Gordon
Peerman invites us to hear and make our own a far vaster story
arising from deep sources of wisdom East and West, whose
language conveys the liberating spaciousness of being truly
awake, aware and alive.”
—John S.
Mogabgab, editor, Weavings Journal
“A guide to freedom from fear,
filled with stories to make us laugh, sigh, cry, and wake up to
compassion for ourselves and all the world.”
—Margaret
McGee, author, Sacred Attention:
A Spiritual Practice for Finding
God in the Moment
“Remarkable. A spiritual exploration
that unites centuries of Buddhist teachings with Christian
wisdom. [The] approach is not only inspired, but also eminently
practical … yet profoundly powerful.”
—Derek
Lin, translator/annotator, Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained
Gordon Peerman is
an Episcopal priest and psychotherapist in private practice,
and an adjunct faculty member at Vanderbilt Divinity School,
where he teaches seminars in Buddhist-Christian Dialogue. He
also teaches Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction at the
Vanderbilt Center for Integrative Health, as well as
mindfulness practices to Vanderbilt Law School and Vanderbilt
Medical School students. He and his wife, Kathy Woods, lead a
weekly meditation with the Nashville Mindfulness Meditation
Group.
