Thich Nhat Hanh
Thich Nhat Hanh’s tradition is called the Order of Interbeing because it emphasises the inter-dependence of everyone and everything on each other. Another major aspect of Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching is mindfulness.
Further information on Thich Nhat Hanh is available from his retreat centre’s website at http://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/.
The Heart Of Buddha’s Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy and Liberation
This is Thich Nhat Hanh’s overview of the full suite of Buddha’s teachings. Where Geshe Kelsang presents the teachings as a path, Thich Nhat Hanh’s style is more random and poetic. The thrust of the teachings is the same though. For a good view of the end-to-end piece and explanation of the main Buddhism teachings, this is an excellent introduction.
Living Buddha, Living Christ
What I love about this book is how it shows the core similarities between Christianity and Buddhism. If you currently follow, or were brought up in, a Christian tradition, this book will deepen your faith and show how some Buddhist principles can add to it. Buddhism is not a big fan of religious conversions. As far as Buddhism is concerned, the core of all traditions is the same (love) so you can find everything you need from it, by going deeper into its core. This book is an essential contribution to doing that for anyone with a Christian background.
No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life
In the West, we have a phenomenal fear of death because we believe it means the end of everything. In the Buddhist tradition, it isn’t, it’s just an event in an endless stream of events that happen to us. An understanding and appreciation of this can give us enormous comfort in our life and provide real meaning and direction. It can also help us to meet the death of others in a different way. If you’ve ever wrestled with life’s biggest questions – death and wondering what the point of life is – this book will help point you to the answer.
Anger: Buddhist Wisdom for Cooling the Flames
A great scourge of our age, anger is incredibly destructive and dangerous both to ourselves and others. Anger is not just about flying into a rage though, it is a feeling within us which might manifest as depression or sulking at what has happened or what we’ve lost. This book presents a Buddhist way of dealing with it.
Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
Mindfulness is Thich Nhat Hanh’s big thing and this book provides a way of incorporating it into our lives. It shows how we can live more mindfully, thus knowing what we are doing and making us able to make better, wiser choices. The opposite is acting mindlessly, which can lead us into anger, depression, anxiety and repeating destructive patterns of past behaviour. He has written other books with meditations and exercises on mindfulness, including The Miracle of Mindfulness, The Blooming of a Lotus and Transformation & Healing.
Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life
Written in conjunction with Dr Lilian Cheung, this book focuses on eating problems and the endless rounds of dieting we often find ourselves in. Using the principles of mindfulness, this book shows how we can create a new relationship with food and how it interacts with our bodies. Many of us have an emotional connection with food, e.g. as a form of comfort or because we associate our size with our self-esteem. Using mindfulness we can see and then sever these connections, thus breaking the cycle of unhealthy eating patterns.
Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child
Many of us had troubled childhoods. But many of us are also troubled adults that don’t realise it is a result of our childhood experiences. Reconciliation shows a way to understand and reconnect with that child, helping us to move forward as balanced adults. It contains introductory teachings, case studies and mindfulness exercises to help us see and understand how our childhood experiences affect us as adults. This is an excellent short introduction for anyone who wants to investigate their childhood to understand how it affects them as adults.
Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra
The Diamond That Cuts Through Illusion
These are Thich Nhat Hanh’s explanations of the teachings on emptiness and non-duality. I found great meaning in both of them and they aided my understanding of the topics, but they are quite advanced and not beginner’s books. But if you have some understanding of these topics then these provide an excellent perspective to help deepen your understanding.
