Monkfish Book Publishing

2022 Foreword INDIES Award Winner | Silver: Body, Mind  Spirit

2023 IPPY Award Winner | Bronze: New Age/Mind, Body, Spirit

Hidden in the darkness is an ancient secret suppressed by every aspect of our light-drunk modern world—there is a Great Mother from the bottom of time who has always guided us through perils and calamities. Now is the hour of Her return.

“An exigent, affecting summons to rediscover the night.”—Kirkus Reviews

Is darkness synonymous with ignorance and evil? Or is it the original matrix from which all life emerges, and the Mother to whom it returns? Higher and higher levels of artificial illumination have suppressed our contact with the numinous since the Industrial Revolution, with dire consequences for society, our planetary ecology, and our souls. This mystical testament weaves together paleobiology, memoir, history, science, and spiritual archaeology to lead readers back into the lost mysteries of the dark. Not since The Teachings of Don Juan or Ishmael has a book diagnosed with such urgency and cultural coherence the problems at the heart of modern life.

In Waking Up to the Dark, Clark Strand offers penetrating insight into the spiritual enrichment that can be found when we pull the plug on our billion-watt culture. He argues that the insomnia so many of us experience as “the Hour of the Wolf” is really “the Hour of God”—a wellspring of rest and renewal, and an ancient reservoir of ancestral wisdom and inspiration. And in a powerful yet surprising turn, he shares with us an urgent message for the world, received through a mysterious young woman he calls Our Lady of Climate Change (aka THE VIRGIN MARY), about the challenges we all know are coming.

"This book is at once a love letter to Zen practice and a critique of late twentieth century American Zen. Judith inspires us to investigate our own karmic knots, and in the middle of this suffering, she invites us to walk quietly down to the neighborhood pond and take a cooling dip in the moonlight." —Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones, and many other books

Untangling Karma is a memoir of accepting and healing personal trauma, both on and off the meditation cushion. Author Judith Ragir, an American Zen teacher, has used her spiritual practice to overcome anger and self-imposed isolation and become more loving. 

In Buddhism, the personal and the systemic are interwoven. If we are to heal from trauma, we need to find and face our deeply held, often hidden pain. Because we have been raised in a society of greed, aggression, and confused values, this is something we all must do, regardless of our ethnic or racial background.

Ragir lets fall the stereotypical cool, calm Zen teacher’s demeanor to reveal her complicated, emotional self. She discusses what she has done to find greater inner peace as well as the personal impacts of transferring an Eastern philosophy onto her Western mind and applying a male-inspired monastic model to herself as an American woman, Jew, and mother. Untangling Karma is at once a love letter to Zen Buddhism and a critique of turn-of-the-century American Zen.

If we can be bold when facing our personal pain and traumatic experiences, says Ragir, and curious about our own karmic histories, then we can help build a more inclusive, healing-focused, 21st-century Buddhism.

Strand’s mystical poems to Ma Kali, the Dark Goddess of India, as occasioned by his encounters with the material dealt in depth in both Waking Up to the Dark and the Way of the Rose.

“A treasure of mystical poetry, these poems pulsate with truth.” —Carolyn Myss, author of Intimate Conversations with the Divine and Anatomy of the Spirit

In the early hours of June 16, 2011, Clark Strand witnessed a startling apparition of the Divine Feminine in the form of a young woman with an X of black electrical tape over Her mouth. Strand removed the tape, and She began to speak of a coming age of chaos and collapse in which the world of humankind would be severely chastened so that Her world—the world of Nature—could be renewed. Overwhelmed by the presence of One so fully Other, Strand found that love was the only language that would suffice. Drawing inspiration from Song of Songs and the Bengali mystics Ramprasad and Sri Ramakrishna, he began a series of poems to Ma Kali, the Dark Goddess of India, the words to which often came from the Great Mother Herself.

“This is one of the best books on Zen and Zen practice that I have read in years. Busshō uses a well-known Zen song/poem to elucidate the key features of Zen meditation, practice and life….It brings the famous Zen master’s teaching alive while also showing how it is relevant to Zen practice in the 21st century." —Tim Burkett, author of Nothing Holy About It and Zen in the Age of Anxiety

Foreword Book of the Year Finalist (Nonfiction: Religion)

Singing and Dancing Are the Voice of the Law introduces us to one of the great works of Zen literature, “The Song of Zazen.” Zen teacher Busshō Lahn illuminates Hakuin’s enigmatic poem in plain language, unpacking it and applying it to contemporary life. His book offers a wealth of information on the context and content of this eighteenth-century work, clearly evoking its themes of abiding wisdom, meditation, compassionate self-regard, and our own everyday life’s potential to express deep spiritual truth.

Short stanza by short stanza, this exceptionally readable and deeply engaging book shows how the poem’s teachings and invitations are as applicable now as they were when they were first written nearly three centuries ago. Lahn offers readers an intuitive and progressive path of exploration of their spiritual lives, regardless of their faith tradition.

Compassion as Remedy is a quietly revolutionary book about healthcare, ethics, and spiritual practice delivered as a commentary on a 2,500-year-old Tibetan text—the rGyud-bZhi (The Four Tantras), which is the guiding treatise for Traditional Tibetan Medicine. This book, which is a translation of “The Physician Chapter” of rGyud-bZhi, helps readers grasp the essence of healing and teaches healthcare practitioners how to develop limitless compassion, a quality that is essential—as our current healthcare situation makes starkly clear.

Moral development and the practice of compassion should be of great importance to all medical practitioners and “The Physician Chapter” provides detailed instructions, drawn from a millennia-old culture and tradition that is attracting increased attention. Although many books have been written about Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and more, there are very few approachable books regarding the unique features of Tibetan medicine and spiritual and meditation practice.

By integrating healthcare with spiritual practice, Compassion as Remedy provides guidelines for ethics, along with suggestions for developing wisdom and compassion. Throughout the world today, both medical practitioners and their patients are increasingly curious about holistic healing traditions, seeking to find natural, organic, and noninvasive remedies with few side effects. This book shows that compassion itself is a source for the alleviation of suffering.

Dr. Yonten includes examples from his clinical practice, drawn from cross-cultural perspectives and neuroscience, giving readers a rare view of compassion as remedy. In the words of His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, one of Dr. Yonten’s teachers, “The ideal physician is one who combines sound medical understanding with compassion and wisdom.”

“Wounds into Wisdom is for anyone who has suffered trauma, either directly or in a family whose generational trauma is buried. It helps readers uncover suffering and use it to help others―the final stage of healing. We may not be able to control what happens to us, but we can control what happens next.” —Gloria Steinem

• 2020 Nautilus Book Award—GOLD/Psychology
• 2020 Book Award from the Jewish Women’s Caucus of the Association for Women in Psychology
• 2019 Book of the Year Award Finalist in Religion and Self-Help categories

In a time when abuse at the hands of religious leaders is too common, comes this guide to making the most of the Zen tradition while protecting and empowering yourself.

While the liberation that Zen offers is real, it must be engaged with carefully, explains this sensei. Her book is neither a memoir about a single case of abuse nor a bloodless academic study. Nelson reflects on the multiple dangers in Zen, from firsthand experience in Boston—where documented abuse recently took place—integrating her discussion at every step with core Zen teachings. 

“This is a thoroughly engaging exploration based on deep knowledge of the tradition as well as contemporary research.” —Martine Batchelor, author, Principles of Zen 

“Practicing Safe Zen imparts a lesson we all will have to learn if we want to truly mature in our spiritual practice.” —Barry Magid, author, Ending the Pursuit of Happiness

This collection of genuine teachings resonates with an authenticity that comes from Yoshin's many years of practice. It is both profound and practical.

A Temporary Affair is a collection of talks given at Sunday morning sittings at the Ithaca Zen Center by Yoshin David Radin, abbot and founder of the Ithaca Zen Center for the past 40 years. The talks contained here were given at a time when Yoshin’s health was severely compromised by end stage renal failure. In February 2019, he received a kidney transplant from a member of Ithaca Zen Center, to whom the publication is dedicated.

The collection of 31 talks contains the insight of the individual dharma talks themselves, as well as the underlying story of how the dharma teachings helped the author cope, and even thrive, with his continuing loss of kidney function. The talks go right up to the days before he was admitted to the hospital. The comfort and guidance he received from the dharma during the times when he was most ill have been a great inspiration to all who know him, as they will to readers. In his own words, “How extraordinary, how blessed, how wonderful, to have met the teachings that free us from suffering when in difficult places.” Through these talks the reader can clearly see how he put that wisdom to use in his own life situation, and how they can do so as well.

"Rich and resonant with women’s voices and values, at once familiar and entirely new.”—Rachel Barenblat, “The Velveteen Rabbi,” and author of Texts to the Holy 

Female protagonists turn Jewish folktales on their heads!

What happens when stories with traditional male protagonists are updated with female characters? Timeless plots and values remain, while old tales transform to inspire and captivate a new generation.

When Debra Gordon Zaslow first ventured into Jewish storytelling in the mid-1980s, she was surprised at how difficult it was to find Jewish tales featuring powerful female characters. This seemed odd, given the obvious strength of Jewish women. Over the years, she found herself slipping female characters into stories and changing male protagonists into females. Her criterion was simple: if it didn’t change the basic meaning or plot of the story, the character could be female. There was always the sense, however, of meddling with something sacrosanct. These Jewish stories have been handed down for centuries, and who was she to change them?

Decades later, comes this collection of stories. The maggidot (Jewish women storytellers) who wrote and compiled this innovative anthology have created a collection to honor Jewish values while featuring female characters in every central role. Some stories are female-centered versions of traditional tales (e.g. “The Fishmonger and the Shiviti” and “The Shekhinah Is in Exile”), others are original fiction inspired by perennial Jewish themes (“A Queer Soul in the Shtetl”).

The author of The Jew in the Lotus seeks to answer the Dalai Lama’s question.

Rodger Kamenetz, author of international bestseller The Jew in the Lotus, about a pilgrimage of rabbis to see H.H. the Dalai Lama (a historic dialogue between Jewish and Buddhist masters), watched as the rabbis asked H.H. in Dharamsala, “How does your spiritual practice purify afflictive emotions?” Rodger explains in this book, “This is the most fundamental question we might ask of any spiritual practice, any religion or philosophy of life. How do your practices help you purify afflictive emotions such as anxiety, envy, resentment, and shame?”

Kamenetz sets out to answer this question experimentally, in spiritual practice, through the contemplation of images in memory, dreams, perception, and prayer. These practices lead to a life of feeling which displaces negativity and reactivity.

Seeing into the Life of Things will help readers cultivate these skills—perception, memory, dreams, and prayer. The book is structured as a commentary on these practices building step-by-step from the simple “count your blessings” to more difficult images in dreams. Kamenetz shows how to use dreams as prompts and scripts, in order to learn how to experience feelings by acting them out.

Memoir and narrative threads also run through the book, revolving around the author’s relationship with Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi—the most important Jewish teacher of the 20th century and the anchor of that trip to Dharamsala in 1990.

“We have a contemplation problem,” and here’s what to do about it.

Jacob Riyeff draws on 1,600 years of contemplative tradition in the West to show how humans are contemplative beings, what it means to contemplate in different areas of life, and how embracing a contemplative life can help lead anyone to a fuller experience of self, world, and communion with the Divine.

This is a volume of “spiritual theology,” using theological principles and understandings but exploring how to apply those principles and understandings to shape one’s daily living. Drawing on the ways that John Cassian, St. Benedict, Gregory the Great, William of Saint-Thierry, Dame Gertrude More, and others shaped and passed on the Christian inheritance, Contemplate brings this directly to bear on contemporary social and cultural situations. It seeks to answer the question, what does the contemplative tradition of the Latin west have to offer Christians living post-industrial, digitally-saturated, ecologically fraught lives?

This book is first in a new series, “Beyond Our Instincts”: succinct, multi-disciplinary, countercultural stances in an environment that sells us the idea that happiness is whatever you want now. These authors—all scholars of religion who are also religiously involved—suggest there are more important things, including some we may have forgotten.
     Coming in future publishing seasons:
     *Join (being together; refusing too much solitariness)
     *Imagine (on opting out of technique-obsessed culture)
     *Wait (the lost value of open questions and not-knowing)

Zen is the ideal path for those who have left institutional religion behind.

In this liminal moment, when the grip of our old religions has loosened, a prominent Zen practitioner asks: What is religion? What is spirituality? And what is it all about? 

Ford begins by invoking the ideas of Aldous Huxley, welcoming what he calls a “naturalistic perennialism.” Ford believes there are currents of religion that are rooted in our biology. And as something natural, it is something that people can find within all religions, in fact, the heart birthing of all religions. 

Then, true to the book’s title, Ford asks and answers, “Why then, Zen?” and demonstrates how pure Zen is as simple as noticing and waking: an expression of an intimate way of life. 

Four noble truths, ox herding pictures, samadhi, koan, lovingkindness, and many other Zen essentials are here, in succinct and conversational prose that offers a lifeboat to anyone who feels something missing in the absence of religious life.

“Mark Matousek has produced [a] riveting account of his search–at age 38, with the help of a private detective–for the father who abandoned him at age four. A searing meditation on the psychic harm suffered by men and women without fathers, this wise odyssey wrestles with questions of life and death and the search for the meaning of one’s existence.” —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

“I was four years old when my father came back to kidnap me,” begins this gripping memoir about Matousek’s search for James Matousek, the drifter father he never knew. Matousek chronicles his compelling search for his own father by hiring a detective and reveals his own life as he follows the hard-bitten investigator from one dead-end to the next.

Described by the New York Times as “ part reminiscence, part detective story, part spiritual musing,” this memoir is more than the story of one man’s search for his father; it is also a look at the meaning of life and how fathers contribute to that meaning.

Enter the world of The Wild Mother—modern fairytale, bold biblical midrash, filled with the psychological depth and imaginative originality for which the author of The Maeve Chronicles is known. Elizabeth Cunningham's classic feminist novel is as fresh and timeless today as when it was first released in 1993 to critical acclaim.

Adam Underwood and Eva Brooke appear to be made for each other. Both are single parents. Both are academics, he a dazzling, enigmatic professor of Alchemy, she a humble but dedicated professor of Fairytales. Adam's children, Ionia and Fred, share a latchkey after school with Eva's precocious son, Jason. So why don't Adam and Eva marry and live happily ever after?

Eva can't help wondering. Pathologically polite, she cannot bring herself to ask personal questions. She struggles not to find it strange that Adam has never so much as mentioned his children's absent mother. Nor has Adam's own mother-cum-housekeeper, the feisty, outspoken Ursula, ever uttered her name. Yet Eva glimpses the missing woman in ten-year-old Ionia's haunted and haunting purple eyes and in Ionia's drawings of a woman dancing on the crest of a hill, wild black hair spread out against the sky....

Then one night, she returns: Lilith, the wild mother. The precarious status quo that Eva, Adam, and their families have achieved is shattered and their world is turned inside out or, more precisely, outside in.

As wild breaks into their lives, Adam, obsessed with control, attempts to seal them all in a deadly trap. Now a crucial challenge confronts each one of them. Will these very human beings embrace their own wildness, risking all they value and understand? Or will they deny the freedom essential to Lilith's nature--and their own.

This is what happened at the famous Zen monastery south of San Francisco.

From the award-winning and best-selling author of the biography of Shunryu Suzuki (Crooked Cucumber), comes a memoir and oral history of Tassajara—a monastery founded by the San Franciscan Zen Center in 1967. Peopled like a Sixties film of Buddhism invasion, with hippies, dreamers, lovers, and the first serious practitioners in the US. Nyogen Senzaki, D.T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, and of course Shunryu Suzuki and Richard Baker are all here. This is the story of what happened at the founding of the first Zen monastery in the West.

"Judaism Without Tribalism is a blessing, a much-needed challenge, and a deep well of wisdom and sanity." —Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones

This book investigates Judaism at its best—and sanest. It strips away outdated and harmful beliefs that have accrued over the centuries and returns to the essential truths that are too-often ignored in favor of tradition, tribal identity, or the claims of the powerful.

The result is a vibrant Judaism for the 21st century and beyond—a Judaism that draws deeply from history and scripture yet addresses the unmet needs of the present and the future. It is a Judaism that is open and accessible to everyone.

Judaism without tribalism is a call to be a light unto the nations, and a blessing to all the people of the earth. It is a Judaism free from legalism and tribalism—a Judaism that refuses to serve patriarchy and power.

Written by one of today's most respected—and most unconventional—Jewish thinkers, Judaism Without Tribalism is a manifesto, an invitation to completeness, and a call for inner and outer spiritual revolution. It is also a deeply practical guide to living authentically, breath by breath and day by day.

“Poetry is the voice of the soul, and in this beautiful collection, Colette Lafia brings us into the joys and sorrows of life, revealing how God's enduring love is present in all we experience.” —Richard Rohr, author of The Tears of Things 

Poems and related practices for a more contemplative life.

Leaving the Shore is a collection of poems with the intent of creating contemplative experiences for readers. The author has added guided Lectio Divina (sacred readings) and writing/journaling prompts, so that readers can pray and reflect with the poems.

Each poem is about some aspect of living the spiritual path: the desire to reach beyond what we know, the longing to step into the Divine Mystery, and the commitment to live in an intimate exchange of love with the Holy.

An experienced spiritual director, Lafia draws on her commitment to the contemplative life. These poems are an expression of contemplation in action as they explore the Holy in moments of daily living: within a marriage, while assisting a loved one dying, in the creative act of painting, and more. They are inspired by writings of the mystics, in particular Mechthild of Magdeburg and St. John of the Cross, and suffused with surrender, love, and awe. They invite the reader into prayer, self-reflection, and seeing their own lives as sacred texts.

Succinct, inspiring biography of a bridge-building Jewish leader, supplemented by 15 black-and-white photographs

On March 21, 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights organizers led 8,000 protesters on a 54-mile march from Selma to Montgomery. They invited a distinguished group of national religious figures to join them in the front lines. One of these was Abraham Joshua Heschel—a gifted Jewish scholar, teacher, and speaker, whose recent book, The Prophets (1962)—a detailed study of the ancient biblical champions of justice and mercy—was a source of great inspiration to Dr. King and others.

As Heschel walked arm-in-arm with his colleagues, he was easy to spot in the crowd: He was a short, stocky man with flowing white hair, a bushy beard, who wore a dark yarmulke (Jewish head covering). Like the prophets of old, Heschel believed that standing up for others—particularly the most vulnerable members of society—is a sacred obligation. He later wrote, the religious person must seek to hold God and humankind “in one thought at one time,” suffering “harm done to others,” making “compassion” one’s “greatest passion.”

Heschel first learned these essential values as a child in Eastern Europe. This little book is his story.

“A great way to deepen your spiritual life is to take a deep dive into a tradition other than your own—especially if you have a competent guide, and Rabbi Rami is an extraordinary guide. Not into Zen? Not a Jew? Not a problem. Anyone on any path will benefit enormously from this profoundly illuminating book.” —Philip Goldberg, author of American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation, How Indian Spirituality Changed the West

With reference to Shunryu Suzuki Roshi’s classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Rami Shapiro begins with beginner’s mind as “empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities. It is the kind of mind which can see things as they are, which step by step and in a flash can realize the original nature of everything.” Then, Rami ponders beginner’s mind in the child of the Passover Haggadah “who knows not how to ask.” The parents of this child are told to open (patach) the child to the art of questioning. Asking questions is key to Jewish mind.

The questioning perennial beginner is central to both Zen and Jewish, Rami demonstrates: a daring, iconoclastic, often humorous mind devoted to shattering the words, texts, isms, and ideologies on which expert mind—closed to inquiry—depends.

Zen Mind / Jewish Mind is not a scholarly study of anything, let alone Zen or Judaism, and despite all the footnotes, the book rests solely on Shapiro’s fifty-plus years of playing in the garden of Judaism, Zen, and advaita/nonduality. Chapters include “Dharma Eye, God’s I” (1), “Koan and Midrash” (4), and “The Yoga of Conversation” (7).

Confronting the reality, habits, and healing of Jewish anxiety.

Jewish anxiety is not all in our heads. Nor is feeling anxious simply a Jewish stereotype, even though many Jews tout anxiety as a stereotypical virtue and ascribe it as a motivator for success. Jewish anxiety is real. We inherit it from our ancestors. We learn it simply by living in an unsafe world as Jewish people. We learn it growing up in Jewish communities. We unconsciously transmit Jewish anxiety to our children through how we remember the past, retell our stories, and celebrate Jewish holidays. We experience Jewish anxiety in how we habitually react to stress, fear, and uncertainty, whether that stress has anything to do with being Jewish. We receive painful messages from the wider world that we internalize as repetitive stress habits of fear, unworthiness, and shame, and then turn these hateful messages on ourselves and each other through the voices of unrelenting internal critics.

Jewish anxiety is real, but it is not inevitable. We don’t have to suffer simply because of the challenging history or learned patterns we’ve inherited. We don’t have to suffer simply because of who we are in the world, or how the world imagines, distorts, and treats Jews. I believe we have more choices about how to respond to life’s challenges than we think. I believe we can unlearn these habits with awareness, curiosity, compassion, and courage. I believe Jewish spirituality offers deep wisdom and simple practices for how to release these patterns from our minds and our bodies for good. We can learn how to calm down, suffer less, and get free. I believe we can choose to live with more joy, despite the conspiracy theories and hatred.

A modern prophet looks back on seven decades of activism.

Ask an expert who are the 5 most influential American Jewish leaders of the last century and Rabbi Arthur Waskow will make most of the lists. The author of the original Freedom Seder and legendary social justice activist is now in his 90s, and has recorded significant memories, relationships, and events of the last seventy years. Beginning with an anecdote about Gloria Steinem and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, Waskow plunges the reader into the counter-culture that has defined his life and work.

“But in the summer of 1968, I didn’t have the language of Spirit,” Waskow writes, and this becomes a chronicle of blending active resistance to tyranny with a gradual discovery of what Waskow calls very simply “Love.” Thus comes the title of this memoir, as these are personal accounts and encounters of Spirit rising—in an extraordinary life.

“A wise, inspiring, and beautiful book offering potent medicine for our times.” —Miranda Macpherson, author of The Way of Grace: The Transforming Power of Ego Relaxation 

“Karma” is in our vocabulary, but do we really know what it means?

The word is everywhere—not just in alternative spirituality, and among Hindus and Buddhists, but in news reports, ads, sitcoms, sports columns, and the everyday conversations of people who wouldn’t know the Upanishads from Us Magazine. Stephen Colbert invokes the term on TV and Taylor Swift summons it in song.

This book chronicles the origin and evolution of karmic theory and describes how the concept came to the West. It explains exactly what karma means—and, crucially, what it doesn’t mean—then shows how to apply karmically sound ethical principles to relationships, life decisions, health, death, and all aspects of self-development. “We’re always planting karmic seeds,” writes Philip Goldberg. Our task is to “choose the right seeds and plant them skillfully, in the right way, at the right time, under the right conditions.”

Karma is a profoundly useful idea, and Karmic Relief is a profoundly useful book. It offers a blueprint for building a fulfilling life and a way to reconcile some of life’s most vexing conundrums.

Replicable experiences of God according to Francis of Assisi, offered on the 800th anniversary of his death.

Never have we needed more to experience God—to feel God. Francis of Assisi was spiritual before anyone used that word, and he was religious in the best ways. We love him because he cut through the paraphernalia to get back to religion where it belongs: working in the human heart, making a difference in everyday life.

Anyone can do the things Francis did, summarized in these 36 ways of experiencing God. Examples offered through anecdote, text, and explanation include “Free captive creatures,” “Pray alone in the woods,” “Allow yourself to weep,” “Stand between those who fight,” “Make a cross with your arms,” and “Pray ‘Who are you, God? And who am I?’” Sweeney introduces each with faithful attention to the original sources, and comparisons to spiritual teachers from other traditions, including Thich Nhat Hanh, Roshi Bernie Glassman, Evelyn Underhill, Richard Rohr, and Mary Oliver.

Offers letters of the Sanskrit alphabet as key to understanding Yoga and the Divine

These original meditations on the Sanskrit letters range from personal narratives to metaphysical and theological speculations, linguistic play, and inter-spiritual allusions to other works and traditions, all relevant to living a contemplative life in the contemporary world.

Sowder’s book is anchored in the devotional Tantrik, Śaiva-Śakta tradition, focused on the Divine Feminine, but allusions to western mystics (Christian, Jewish, Muslim) also appear frequently. No other book like this exists.

“A must-read for anyone on the path of awakening.” —Roshi Joan Halifax

A raw and revelatory spiritual memoir that chronicles a woman’s quest for love, healing, and awakening across multiple continents.

From the emotional barrenness of a postwar German childhood to the false promise of guru culture, the ecstasy of mystical experience, and the crucible of human intimacy, Annette Knopp’s unflinchingly honest account illuminates both the pitfalls and rewards of the spiritual path and her work as a teacher assisting others in navigating the path to wholeness.

Struggling with depression and lack of meaning prompts the author to leave her fiancé and successful career in Spain to travel to the Osho ashram in Pune. Her journey takes her further to the Dalai Lama in Northern India, the nightclubs and Shinto shrines in Japan, facing a female Buddha in New Zealand, working nightshifts in an opal mine in Australia’s outback, diving into somatic therapy and Tibetan Buddhism in Amsterdam, shamanism in Peru, teaching in the US, until the opening of a retreat center with her husband in Costa Rica.

Annette experiences profound shifts of spiritual awakening and the shattering of illusions in her encounters with various teachers and traditions. Her path takes a dark turn when she is sexually assaulted by a trusted spiritual mentor, plunging her into a crisis of faith and a deep descent into unresolved trauma. With unflinching honesty and vulnerability, she illuminates the complexities of the teacher-student relationship, the dangers of spiritual bypassing, and the importance of personal empowerment and discernment on the spiritual path. Sharing her healing and integration process, Knopp weaves insights from Eastern contemplative traditions, Western psychology, earth-based wisdom practices, and somatic approaches to trauma resolution.

This bilingual edition of St. Teresa of Avila’s poems with commentary engages readers with all facets of the Saint’s life: the mystic and monastic reformer, the artist and proto-feminist, and the philosopher with a penchant for paradox.

“What a gift then to read Dana Delibovi’s translations of St Teresa d’Ávila’s complete poems—sweet treasure!—so elegant and concise, the language lyrical yet simple and accessible, the music of the stanzas and the profundity of her voice carried into English. I also appreciated Delibovi’s curation: the short introductions and thematic arrangement of the poems—nothing overly ponderous and academic. It’s as if we are on a pilgrimage into the heart and soul and song of this amazing woman and spiritual leader and poet.” —Julia Alvarez, poet, novelist, and essayist; author of The Cemetery of Untold Stories

“Saint Teresa has, at last, found an English translator who has deeply penetrated the poet’s essence, her revelatory reverence and rapturous beauty.” —Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno, author of Night Suite, Remission, and A Continual Pilgrimage: American Writers in Paris, 1944-1960

St. Teresa of Avila’s poems, written in the 16th century, speak to the spiritual longing of our times and invite us to find peace amid turmoil. St. Teresa walked a path of grace, seeking the divine within the human soul, and her poetry lights this path for all of us. This is the first translation of St. Teresa’s poetry by a woman poet and captures the saint’s spiritual vigor and famously conversational tone in English. That voice is echoed in well-researched commentary strengthened by the translator’s willingness to share her spiritual journey.

Braided medieval and modern stories of an anchoress, her handmaiden, and the adjunct professor searching for them across centuries as they each navigate ambition, confinement, and the patriarchy.

“The modern and medieval stories spiral in and out of each other, intricate and vivid as the letters of illuminated manuscripts, connected by the mysteries of paradox: confinement and freedom, loss and fulfillment.” —Elizabeth Cunningham, My Life as a Prayer and The Maeve Chronicles

 “Holt-Browning is adept at honing in on the passion for life, nature, and language that can sustain a person through the hardest times.” —Nerissa Nields, Plastic Angel and All Together Singing in the Kitchen

Twelve-year-old Elinor is enclosed with an anchoress, Lady Adela, in a cell at Wenlock Abbey, 14th century England. Centuries later, an adjunct professor of medieval studies discovers Elinor’s long-lost book of hours on a research trip to England. Holt-Browning explores women’s timeless struggle for personal agency as her unforgettable characters discover the burdens and rewards of faith and devotion. A must-read for fans of Julian of Norwich.

“Reading Ellen Bernstein's Toward a Holy Ecology is to partake in a garden of delights. She refreshes our reading of the Song by enlivening all of our senses." —Rabbi Nancy Flam, Co-founder National Center for Jewish Healing, and The Institute for Jewish Spirituality

Song of Songs is known as the erotic part of the Bible, but Ellen Bernstein shows how it is also an ancient source of deep ecological wisdom.

Toward a Holy Ecology is a new translation of this Hebrew text, illuminating the place of humans in the natural world and inviting you to develop a holy, ecological language for life.

This book sets the natural world before you with intensity and beauty, inviting you to savor it with all your senses. Then you are able to return to the world with a renewed clarity, love, and energy necessary for creating a healthier future for the earth and all her inhabitants.

Toward a Holy Ecology is for all who love the earth and its inhabitants—including outdoor enthusiasts, spiritual seekers, fellow poets, feminists, and students of the humanities, religion, and ecology. It will change how you see, how you speak, and how you live.

“A brilliant and engaging book on haiku, and on the state of the body and mind required in the million to one shot against producing a good one” —Jim Harrison

First published in 1997, Seeds From a Birch Tree introduced readers to the only form of poetry in all of world literature that makes nature into a spiritual path. Its message was simple: Haiku teaches us to return to nature by following the seasons—seventeen syllables at a time.

With its mix of poetry and memoir, fallen leaves and birdsong, Seeds From a Birch Tree awakens us to what Bashō called “the life of each thing.” Simple instructions guide us to the possibilities for creativity and joy hidden in plain sight in the natural world around us, giving us hope and resilience in the face of life’s challenges.

This Revised & Expanded 25^th Anniversary Edition includes the complete text of the original classic, plus dozens of new haiku and an Afterword by the author discussing haiku for the 21^st century.

Winner of the 2023 Nautilus Book Awards Gold Prize for Memoir

This luminous memoir combines the hardscrabble setting of Appalachia with the spiritual wisdom of Shunryu Suzuki’s classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.

“Amazing and intense. A unique, entertaining, and valuable contribution to the Dharma literature, Appalachian Zen addresses a part of the Western Dharma world that hasn’t received much attention: class.” —Rev. Sumi Loundon Kim, Yale University, author of Blue Jean Buddha and Sitting Together

Appalachian Zen describes a journey we all take, one that Buddhism calls “seeking our true home.” Edgy, lyrical, and lovingly rendered, this book recounts how a kid from a Pennsylvania mill-town trailer park grew up—surrounded by backwoods farms and amid grief, violence, and passionate yearning—to become something improbable: a Buddhist minister teaching Zen. Author Steve Kanji Ruhl takes readers on an adventure of discovery, roving far from the Appalachian Mountains of central Pennsylvania on a footloose Zen pilgrimage to Japan and beyond.

Featuring vivid firsthand accounts of spiritual seeking and teaching in Japanese temples, as well as forays to Tokyo and Hiroshima, the alleys of Kyoto, Amish cornfields near the Susquehanna, and a monastery in the Catskills, Appalachian Zen includes robust historical sketches, rapt nature passages, and cultural references ranging from Proust to punk rock. Throughout the book, Ruhl engages Buddhist themes of awakening and the death of the self by confronting the lives and deaths, including two by suicide, of his loved ones. This provocative memoir tells how it feels to practice Zen, and to move toward a life of hard-won forgiveness, healing, and freedom.

“A must-read for anyone on the path of awakening.” —Roshi Joan Halifax

A raw and revelatory spiritual memoir that chronicles a woman’s quest for love, healing, and awakening across multiple continents.

From the emotional barrenness of a postwar German childhood to the false promise of guru culture, the ecstasy of mystical experience, and the crucible of human intimacy, Annette Knopp’s unflinchingly honest account illuminates both the pitfalls and rewards of the spiritual path and her work as a teacher assisting others in navigating the path to wholeness.

Struggling with depression and lack of meaning prompts the author to leave her fiancé and successful career in Spain to travel to the Osho ashram in Pune. Her journey takes her further to the Dalai Lama in Northern India, the nightclubs and Shinto shrines in Japan, facing a female Buddha in New Zealand, working nightshifts in an opal mine in Australia’s outback, diving into somatic therapy and Tibetan Buddhism in Amsterdam, shamanism in Peru, teaching in the US, until the opening of a retreat center with her husband in Costa Rica.

Annette experiences profound shifts of spiritual awakening and the shattering of illusions in her encounters with various teachers and traditions. Her path takes a dark turn when she is sexually assaulted by a trusted spiritual mentor, plunging her into a crisis of faith and a deep descent into unresolved trauma. With unflinching honesty and vulnerability, she illuminates the complexities of the teacher-student relationship, the dangers of spiritual bypassing, and the importance of personal empowerment and discernment on the spiritual path. Sharing her healing and integration process, Knopp weaves insights from Eastern contemplative traditions, Western psychology, earth-based wisdom practices, and somatic approaches to trauma resolution.

The lost fiction—fantasy and horror—of the famous Christian writer.

A revered priest’s horrifying metaphysical secret that is revealed only after his death. A sculptor’s obsessive desire to craft the horrific face that haunts his dreams and drives him to madness. A journey upriver to an unspoiled realm whose denizens revile anything tainted by humans. The sole survivor of an island shipwreck and the terrifying ancient being he confronts.

Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) is best known for her groundbreaking and accessible studies on Christian mysticism: over forty books and hundreds of articles and lectures on spiritual practices, including her most famous work, Mysticism (1911). Yet even the most avid Underhill reader does not know that she spent her youth writing some seriously weird fiction: supernatural short stories that H.P. Lovecraft might have enjoyed. Here for the first time is a collection of short stories, poetry, and an essay written by the foremost Christian mystic of the twentieth century. Furthermore, Underhill’s brief fiction career represents an important step in her mystical and spiritual development. Understand these stories and you go a long way toward understanding how Underhill became the transformational thinker and mystic the world knows her to be.

Epistolary biography of a bridge-building 20th century Christian-Hindu spiritual leader

This fascinating biography of Swāmī Abhishiktānanda (Henri Le Saux) is based on a vast collection of letters written to friends and family over his twenty-five years in India.

Swāmī Abhishiktānanda (1910-1973)—a French Catholic monk, who came to India in 1948 and settled there till the end of his life in 1973—was one of the most fascinating spiritual figures of the twentieth century and a bridge-builder between Christian and Hindu traditions. After nineteen years of living in a Benedictine monastery in France, his passionate longing to realize the Truth brought him face-to-face with Indian spirituality and paved the way for him to meet one of the greatest contemporary sages of India, Shri Ramana Maharshi.

This book illustrates the spiritual trajectory of an extraordinary pioneer of interreligious dialogue and a bridge-builder between Christian and Hindu traditions, from his first arrival in South India in 1948 towards his spiritual Awakening in Rishikesh on July 14, 1973.

2023 Foreword INDIES Award Winner | Silver: Travel

A pilgrimage-turned-adventure story in pursuit of a pagan mystery on the Camino de Santiago across France and Spain

"In Beebe Bahrami’s The Way of the Wild Goose, a mystery, the wild feminine, and trail magic come together on the Camino de Santiago....Bahrami affirms that the Camino is more than a mere road—it’s an initiation. With skill and insight, she details the joys, challenges, and human kindness she experienced on this ‘great leyline forged from the mix of natural earth energies with the human imagination’ that became her road to self-discovery and a heart-centered life." —Foreword Reviews; starred review

With three pilgrimages across southern France and northern Spain defining author and anthropologist Beebe Bahrami’s single journey on the Camino de Santiago, The Way of the Wild Goose recounts an inner and outer journey full of wild nature, ancient roads and history, quirky pilgrims, wise and humorous locals, and mysterious folklore. It’s a compelling tale of quest, initiation, and transformation following the Way of Saint James.

The book is also a detective story that reveals an old mystery: Why is the goose associated with the medieval Camino de Santiago, and how did it come to preserve a whole universe of pagan, pre-Christian lore in one innocent symbol? Longtime trekker Bahrami decided to find out, and unknowingly catapulted herself into a true wild goose chase, unearthing a magnetically alive and meaningful long walk on the ancient roads in France and Spain—and a journey into the Self.

This guide to Integrative Medicine, based on quantum science, combines studies in consciousness, with alternative systems of healing such as Ayurveda and Yoga to produce a new science of health which sees disease as a health disorder. Required reading for health professionals and anyone looking for a deeper understanding of wellness.

Inspired by the Dalai Lama to apply the integrative ideas of quantum science to practical everyday problems in people’s lives, famed physicist Amit Goswami began working in 1999 in the field of health and healing. His first task was to use the new quantum metaphysics to provide a basic science for the systems of alternative medicine and thus begin a tentative integrative medicine. This was accomplished in The Quantum Doctor, first published in 2004. 

What was still lacking was a unified theory of health leading to a new science of heath which would treat disease as a health disorder. Much more expertise in specifics was needed for such a project. In 2016, Goswami partnered with Valentina Onisor, MD, trained in both allopathic and most systems of alternative medicine as well including Ayurveda, yoga, naturopathy, aromatherapy, and homeopathy. This book is the culmination of their efforts to date. It is intended for both laypeople and health professionals.

Enlightened Contemporaries is the first book to compare the lives and teachings of three of the world's most admired spiritual masters: Francis of Assisi, the Christian saint; Dogen, the great Zen Buddhist teacher; and Rumi, the Islamic Sufi master. They lived during the same turbulent century. They integrated mystical experiences of the sacred into their lives, and they can inspire us to do the same.

Enlightened Contemporaries combines robust scholarship with brisk, engaging, lyrical prose. Offering a thorough introduction for the general reader as well as specialists, it will appeal to those who enjoy an interfaith approach to spiritual exploration, one that links Christian, Buddhist, and Islamic mystical teachings within a vibrant historical context and shows how they not only complement each other but remain profoundly relevant in the twenty-first century.

Bringing Saint Francis, Dogen, and Rumi vividly to life as complex and compelling human beings, Enlightened Contemporaries lucidly explains their spiritual paths, explores the dynamic age in which these three pioneering teachers struggled and triumphed, and investigates their remarkable poetry. It also deftly examines how Francis, Dogen, and Rumi engaged the world in the context of five shared themes: spiritual love, nature, the body, the role of women, and balancing retreat from society with active involvement. By interweaving the spiritual lives of these Christian, Buddhist, and Muslim teachers, Enlightened Contemporaries will help readers enhance their own lives and find new paths of spiritual understanding.

“Rilke's voice from the last tumultuous young century reaches tenderly into ours. But his lush German is a language of its own. Mark Burrows has a rare gift to coax it faithfully into English. I am delighted, and so very grateful for this book.” —Krista Tippett, host of “On Being”

On the centennial of the first appearance (1923) of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, award-winning translator Mark Burrows reveals their depth and meaning with a brilliant new introduction and translation.

This new translation captures the lyric beauty of Rilke's poems, honoring their syntactic peculiarities and grammatical complexities as few translators have dared to do. Burrows’ versions maintain the essential strangeness of language and abruptness of metaphor by which the sonnets attain their distinctive character in German. Burrows' approach replicates what one reviewer describes as the poems’ “dazzling obscurity,” refusing to resolve the deliberate difficulties Rilke’s formulations present. The effect invites readers to linger with these sonnets, allowing themselves to be shaped in their encounter with them.

Zen as the ideal path for those who have left institutional religion behind

Do you feel there is something more to be found in life? Is there something more for your life? Traditionally people turn to religions to find that “more.”

Today, when cultures are in upheaval and traditional religions are collapsing, a prominent Zen teacher explores the possibility of a spirituality at the heart of all religions.

Zen at the End of Religion is a brief introduction to Zen as a practical expression of perennial wisdom, a “naturalistic perennialism.”

The book offers a simple introduction to the core of Zen’s why and how. While Zen is a rich and varied tradition, this introduction focuses on the essentials, the foundations of the Zen way. This book explores the Four Noble Truths, the Two Truths, the Ten Ox Herding Pictures, Zen meditation, samadhi, koans, enlightenment, and more.

“When I hear James Ford’s words, something in me wakes up. He has the rare ability to communicate something that is much larger than himself. We are all lucky to be in contact with this gift.” —Gesshin Claire Greenwood, author of Bow First, Ask Questions Later

“A beautifully written tale of spiritual growth.”—James Martin, SJ, author of the New York Times bestsellers Jesus: A Pilgrimage and Learning to Pray 

Not every Catholic mother wants her son to be a priest.

The true story of a young man’s journey to become a Jesuit priest—written by his mother, a fallen-away Catholic who must come to terms with her son’s decision or risk losing him. It is an intimate, sometimes irreverent, and often searing examination of faith, family, and reconciliation.

“You send your son off to college and you think that in a few years you might get a call, and he’ll announce that he has someone he’s bringing home, someone he wants you to meet. But then that someone turns out to be a recruiter hawking a lifetime of poverty, chastity and obedience. What college kid in his right mind would sign up for that?”

The book offers a rare, often entertaining, glimpse into the highly unusual Jesuit formation process—which includes sending would-be priests off on pilgrimages with $35 in their pockets. It also takes on tough issues, from the church’s history of sexual abuse to its treatment of women, and asks tough questions: Is it possible to be Catholic, liberal, and a feminist all at the same time? What does it mean to call yourself a Catholic?

For four decades Rabbi Bonder was immersed in spirituality and sought out by people who needed comfort. He has now transformed some of these cases into fiction.

A Romanian woman, resident of Copacabana, wants to marry her dead fiancé. The discovery of a manuscript from the Inquisition, written to defame a woman, has the power to awaken lust and perversion in whomever reads it. A boy who scares his parents with paranormal powers prepares for his bar mitzvah. 

These are the subjects of Nilton Bonder’s imagination in this collection of short stories. He writes in the tradition of the best of Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Each story comes from a place bordering reality with the unusual and inexplicable, revealing the little that’s required to transform the ordinary into extraordinary. With starting points from real situations (including the author himself as a young man, seriously bored in the house of Abraham Joshua Heschel), each story moves into another reality.

Previously published in Portuguese.

The spiritual journey is interior to each person, but not meant to be walked alone.

Much can be gained from trailing the spiritual narratives of those who have traveled ahead of us, for the God they have found, we may never have considered. How I Found God in Everyone and Everywhere, Volume 2 again captures for a general audience the spiritual shift away from popular notions of a God “up there” and “out there” and toward immanent and inclusive understandings of a God in our very midst. It is built around the fascinating personal journeys of a close-knit group of prominent contributors, leaders including Christopher M. Bache, Jude Currivan, Amit Goswami, Kabir Helminski, Karen Johnson with Hameed Ali (A. H. Almaas), Sheri Kling, Beverly Lanzetta, Ervin Laszlo, Jay McDaniel, Raymond Moody, Peter Russell, Rupert Spira, and Becca Tarnas.

From dark nights of suffering and despair, to the joy of scientific and intellectual discovery, to the aesthetic beauty of music and nature, and the blissful—and at times dreadful—shock of psychedelic, mystical and near-death experience, these spiritual memoirs reveal exceptional encounters with the Holy Mystery—a universal Mind that exceeds but also includes our very own. And, unlike the first volume, this new book is deliberately catered toward group study with its “Questions for Discussion” and “Sages to Explore” sections at the end of each chapter.

“Beautiful, generative, loving, and deep: this may be the wisest Tarot book ever written. Gil Stafford finds the folly of the Cross in the journey of the Fool, and reminds us that ‘Life is a pilgrimage on the path of wisdom’s way.’” —Lisa Freinkel Tishman, author of Mindful Tarot

This book is a portal for those interested in the Bible and curious about the Tarot, for both those who might read the Bible daily as well as those who know very little about it but are not averse to it.

The first two chapters provide background that place the two mystical texts in conversation with each other. The vast and complex mythos of the Bible with its complex characters, actors, symbols, stories, and parables, are the backstory of the magnificent creatures of the Tarot’s inner psychic world.

A book for spiritual explorers, reading the Bible and the Tarot hand-in-hand can expand the imagination. It explores how to read the Tarot and the Bible to provoke the unconscious, the dream world, and expand the imagination. By the final chapter, readers are able to connect the mysteries of the Bible with the psychological magic of the Tarot.

2025 Nautilus Award Winner | Silver | Religion

A rabbi’s lifelong journey to discover the source and inspiration of Hasidism.

As a student of Abraham Joshua Heschel’s at Jewish Theological Seminary sixty years ago, Burt Jacobson was moved to devote his life to the study of Israel Baal Shem Tov—the founder of Hasidism. Heschel considered the Baal Shem the greatest Jewish teacher and communal leader of the last 1,000 years. Living in the Presence: A Personal Quest for the Baal Shem Tov is a wide-ranging portrait, revealing numerous facets of the Baal Shem Tov’s biography and revolutionary thought previously unknown. Through his knowledge of the world’s wisdom traditions, and personal journey, Rabbi Jacobson is able to place the Baal Shem in the company of the great world spiritual teachers. He reveals the Baal Shem’s vision as an ecstatic mystical encounter that opened to the transcendent unity of existence. It was this that inspired his love and compassion for all creation, especially for the people he met. His disciples testified that their experience of these truths transformed how they understood their own identities as manifestations of the Divine, altered how they lived as spiritual leaders of their communities, and laid the foundations for Hasidism as a movement.

Throughout his book Jacobson presents and evaluates insights of historians and scholars, but it is also filled with personal stories about Jacobson’s own struggle with his Jewish identity and his encounter with the Baal Shem as his spiritual teacher. Both a tour de force and a labor of love, this book will quickly become the most essential work on the subject ever published in English.

2024 WINNER Autobiography/Memoir Best Book Awards
2025 Nautilus Award Winner | Silver | Death & Dying / Grief & Loss
2025 Foreword INDIES Award Winner | Bronze | Grief/Grieving (Adult Nonfiction)

“A wondrous, hopeful, heart-breaking witness to one of the darkest journeys imaginable… This will be one of those rare books that people re-read, think about, and encourage others to read.” —Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D, author, with Oprah Winfrey, of What Happened to You

“I love this book. I absolutely could not put it down. It is beautifully written and cuts to the very heart of life and love: The story of Havi’s short, beautiful life and early death from Tay-Sachs is harrowing, heartbreaking, uplifting, profound and sometimes funny. Havi will charm the socks off you.”—Anne Lamott

Life is unfolding as planned for Myra Sack and her husband Matt until their beautiful year-old daughter Havi is diagnosed with Tay-Sachs, a fatal neurodegenerative disease, and given only a year to live. Myra and Matt decide to celebrate Havi’s short life and vow to show her as much of the world as they can, surrounded by friends and family who relocate to be in Havi’s orbit. Tapping their Judaism, they transform Friday night Shabbats into birthday parties—“Shabbirthdays”—to replace the birthdays Havi will never have.

In this highly readable book, Master Gou Jun brings Chan’s powerful and profound teachings to the page in a way that is accessible and warm. This is a book for those new to Chan, and for seasoned practitioners.

Essential Chan Buddhism is the rare unearthing of an ancient and remarkable Chinese spiritual tradition. Master Guo Jun speaks through hard-won wisdom on Chan's spiritual themes familiar to Western readers, such as mindfulness and relaxation in meditation, as well as profound, simply expressed teachings and insightful explorations of religious commitment. Essential Chan Buddhism filters formal spiritual practices through the lens of mundane and everyday life activities. The work captures the lyrical beauty and incantatory style of Guo Jun’s spoken English from the talks he gave at a fourteen-day retreat near Jakarta in 2010 and in subsequent conversations with his editor Kenneth Wapner.

Named a Best Spiritual Book of 2023 by Spirituality and Practice

“Wild Grace is Chelan Harkin’s most moving collection of poetry yet… These poems are deeply nourishing. It’s impossible to read them without feeling something long dormant stir inside you.” —Eric Weiner New York Times Best-selling author of The Geography of Bliss

“There’s a Vedic saying: ‘Thy gifts, my Lord, I surrender to Thee.’ Chelan has indeed received a Divine gift. I don’t think ordinary human intelligence could express such depth in words..” —Rick Archer, host of podcast Buddha at the Gas Pump: Conversations with “Ordinary” Spiritually Awakening People

In Wild Grace, Chelan Harkin uses ecstatic poetry to redefine our relationship with the divine. She targets a tipping point happening in the souls of many that shifts a conceptual relationship with God into a genuine, direct, and satisfying experience. These are visions of the present, speaking into the future. They are openings of the heart and awe-filled possibilities for a life of honesty and joy.

A lighthearted comedy about the way a spiritual teacher tries to empower his followers, but they invest him with all the power.

“…brilliant, wise, moving, and funny. Like, really funny. … Spiritual writing like this is rare. “ Shozen Jack Haubner, author of Zen Confidential 

Henry “Hank” Wilder, a divorced loner, is unsuccessfully trying to establish a new Zen center when he accidentally cures an ex-girlfriend’s recurring cancer with his touch and discovers—at least this is what people keep telling him—that he has healing powers.

Suddenly the empty zendo is overcrowded with Zen students who also want to be touched and healed by Hank. At first he resists, but when he cures a local Mexican boy of a bad limp, his reputation takes off. A TV story on Hank’s healings goes viral. The Latino community shows up, bearing food and icons of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Hank befriends a Catholic priest and falls in love again. When his life gets totally out of hand, he escapes to Mexico on a spiritual odyssey and finds out who he really is.

“Sruti Ram is a fearless adventurer—a believer in miracles, mysticism and magic. His wondrous life proves that for the sincere seeker, the one who cultivates the highest intention, all roads lead to God, eventually but inevitably.” —Sharon Gannon, co-founder of Jivamukti yoga and author of the bestselling Jivamukti Yoga: Practices for Liberating Body and Soul (foreword by Sting)

“Sruti Ram reveals the road less travelled and the life of commitment to the journey within. One feels the unfolding of life’s magic that arises not from mental planning rather trusting the heart to show the way of true happiness in life. I admire Sruti Ram’s devotion to follow a spiritual path as an authentic way of life in a society focused too much on material concerns.” — Stephan Rechtschaffen, MD, founder of Blue Spirit Costa Rica and the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY

For anyone drawn to spiritual love and devotion, and how to joyfully align one’s life to a soulful calling, All Roads Lead to Ram is a captivating and empowering true tale. Filled with Hindu deities, ancient temples, glittering festivals, and plenty of danger, it’s also entertaining and filled with humor and warmth. It’s part Indiana Jones adventure story and part spiritual memoir, with remarkable beating heart. Each chapter is a step in Sruti Ram’s profound and surprising personal journey. Chapters close with a sutra (lesson) by Sruti Ram himself—offering compassion and guidance founded in his own powerful teachings and the lessons of the ancient texts. The end of the book contains Sruti Ram’s teachings on the authentic Hindu texts and philosophy.

For the spiritual seeker, the avid reader, Hindu devotees or neophytes, yoga fans, for adventure-lovers and armchair travelers, for anyone interested in personal growth and mystical experience, All Roads Lead to Ram is bound to be a sure and rare delight.

Illustrated with rare and never before seen photos of Neem Karoli Baba, Ram Dass, Sruti Ram and many more.

International Book Awards—Religion: Eastern | Top Award
AmericanBookFest's Best Book Awards Winner | Religion: Eastern
Nautilus Award | Gold
Benjamin Franklin Award | Silver
Independent Book Publisher's Award | Bronze
Named One of the Best Books of 2021 — Spirituality and Practice Magazine

“An intriguing, challenging crash course in Zen Buddhism.” — Kirkus Reviews

"A generation-defining rendering of one of the great Zen Buddhist scriptures." — Spirituality and Practice

For centuries, The Blue Cliff Record has stood as one of the preeminent scriptures of the Zen Buddhist tradition in China, Japan, and Korea. However, until now there has been no published commentary by a contemporary Zen Master to assist readers in understanding its counterintuitive and sometimes baffling teachings.

The Garden of Flowers and Weeds draws on contemporary scholarship and the author’s extensive experience with Zen in order to offer new insights for sophisticated students who are hoping to uncover the secrets of the koan tradition. At the same time, The Garden is jargon-free and uses personal stories to appeal to readers who are new to Buddhism. The theme of the book is simple: Accepting the unenlightened self with all its flaws is the most profound form of enlightenment.

Even with this clarity, finding a path into these old Zen stories is a challenge. They are designed to be roadblocks to intellectual understanding. Using personal memoire, the oral teachings of Zen, and meditation instruction, The Garden assists the reader in approaching the dialogues as spiritual exercises. The Blue Cliff Record contains an explosive power, but you can only access it by integrating its wisdom into your everyday experiences. As Zen Master Nanquan said, “Ordinary mind is the Way.”

Wise, compassionate advice from one of the nation's most trusted grief counselors to help heal emotional wounds that prevent us from leading fulfilling lives.

Renowned grief counselor Stephen Levine tells us that long after an initial loss has passed and the period of grieving has ended an unattended sorrow lingers, accounting for a host of physical, emotional and spiritual maladies. It is not uncommon then for those with unresolved grief to lean toward addictions or dangerous behaviors or other forms of self-destruction. In Unattended Sorrow, Levine addresses the grief from fresh loss but also attends to the pain and troubles caused by the unresolved anguish, sadness and delayed stress than can accumulate over a lifetime. He notes that we may never entirely overcome sorrows but we can confront them with mercy and self-acceptance that smooths the path to healing the heart.

 “There is no one better to turn to in times of loss than Stephen Levine. This book is an invaluable tool for anyone recovering from any type of major loss. A must, must read.”—Richard Carlson, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

“Stephen’s work is magic. His work with the grieving and dying is among the most skillful and compassionate that I am aware of.”—Elizabeth Kubler-Ross 

First published account of the spiritual master who inspired Kripalu, the largest yoga center in the U.S.

“Swami Kripalu, affectionately known as Bapuji (or dear father), was one of the greatest Kundalini yogis of the 20th Century. Scholar, classical musician, composer, playwright, athlete, actor, and consummate story-teller, Bapuji was most renowned for his practice of sahaj or spontaneous yoga and his encyclopedic writings on yoga and classical music. He lived in the western state of Gujarat from 1913 to 1981. Although Bapuji visited the US from 1977-1981, few of his writings have been translated into English. Thus the full impact of his wisdom is yet to be felt in the west. Atma's thoughtful and creative approach to his life and teachings in Pilgrim of Love builds a strong foundation for getting to know this extraordinary master of yoga.” —Stephen Cope, author of Yoga and the Quest for the True Self

Kripalu Yoga, originally pioneered by Yogi Amrit Desai and later developed into a structured practice by key Kripalu teachers, provides an introduction to the life-transforming yogic principles that are Bapuji's legacy to Kripalu Center. With his teachings as its foundation, Kripalu Center is the largest residential yoga center in the world and is located in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. Offering year-round trainings, programs and health services, Kripalu Center provides the means for guests to develop awareness, cultivate health, and embark on a journey of deep spiritual transformation--all through the application of the tools of yoga.

Atma Jo Ann Levitt, M.A., R.N., is a certified yoga teacher, Healing Touch practitioner, and author of three books, including The Kripalu Cookbook: Gourmet Vegetarian Recipes. She pioneered many growth and wellness programs at Kripalu Center. She is coauthor of a book on sibling relationships, Sibling Revelry: 8 Steps to a Successful Adult Sibling Relationship.

A book about love, because the Bible is all about love

The subject of Rami Shapiro’s new book is not simply the Tanakh (Torah, Prophets, and Writings)—what Christians call Old Testament. Rabbi Rami loves the New Testament and the Apocrypha as well. When he functions as a rabbi in a synagogue, he limits himself to those books Jews hold sacred, but when teaching Bible in a university setting he teaches it all. And as a seeker of wisdom, he refuses to be limited in his search for wisdom.

The Bible is one of the most, if not the most, important collections of human literature ever written. Its influence on the lives of billions of people over thousands of years is incalculable. For this reason alone, it demands our attention.

Shapiro shows how the wisdom of the Bible, unlike its various theologies, is testable. The purpose of wisdom is to help navigate the intricacies of life more effectively, to deepen our capacity for compassion and commitment to justice, and help us “walk through the shadowed Valley of Death” fearlessly, even tranquilly, and almost certainly fed by faith understood as the capacity to engage the world with an open heart and open mind regardless of what we encounter. Throughout these sometimes philosophical, sometimes deeply textual, and always profound reflections, Rami’s hope is that readers will see what he sees, and hear what he hears in these texts of love for people of all traditions.

In the spirit of monk-poets Hanshan, Thomas Merton, and Philip Wallen

Trappist monk Paul Quenon spends his days in prayer, contemplation, and the monastery kitchen. These poems reflect those places and those moments. The Kentucky knobs play a role, as do the creatures and birds that live there. Nocturnal vigils, too, are important to the poems, and some of them were written like hymns to be sung rather than spoken. This is the work of a poet at the height of his powers, in his ninth decade of a life well-lived.

The book also includes a rare interview with the poet, which includes this: “I want a poem to be a poem. It is more than descriptive prose, more than an account of the state of my soul, a record of what I’ve experienced, information about my spiritual life. A poem steps into a space of its own. It nudges along with a spirit of its own, and is best when it surprises me. If I know ahead of time what I want to write, that is a drag and will bore the reader. Best to be free of pre-conceived ideas, and best when I’m obedient to the poem, to whatever it wants.” (Brother Paul Quenon)

A book for practicing Yoga like Swami Kripalu did.

Swami Kripalu (1913-81) was an Indian saint and social activist who experienced a profound energetic awakening in mid-life and spent his last four decades intensively practicing asana, pranayama, and meditation in a quest to scale the ladder of yoga to its highest rung. This is the first book to present his teachings on yoga and a host of related esoteric topics in a straightforward manner that enables them to be sensibly applied on the mat and cushion by today’s practitioners. 

The book also traces the efforts of the author and a cadre of other Westerners – sometimes effectively, other times not – to progress along Swami Kripalu’s path of yoga through the type of systematic practice he valued so highly. Presented in contemporary language, these are potent teachings true to the roots of historic yoga to bring its mysteries alive for today’s students.

A book for practicing Yoga like Swami Kripalu did.

Swami Kripalu (1913-81) was an Indian saint and social activist who experienced a profound energetic awakening in mid-life and spent his last four decades intensively practicing asana, pranayama, and meditation in a quest to scale the ladder of yoga to its highest rung. This is the first book to present his teachings on yoga and a host of related esoteric topics in a straightforward manner that enables them to be sensibly applied on the mat and cushion by today’s practitioners. 

The book also traces the efforts of the author and a cadre of other Westerners – sometimes effectively, other times not – to progress along Swami Kripalu’s path of yoga through the type of systematic practice he valued so highly. Presented in contemporary language, these are potent teachings true to the roots of historic yoga to bring its mysteries alive for today’s students.

An Oklahoma girl’s years of immersion in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery

Girl in a Box: Seeking Enlightenment as a Tibetan Buddhist Nun chronicles a five-year immersion in the paradigm-altering world of a Tibetan retreat center in New York’s Hudson Valley. It weaves flashbacks of Collins’ former life with her ongoing attempts to surrender to monastic life. She travels to India with her teacher, takes vows as a nun, then returns to life at the monastery where she works as a house cleaner days and evenings to earn money to attend a dreamed-of three-year retreat. In her struggle to become a stellar nun, she conducts a one-sided jealous rivalry with a beautiful and “perfect” young nun—whom she later discovers is hiding a shocking secret. She also describes the grueling practice of performing over 100,000 prostrations and her disillusionment upon learning of the imperfect humanity of her revered teachers.

As the underlying grace of those years spent with the Tibetans come into focus, Collins sees that she is like a girl who packs her suitcase and sets off down the road only to discover she has nowhere to go. What she is seeking––the very “home” she longs for––has been right there all along. Hiding in plain sight; masked in a cloak of the suffering she so longs to escape. Overlooked. Because, as the Tibetans teach—it’s too simple, too obvious, too close.

Reveals Jesus’ secret teachings to his closest disciples

It is arguably the earliest work of Christian mysticism. And like mysticism in all times and places it is susceptible to misunderstandings and erroneous accusations. Declared heretical after the church councils in the fourth century, Philip was suppressed and banned and laid hidden until being rediscovered in 1945 for a new consideration. Reexamined through the lens of a longer arc of Christian mysticism we see it at the heart of the Jesus movement based secret teachings Jesus gave to his disciples.

A memoir of adversity, hope, and the value of the Gurdjieff Work

James Opie’s spiritual autobiography is a story of continuous movement. Episodes of youthful right-wing politics, racism, and drug use move into resistance to the draft and Vietnam, and eventually connect with the teaching of G.I. Gurdjieff. Opie even enters the same line of work that the spiritual master maintained—becoming an Oriental rug dealer. There are travels to Iran and Afghanistan, and colorful characters as Opie plies his trade with distinction. Opie moves through several marriages and other personal turbulence. Fourteen years in a Gurdjieff center in Oregon come to an end in 1988 when Opie runs afoul of the motherly but overbearing leader of “The Farm.” But by then he has spoken with Madame Jeanne de Salzmann, Gurdjieff’s most devoted pupil who remained with him until his death in 1949 and for forty-one years worked to transmit his teaching and preserve the content and meaning of the Movements. Opie also learns directly from the leader of the Gurdjieff Work in North America, Lord Pentland. In the end, this memoir-with-Gurdjieff reveals how inner efforts and fortuitous help incrementally make a man more mature and serious, though still remaining a beginner.

Awaken to an awareness that’s already inside you

The Placeless Abode weaves together five dharma talks delivered by Yoshin David Radin at the Rinzai-ji Zen Center of Los Angeles—his teacher Joshu Sasaki Roshi’s home temple. Structured like the sesshin, or Zen retreat, from which the material arose, each day’s talk is followed by other writings that reflect and deepen the themes addressed.

The book invites readers to question the fundamental delusion of selfhood, explore the nature of death, and examine the mind’s tendency to misidentify itself as form. Radin writes and speaks with a rare combination of piercing insight and compassionate humor, reflecting his deep training and decades of teaching experience. The central message—awakening to the awareness that is already present—is rendered with striking simplicity, allowing readers from diverse backgrounds to resonate with its truth and meaning.

The tone is warm, poetic, and direct, offering a rare accessibility to the often paradoxical teachings of Zen.

The true story, woven with fiction, of Eileen O’Connor—Australia’s saint-in-waiting

In this inspirational novel, a family traumatized by addiction and catastrophe discover their great-grandmother’s lost account of Australia’s saint-in-waiting—a severely disabled woman who barely survived childhood but defied the Catholic Church and provided free nursing care in Sydney’s slums—and miracles happen. With a dual timeline, novelist Kate Clinch weaves the story of Eileen O’Connor, whose cause for sainthood is currently active in Rome, with the lives of a fictional contemporary family a century after her death.

The backdrop is Sydney in the midst of World War I and the Spanish Flu. Eileen is crippled by tuberculosis, partial paralysis, and interminable pain. Her determination and faith that she is called to help others, drives her to establish a private domiciliary nursing organization, and brings her into conflict with the Catholic hierarchy. A diverse array of colorful fictional characters and situations also then help bring to life this twentieth-century story of courage and resiliency. One of Eileen’s friends, believing her to be a living saint, records Eileen’s story, leaving it to be found like a lost artifact, in 2019.

An Oklahoma girl’s years of immersion in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery

Girl in a Box: Seeking Enlightenment as a Tibetan Buddhist Nun chronicles a five-year immersion in the paradigm-altering world of a Tibetan retreat center in New York’s Hudson Valley. It weaves flashbacks of Collins’ former life with her ongoing attempts to surrender to monastic life. She travels to India with her teacher, takes vows as a nun, then returns to life at the monastery where she works as a house cleaner days and evenings to earn money to attend a dreamed-of three-year retreat. In her struggle to become a stellar nun, she conducts a one-sided jealous rivalry with a beautiful and “perfect” young nun—whom she later discovers is hiding a shocking secret. She also describes the grueling practice of performing over 100,000 prostrations and her disillusionment upon learning of the imperfect humanity of her revered teachers.

As the underlying grace of those years spent with the Tibetans come into focus, Collins sees that she is like a girl who packs her suitcase and sets off down the road only to discover she has nowhere to go. What she is seeking––the very “home” she longs for––has been right there all along. Hiding in plain sight; masked in a cloak of the suffering she so longs to escape. Overlooked. Because, as the Tibetans teach—it’s too simple, too obvious, too close.

A book about love, because the Bible is all about love

The subject of Rami Shapiro’s new book is not simply the Tanakh (Torah, Prophets, and Writings)—what Christians call Old Testament. Rabbi Rami loves the New Testament and the Apocrypha as well. When he functions as a rabbi in a synagogue, he limits himself to those books Jews hold sacred, but when teaching Bible in a university setting he teaches it all. And as a seeker of wisdom, he refuses to be limited in his search for wisdom.

The Bible is one of the most, if not the most, important collections of human literature ever written. Its influence on the lives of billions of people over thousands of years is incalculable. For this reason alone, it demands our attention.

Shapiro shows how the wisdom of the Bible, unlike its various theologies, is testable. The purpose of wisdom is to help navigate the intricacies of life more effectively, to deepen our capacity for compassion and commitment to justice, and help us “walk through the shadowed Valley of Death” fearlessly, even tranquilly, and almost certainly fed by faith understood as the capacity to engage the world with an open heart and open mind regardless of what we encounter. Throughout these sometimes philosophical, sometimes deeply textual, and always profound reflections, Rami’s hope is that readers will see what he sees, and hear what he hears in these texts of love for people of all traditions.

A leading scholar of Jewish mysticism with Hasidic insight for every Shabbat

Arthur Green has been the leader of a neo-Hasidic revival in modern American Judaism for the last half-century. All of that comes together in this new book of Torah interpretation.

His reflections on the weekly Torah portions are replete with the sense that the text is torah, teaching, and we are here to learn from it. This is done by entering the text and its reality. The frequent refrain of the early Hasidic sources (“Torah is eternal, speaking to each generation. What does this text have to teach us today?”) is echoed loudly, here, for a new generation of listeners determined to set its own course.

Even in original Hasidism, while the vocabulary of postmodernism hadn’t yet emerged, there was a growing sense of the readers’ right to take an active role in allowing the text to speak. Twin understandings of this process, one seeing a new generation of seekers wanting to enter the text, and the other seeing the ancient sources in quest of new and creative readers and interpreters, have continued to emerge in tandem over the past half-century. This way of reading Torah has entered many synagogues as well. And that is the spirit in which the present collection of divrey torah is offered.

Rabbi Green does not need to call for a new renaissance of the midrashic art or the Hasidic boldness in reading scripture. This rebirth is already underway—and here it is being noticed and nurtured.

Reveals Jesus’ secret teachings to his closest disciples

It is arguably the earliest work of Christian mysticism. And like mysticism in all times and places it is susceptible to misunderstandings and erroneous accusations. Declared heretical after the church councils in the fourth century, Philip was suppressed and banned and laid hidden until being rediscovered in 1945 for a new consideration. Reexamined through the lens of a longer arc of Christian mysticism we see it at the heart of the Jesus movement based secret teachings Jesus gave to his disciples.

The true story, woven with fiction, of Eileen O’Connor—Australia’s saint-in-waiting

In this inspirational novel, a family traumatized by addiction and catastrophe discover their great-grandmother’s lost account of Australia’s saint-in-waiting—a severely disabled woman who barely survived childhood but defied the Catholic Church and provided free nursing care in Sydney’s slums—and miracles happen. With a dual timeline, novelist Kate Clinch weaves the story of Eileen O’Connor, whose cause for sainthood is currently active in Rome, with the lives of a fictional contemporary family a century after her death.

The backdrop is Sydney in the midst of World War I and the Spanish Flu. Eileen is crippled by tuberculosis, partial paralysis, and interminable pain. Her determination and faith that she is called to help others, drives her to establish a private domiciliary nursing organization, and brings her into conflict with the Catholic hierarchy. A diverse array of colorful fictional characters and situations also then help bring to life this twentieth-century story of courage and resiliency. One of Eileen’s friends, believing her to be a living saint, records Eileen’s story, leaving it to be found like a lost artifact, in 2019.

In the spirit of monk-poets Hanshan, Thomas Merton, and Philip Wallen

Trappist monk Paul Quenon spends his days in prayer, contemplation, and the monastery kitchen. These poems reflect those places and those moments. The Kentucky knobs play a role, as do the creatures and birds that live there. Nocturnal vigils, too, are important to the poems, and some of them were written like hymns to be sung rather than spoken. This is the work of a poet at the height of his powers, in his ninth decade of a life well-lived.

The book also includes a rare interview with the poet, which includes this: “I want a poem to be a poem. It is more than descriptive prose, more than an account of the state of my soul, a record of what I’ve experienced, information about my spiritual life. A poem steps into a space of its own. It nudges along with a spirit of its own, and is best when it surprises me. If I know ahead of time what I want to write, that is a drag and will bore the reader. Best to be free of pre-conceived ideas, and best when I’m obedient to the poem, to whatever it wants.” (Brother Paul Quenon)

A memoir of adversity, hope, and the value of the Gurdjieff Work

James Opie’s spiritual autobiography is a story of continuous movement. Episodes of youthful right-wing politics, racism, and drug use move into resistance to the draft and Vietnam, and eventually connect with the teaching of G.I. Gurdjieff. Opie even enters the same line of work that the spiritual master maintained—becoming an Oriental rug dealer. There are travels to Iran and Afghanistan, and colorful characters as Opie plies his trade with distinction. Opie moves through several marriages and other personal turbulence. Fourteen years in a Gurdjieff center in Oregon come to an end in 1988 when Opie runs afoul of the motherly but overbearing leader of “The Farm.” But by then he has spoken with Madame Jeanne de Salzmann, Gurdjieff’s most devoted pupil who remained with him until his death in 1949 and for forty-one years worked to transmit his teaching and preserve the content and meaning of the Movements. Opie also learns directly from the leader of the Gurdjieff Work in North America, Lord Pentland. In the end, this memoir-with-Gurdjieff reveals how inner efforts and fortuitous help incrementally make a man more mature and serious, though still remaining a beginner.

Awaken to an awareness that’s already inside you

The Placeless Abode weaves together five dharma talks delivered by Yoshin David Radin at the Rinzai-ji Zen Center of Los Angeles—his teacher Joshu Sasaki Roshi’s home temple. Structured like the sesshin, or Zen retreat, from which the material arose, each day’s talk is followed by other writings that reflect and deepen the themes addressed.

The book invites readers to question the fundamental delusion of selfhood, explore the nature of death, and examine the mind’s tendency to misidentify itself as form. Radin writes and speaks with a rare combination of piercing insight and compassionate humor, reflecting his deep training and decades of teaching experience. The central message—awakening to the awareness that is already present—is rendered with striking simplicity, allowing readers from diverse backgrounds to resonate with its truth and meaning.

The tone is warm, poetic, and direct, offering a rare accessibility to the often paradoxical teachings of Zen.

“As priceless as discovering a previously unknown time capsule.”—Peter Coyote (Hosho Jishi), actor, director, author

This is what happened at the famous Zen monastery south of San Francisco.

From the best-selling author of the biography of Shunryu Suzuki (Crooked Cucumber), comes a memoir and oral history of Tassajara—a monastery founded in 1967 by Shunryu Suzuki, abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center. Peopled like a Sixties film of Buddhist invasion, with hippies, dreamers, lovers, a wave of serious practitioners. Nyogen Senzaki, D.T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, Ruth Fuller Sasaki, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, and of course Shunryu Suzuki and Richard Baker are all here. This is the story of what happened at and surrounding the founding of the first Zen monastery in the West.

A modern prophet looks back on seven decades of activism.

Ask an expert who are the 5 most influential American Jewish leaders of the last century and Rabbi Arthur Waskow will make most of the lists. The author of the original Freedom Seder and legendary social justice activist is now in his 90s, and has recorded significant memories, relationships, and events of the last seventy years. Beginning with an anecdote about Gloria Steinem and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, Waskow plunges the reader into the counter-culture that has defined his life and work.

“But in the summer of 1968, I didn’t have the language of Spirit,” Waskow writes, and this becomes a chronicle of blending active resistance to tyranny with a gradual discovery of what Waskow calls very simply “Love.” Thus comes the title of this memoir, as these are personal accounts and encounters of Spirit rising—in an extraordinary life.

Discover your own inner goddess.

Cynthia Abulafia introduces a map of the complete spiritual process rooted in history, spiritual traditions, and modern science, by recalling the radically inclusive divine feminine principles of curiosity and reverence.

Spiritual traditions and religions often ask seekers to transcend something: the body, the mind, the human experience? Spirituality has for centuries, if not millennia, focused on moving beyond the human body and life. But embodiment matters, and is crucial. Many spiritual seekers have been offered an incomplete map of the spiritual process with a goal from “salvation” to “samadhi.” Abulafia calls this the transcendence bias: when a tradition teaches us to go up and out but forgets to tell us how to come back into the body.

Embodying the Goddess is about turning back in and toward the body, mind, and intuitive field, and finding spiritual recognition in the individual- limitations and all. The Goddess path is one where the spiritual practice is firmly experienced in life.

“Poetry is the voice of the soul, and in this beautiful collection, Colette Lafia brings us into the joys and sorrows of life, revealing how God's enduring love is present in all we experience.” —Richard Rohr, author of The Tears of Things 

Poems and related practices for a more contemplative life.

Leaving the Shore is a collection of poems with the intent of creating contemplative experiences for readers. The author has added guided Lectio Divina (sacred readings) and writing/journaling prompts, so that readers can pray and reflect with the poems.

Each poem is about some aspect of living the spiritual path: the desire to reach beyond what we know, the longing to step into the Divine Mystery, and the commitment to live in an intimate exchange of love with the Holy.

An experienced spiritual director, Lafia draws on her commitment to the contemplative life. These poems are an expression of contemplation in action as they explore the Holy in moments of daily living: within a marriage, while assisting a loved one dying, in the creative act of painting, and more. They are inspired by writings of the mystics, in particular Mechthild of Magdeburg and St. John of the Cross, and suffused with surrender, love, and awe. They invite the reader into prayer, self-reflection, and seeing their own lives as sacred texts.

Zen poems of everyday awakening.

A fresh translation of short poems by the Japanese Zen poet Ryokan that reads well as modern American poetry, accompanied by an introduction and commentaries on the poems from the translators. Most of the existing translations are stiff, or sentimental, or awkward as poems in English. This effort is comparable to Gary Snyder’s Han-Shan poems, or Thomas Merton’s Chuang-Tzu.

One of the greatest poets of the Edo period and certainly one of the most loved, Ryokan was a highly original and eccentric master artist and Zen practitioner. A solitary hermit who begged for food and lived among the poor, often in dire need himself, his offbeat poems are moments of everyday awakening, characterized, as was his personality, by both austerity and playfulness. This translation aims to retain Ryokan’s charm without undue sentiment or saint-making, allowing for his rougher edges to appear.

Confronting the reality, habits, and healing of Jewish anxiety.

Jewish anxiety is not all in our heads. Nor is feeling anxious simply a Jewish stereotype, even though many Jews tout anxiety as a stereotypical virtue and ascribe it as a motivator for success. Jewish anxiety is real. We inherit it from our ancestors. We learn it simply by living in an unsafe world as Jewish people. We learn it growing up in Jewish communities. We unconsciously transmit Jewish anxiety to our children through how we remember the past, retell our stories, and celebrate Jewish holidays. We experience Jewish anxiety in how we habitually react to stress, fear, and uncertainty, whether that stress has anything to do with being Jewish. We receive painful messages from the wider world that we internalize as repetitive stress habits of fear, unworthiness, and shame, and then turn these hateful messages on ourselves and each other through the voices of unrelenting internal critics.

Jewish anxiety is real, but it is not inevitable. We don’t have to suffer simply because of the challenging history or learned patterns we’ve inherited. We don’t have to suffer simply because of who we are in the world, or how the world imagines, distorts, and treats Jews. I believe we have more choices about how to respond to life’s challenges than we think. I believe we can unlearn these habits with awareness, curiosity, compassion, and courage. I believe Jewish spirituality offers deep wisdom and simple practices for how to release these patterns from our minds and our bodies for good. We can learn how to calm down, suffer less, and get free. I believe we can choose to live with more joy, despite the conspiracy theories and hatred.

Inviting you to explore and contemplate the great art of the world

“Somewhere, sometime in the course of casual encounters with art, an icon may emerge and claim its person: an image that startles and calls to you, that separates from its setting to inhabit your mind and heart.” With these words Roger Lipsey introduces the theme, and sparkling challenge, of this book.

With more than sixty full-page, full-color illustrations of the world’s great art, Eyes to See is a feast for eye and mind—and heart. Through his selection of works and his enlightening, accessible commentaries, Lipsey renews for our time André Malraux’s “museum without walls.” What is the spiritual and how is it present in art? Allow this book to show you. It explores whole worlds of art, from ancient Egypt and the Mediterranean to medieval Europe and the Renaissance, India, the Far East, and the world of Islam. Lipsey’s approach encourages new understandings—felt, contemplative, inquiring—and offers readers a lasting orientation for their own future explorations.

“Icons emerge from the fog of things and make themselves known. You have no initial idea that you will cherish one work of art or another—until the moment of recognition, when light flashes into some little known or vital corner of self. The encounter engages not just the mind but also feeling and body in a moment of knowing, of surprise and delight, of measuring both what one is today and one’s sense of direction. The response is quite total, a memorable event. Adoption occurs: the image becomes part of oneself.”

“A beautifully written tale of spiritual growth.”—James Martin, SJ, author of the New York Times bestsellers Jesus: A Pilgrimage and Learning to Pray

Not every Catholic mother wants her son to be a priest.

The true story of a young man’s journey to become a Jesuit priest—written by his mother, a fallen-away Catholic who must come to terms with her son’s decision or risk losing him. It is an intimate, sometimes irreverent, and often searing examination of faith, family, and reconciliation.

“You send your son off to college and you think that in a few years you might get a call, and he’ll announce that he has someone he’s bringing home, someone he wants you to meet. But then that someone turns out to be a recruiter hawking a lifetime of poverty, chastity and obedience. What college kid in his right mind would sign up for that?”

The book offers a rare, often entertaining, glimpse into the highly unusual Jesuit formation process—which includes sending would-be priests off on pilgrimages with $35 in their pockets. It also takes on tough issues, from the church’s history of sexual abuse to its treatment of women, and asks tough questions: Is it possible to be Catholic, liberal, and a feminist all at the same time? What does it mean to call yourself a Catholic?

The author of The Jew in the Lotus seeks to answer the Dalai Lama’s question.

Rodger Kamenetz, author of international bestseller The Jew in the Lotus, about a pilgrimage of rabbis to see H.H. the Dalai Lama (a historic dialogue between Jewish and Buddhist masters), watched as the rabbis asked H.H. in Dharamsala, “How does your spiritual practice purify afflictive emotions?” Rodger explains in this book, “This is the most fundamental question we might ask of any spiritual practice, any religion or philosophy of life. How do your practices help you purify afflictive emotions such as anxiety, envy, resentment, and shame?”

Kamenetz sets out to answer this question experimentally, in spiritual practice, through the contemplation of images in memory, dreams, perception, and prayer. These practices lead to a life of feeling which displaces negativity and reactivity.

Seeing into the Life of Things will help readers cultivate these skills—perception, memory, dreams, and prayer. The book is structured as a commentary on these practices building step-by-step from the simple “count your blessings” to more difficult images in dreams. Kamenetz shows how to use dreams as prompts and scripts, in order to learn how to experience feelings by acting them out.

Memoir and narrative threads also run through the book, revolving around the author’s relationship with Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi—the most important Jewish teacher of the 20th century and the anchor of that trip to Dharamsala in 1990.

"Rich and resonant with women’s voices and values, at once familiar and entirely new.”—Rachel Barenblat, “The Velveteen Rabbi,” and author of Texts to the Holy

Female protagonists turn Jewish folktales on their heads!

What happens when stories with traditional male protagonists are updated with female characters? Timeless plots and values remain, while old tales transform to inspire and captivate a new generation.

When Debra Gordon Zaslow first ventured into Jewish storytelling in the mid-1980s, she was surprised at how difficult it was to find Jewish tales featuring powerful female characters. This seemed odd, given the obvious strength of Jewish women. Over the years, she found herself slipping female characters into stories and changing male protagonists into females. Her criterion was simple: if it didn’t change the basic meaning or plot of the story, the character could be female. There was always the sense, however, of meddling with something sacrosanct. These Jewish stories have been handed down for centuries, and who was she to change them?

Decades later, comes this collection of stories. The maggidot (Jewish women storytellers) who wrote and compiled this innovative anthology have created a collection to honor Jewish values while featuring female characters in every central role. Some stories are female-centered versions of traditional tales (e.g. “The Fishmonger and the Shiviti” and “The Shekhinah Is in Exile”), others are original fiction inspired by perennial Jewish themes (“A Queer Soul in the Shtetl”).

The lost fiction—fantasy and horror—of the famous Christian writer.

A revered priest’s horrifying metaphysical secret that is revealed only after his death. A sculptor’s obsessive desire to craft the horrific face that haunts his dreams and drives him to madness. A journey upriver to an unspoiled realm whose denizens revile anything tainted by humans. The sole survivor of an island shipwreck and the terrifying ancient being he confronts.

Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) is best known for her groundbreaking and accessible studies on Christian mysticism: over forty books and hundreds of articles and lectures on spiritual practices, including her most famous work, Mysticism (1911). Yet even the most avid Underhill reader does not know that she spent her youth writing some seriously weird fiction: supernatural short stories that H.P. Lovecraft might have enjoyed. Here for the first time is a collection of short stories, poetry, and an essay written by the foremost Christian mystic of the twentieth century. Furthermore, Underhill’s brief fiction career represents an important step in her mystical and spiritual development. Understand these stories and you go a long way toward understanding how Underhill became the transformational thinker and mystic the world knows her to be.

“We have a contemplation problem,” and here’s what to do about it.

Jacob Riyeff draws on 1,600 years of contemplative tradition in the West to show how humans are contemplative beings, what it means to contemplate in different areas of life, and how embracing a contemplative life can help lead anyone to a fuller experience of self, world, and communion with the Divine.

This is a volume of “spiritual theology,” using theological principles and understandings but exploring how to apply those principles and understandings to shape one’s daily living. Drawing on the ways that John Cassian, St. Benedict, Gregory the Great, William of Saint-Thierry, Dame Gertrude More, and others shaped and passed on the Christian inheritance, Contemplate brings this directly to bear on contemporary social and cultural situations. It seeks to answer the question, what does the contemplative tradition of the Latin west have to offer Christians living post-industrial, digitally-saturated, ecologically fraught lives?

This book is first in a new series, “Beyond Our Instincts”: succinct, multi-disciplinary, countercultural stances in an environment that sells us the idea that happiness is whatever you want now. These authors—all scholars of religion who are also religiously involved—suggest there are more important things, including some we may have forgotten.
     Coming in future publishing seasons:
     *Join (being together; refusing too much solitariness)
     *Imagine (on opting out of technique-obsessed culture)
     *Wait (the lost value of open questions and not-knowing)

“A wise, inspiring, and beautiful book offering potent medicine for our times.” —Miranda Macpherson, author of The Way of Grace: The Transforming Power of Ego Relaxation 

“Karma” is in our vocabulary, but do we really know what it means?

The word is everywhere—not just in alternative spirituality, and among Hindus and Buddhists, but in news reports, ads, sitcoms, sports columns, and the everyday conversations of people who wouldn’t know the Upanishads from Us Magazine. Stephen Colbert invokes the term on TV and Taylor Swift summons it in song.

This book chronicles the origin and evolution of karmic theory and describes how the concept came to the West. It explains exactly what karma means—and, crucially, what it doesn’t mean—then shows how to apply karmically sound ethical principles to relationships, life decisions, health, death, and all aspects of self-development. “We’re always planting karmic seeds,” writes Philip Goldberg. Our task is to “choose the right seeds and plant them skillfully, in the right way, at the right time, under the right conditions.”

Karma is a profoundly useful idea, and Karmic Relief is a profoundly useful book. It offers a blueprint for building a fulfilling life and a way to reconcile some of life’s most vexing conundrums.

“It has given me a friend in Saint Francis for a lifetime. A divine encounter.” —Karen Kiefer, Director, The Church in the 21st Century Center, Boston College 

Replicable experiences of God according to Francis of Assisi, offered on the 800th anniversary of his death.

Never have we needed more to experience God—to feel God. Francis of Assisi was spiritual before anyone used that word, and he was religious in the best ways. We love him because he cut through the paraphernalia to get back to religion where it belongs: working in the human heart, making a difference in everyday life.

Anyone can do the things Francis did, summarized in these 36 ways of experiencing God. Examples offered through anecdote, text, and explanation include: 

• Free captive creatures 
• Pray alone in the woods 
• Allow yourself to weep 
• Stand between those who fight 
• Make a cross with your arms 
• Pray Who are you, God? And who am I? 

Sweeney introduces each with faithful attention to the original sources and comparisons to spiritual teachers from other traditions, including Thich Nhat Hanh, Roshi Bernie Glassman, Evelyn Underhill, Richard Rohr, and Mary Oliver. 

Offers letters of the Sanskrit alphabet as key to understanding Yoga and the Divine

These original meditations on the Sanskrit letters range from personal narratives to metaphysical and theological speculations, linguistic play, and inter-spiritual allusions to other works and traditions, all relevant to living a contemplative life in the contemporary world.

Sowder’s book is anchored in the devotional Tantrik, Śaiva-Śakta tradition, focused on the Divine Feminine, but allusions to western mystics (Christian, Jewish, Muslim) also appear frequently. No other book like this exists.

“Julia Walsh gives me hope for a future with religious women changing the world. She tells a story all her own, but I felt her doubts, questions, and passion each step of the way. Highly recommended.” —Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking and River of Fire

A questioning novice nun’s coming-of-age story. Readers will be moved to reflect on the universal human experiences of being broken and the pull to be part of something bigger than themselves.

At the age of 25, just a month into her novitiate as a Franciscan Sister, Julia Walsh fell from a cliff and became disfigured. While working toward healing, she felt pulled to religious community life, but also toward unresolved feelings regarding her own sexuality, identity, and injustice.

For Love of the Broken Body is a story of pain, questioning, recovery, and discovery. What does it mean to exist as a broken body? Why would a young woman dedicate herself to the Catholic Church—to a life as a Franciscan Sister—while others are leaving churches in droves?

The number of women choosing to enter religious life across the U.S. is shrinking rapidly, so Walsh encounters a lot of curiosity about her choice. In this memoir, she writes honestly about feeling drawn to men and to sex, as well as what it means, in this age of self-discovery and hook-ups, for a young woman—physically broken and still very much attracted to the world—to join a celibate, religious community.

2020 NAUTILUS BOOK AWARD: GOLD IN PSYCHOLOGY
FOREWORD REVIEWS 2019 BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDS FINALIST IN BOTH THE RELIGION AND SELF-HELP CATEGORIES

Our past does not simply disappear. The painful history of our ancestors and their rich cultural wisdom intertwine within us to create the patterns of our future. Even when past trauma remains unspoken or has long been forgotten, it becomes part of us and our children—a legacy of both strength and woundedness that shapes our lives.

In this book, Tirzah Firestone brings to life the profound impact of protracted historical trauma through the compelling narratives of Israeli terror victims, Holocaust survivors, and those whose lives were marred by racial persecution and displacement. The tragic story of Firestone’s own family lays the groundwork for these revealing testimonies of recovery, forgiveness, and moral leadership. Throughout, Firestone interweaves their voices with neuroscientific and psychological findings, as well as relevant and inspiring Jewish teachings.

Seven principles emerge from these wise narratives—powerful prescriptive tools that speak to anyone dealing with the effects of past injury. At the broadest level, these principles are directives for staying morally awake in a world rife with terror.

2021 International Book Awards - Religion: General - Award-Winner
2021 International Book Awards - Spirituality; Inspirational - Award-Winner
2021 International Book Awards - Social Change - Finalist

“Rabbi Dosick has written more theological books than this one, but none wiser or more courageous. While his idiom here is Jewish, my liberal Catholic heart is cheering.” —Jon M. Sweeney, coauthor, Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart, and translator, Francis of Assisi in His Own Words

For many of us, it feels as if our world is breaking apart. Long-held, comfortable beliefs are being shattered, and we face unprecedented questions and challenges. How do we heal the harsh divisions of class, race, religion, and cultures that plague us? How do we vanquish sexism, rigid fundamentalism, unabashed nationalism, senseless hatred, and violent terrorism? How do we save our precious planet from the threats to its very existence?

In this book is a bold, visionary, Spirit-filled blueprint for the redemption, transformation, and evolution of our emerging new world through radical loving and a day-to-day sense of the sacred. With age-old wisdom wrapped in contemporary garb, sweet, inspiring stories, keen insights, and gentle guidance, Radical Loving is a call to renewal and to Oneness—a promise that Earth can be Eden once again.

“Between God and the soul, there is no in-between,” said Julian of Norwich, a 14th-century mystic, and that idea frames the poems in this collection.

Norris’ central idea is that mystery is the core of being. It is in us and around us. Given a chance, something deep inside will show up as longing, something that can’t be explained but needs expression. This is what she begins to call “soul singing.”

A well-known writer and poet now in her eighties, Gunilla Norris offers this collection of short prayers, tender moments of awareness, even humming, that express her yearning for and experience of connecting with the Source of all. Norris’ expressions have a universal feel, and speak across a spectrum of traditions. Above all, Soul Songs shows how sometimes we simply can’t help but lift our hearts and sing for the soul’s sake.

A daughter’s search for her deceased mother brings her face to face with the gods, ghosts, and saints of Cuba. 

“My Mother in Havana lifts the veil between the living and the dead and makes believers of us all. This story of a mother's absence and a daughter's need is written with a lyricism that filled my heart with beauty while also making it ache for loved ones lost. This is a stunning debut.” —Lee Martin, author of the Pulitzer Prize Finalist, The Bright Forever

“I closed this book believing more than ever that the people we love, including the people we’ve been, never really leave us.” —Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful