I believe that creativity and mindfulness are critical qualities for a well-lived life. This is something I learned through personal experience as a former lawyer who returned to my childhood dream of creating art and stories. Mindfulness—a kind, nonjudgmental awareness of what is happening in the present moment in and around you—helps people of all ages practice self-compassion, appreciate the world and others, and see life as an adventure. I write and illustrate picture books to share these concepts through storytelling, teach mindful creative classes, and am a certified meditation teacher through The Awareness Training Institute and the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.
I love the simple and approachable pebble meditation practice shared in this kid-friendly mindfulness guide, which emphasizes our interconnectedness with nature.
I truly believe that mindful skills like self-awareness and emotional regulation are critical to living a happy, meaningful, and compassionate life, and the sooner children can begin practicing them, the better.
This book offers a fun, easy, and beautiful meditation practice for all ages.
A playful, illustrated guide to one of the best known and most innovative meditation practices for young children experiencing stress, difficulty focusing, and difficult emotions
Developed by Thich Nhat Hanh as part of the Plum Village community’s practice with children, pebble meditation is a playful and fun activity that parents and educators can do with their children to introduce them to meditation. It is designed to involve children in a hands-on and creative way that touches on their interconnection with nature. Practicing pebble meditation can help relieve stress, increase concentration, nourish gratitude, and can help children deal with difficult emotions.…
I’ve been meditating for thirty years, leading meditations with students for the last decade, and most recently working with teachers to explore how they can deepen the experiences of their students by engaging in their inner lives. This work, as well as my own experiences in the classroom as an educator, makes the topic ideal for me to explore and share more about.
This book seems to be even more relevant today after the recent passing of Thich Nhat Hanh. Hanh was truly a groundbreaking monastic and peace activist. He introduced mindfulness to the west as well as the concept of “engaged contemplation.” I think Hanh’s book, Happy Teachers is the ultimate toolkit for bringing these practices fully into the classroom. It is so much more than just mindfulness, but a new way of seeing one’s own teaching and practice.
Happy Teachers Change the World is the first official, authoritative manual of the Thich Nhat Hanh/Plum Village approach to mindfulness in education. Spanning the whole range of schools and grade levels, from preschool through higher education, these techniques are grounded in the everyday world of schools, colleges, and universities.
Beginning firmly with teachers and all those working with students, including administrators, counselors, and other personnel, the Plum Village approach stresses that educators must first establish their own mindfulness practice since everything they do in the classroom will be based on that foundation. The book includes easy-to-follow, step-by-step techniques perfected by…
Lodro Rinzler has taught Buddhism for 20 years, starting when he was just 18 years-old. He is the author of seven meditation books including the best-seller The Buddha Walks into a Bar, and the co-founder of MNDFL meditation studios in New York City. His books Walk Like a Buddha and The Buddha Walks into the Office both have received Independent Publisher Book Awards. Named one of 50 Innovators Shaping the Future of Wellness by SONIMA, Rinzler's new book is Take Back Your Mind: Buddhist Advice for Anxious Times.
If you’re interested in learning about Buddhism, you don’t want to go the route of Buddhism for Dummies; you want to read the words of true Buddhist masters who are pioneers in the field of making this ancient tradition accessible and relevant to our modern world. The Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh is famous for his peaceful demeanor as well as making Buddhism applicable and meditation easy to grasp and practice. While all of his books are lovely (you can even check out the recent shorter books such as How to Love or How to Fight) this book goes over the foundations of what the Buddha taught so for our purposes it hits the top of the list.
'Thich Nhat Hanh shows us the connection between personal, inner peace, and peace on earth.' The Dalai Lama
In The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching, Thich Nhat Hanh brings his gift of clear and poetic expression to an explanation of the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, and other basic Buddhist teachings. Thich Nhat Hanh's extraordinary contribution to Buddhism and to life is the way he makes these teachings and practices accessible to everyone, showing us how the very suffering that is holding us down can be the path to our liberation.
The secret to happiness is to acknowledge and transform suffering, not to run away from it. Here, Thich Nhat Hanh offers practices and inspiration transforming suffering and finding true joy.
Thich Nhat Hanh acknowledges that because suffering can feel so bad, we try to run away from it or cover it up by consuming. We find something to eat or turn on the television. But unless we’re able to face our suffering, we can’t be present and available to life, and happiness will continue to elude us.
Nhat Hanh shares how the practices of stopping, mindful breathing, and deep concentration…
I think of myself as a listener and life in progress. As a poet and author, I’m always listening to the words that move through my heart. I’m also a spiritual seeker, always looking for the Divine in the world around me and almost always surprised by the ways it shows up when I’m paying attention. Yet, there’s another part of me that is a Jersey girl through and through, looking for humor or irreverence in the face of life’s challenges. All these aspects come together in an unusual harmony, creating an openness to being changed by the things that come into my life. Hence, a list of life-changing books.
Reading this book helped me change my life for the better. Putting Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings into practice in my daily life helped me live a more mindful, more peaceful life at a time of great transition in my personal life.
One of the things I love the most about this book is how simple it is to incorporate its practices into daily life. There are sections on how to be mindful about washing dishes or answering the phone! There are also sections that went much deeper, which dealt with how to be mindful of my emotions, which I have found so valuable in dealing with anxiety, difficult situations, and fear.
One of my favorite experiences related to this book was guiding a group of middle school-age kids through a discussion inspired by the “Tangerine Meditation.” Instead of a tangerine, we considered a piece of paper and talked about the…
'This is a very worthwhile book. It can change individual lives and the life of our society.' The Dalai Lama
Lucidly and beautifully written, Peace is Every Step contains commentaries and meditations, personal anecdotes and stories from Nhat Hanh's experiences as a peace activist, teacher, and community leader. It begins where the reader already is - in the kitchen, office, driving a car, walking in a park - and shows how deep meditative presence is available now. Nhat Hanh provides exercises to increase our awareness of our own body and mind through conscious breathing, which can bring immediate joy and…
I am passionate about the dissemination of economic ideas both inside and outside university spaces. In addition to classroom lectures at my university, I give a lot of public lectures on economics. Through these talks, I introduce the audience to the tradition of doing economics using a critical perspective. I have an MA and MPhil in Economics from the University of Hyderabad and a PhD in Economics from the University of Sydney.
I was introduced to bell hooks only later in my teaching career—after I had taught for 10 years.
And I read hooks immediately after reading Paulo Freire’sThe Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
This is a book on pedagogy, especially within a classroom with students from diverse social backgrounds. This is the book on critical pedagogy, I would say.
The training of economists will significantly benefit from engaging with the work of hooks.
"After reading Teaching to Transgress I am once again struck by bell hooks's never-ending, unquiet intellectual energy, an energy that makes her radical and loving." -- Paulo Freire
In Teaching to Transgress,bell hooks--writer, teacher, and insurgent black intellectual--writes about a new kind of education, education as the practice of freedom. Teaching students to "transgress" against racial, sexual, and class boundaries in order to achieve the gift of freedom is, for hooks, the teacher's most important goal.
bell hooks speaks to the heart of education today: how can we rethink teaching practices in the age of multiculturalism? What do we do…
I experienced this book twice during the year and will
likely come to it again several more times. In my own spiritual exploration, I
was already drawing parallels between Buddhist and Christian teachings.
When I
first came across this book, I was immediately drawn to its title. I read and then listened to this book read by Ben
Kingsley, which added so much gravity to the written words. The book helps a
seeker to understand the fundamentals of both teachings and their connection in
profoundly meaningful ways.
Hanh saw the Buddha and Christ as his spiritual
ancestors and paid them their due respect, not pitting one against the other or
trying to make one spiritual tradition better than the other—this resonated
with me. While I am a practicing member of the Greek Orthodox faith, I firmly
believe in God of a thousand faces. One finds their faith in many ways…
'Thich Nhat Hanh is a holy man, for he is humble and devout. He is a scholar of immense intellectual capacity. His ideas for peace if applied, would build a monument of ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity.' Martin Luther King, Jr.
Budda and Jesus Christ, perhaps the two most pivotal figures in the history of humankind, each left behind a legacy of teachings and practices that have shaped the lives of billions of people over the course of two millennia. If they were to meet on the road today, what would each think of the other's spiritual views and…
To paraphrase the old Hair Club for Men ads from 1980s late-night TV, I'm not only a life coach, I'm also a client. I’ve been a self-help junkie since before the term was a book category. I started out with Eastern thought, added in meditation and psychology, and eventually became a therapist and life coach myself. Like the authors of several of the books I’m recommending here, I’ve crystalized into one easy-to-access volume the essence of what I’ve learned from 20 years of working with clients and from my own struggles. I hope these books help you move ahead confidently, knowing you can take on whatever comes your way.
I read Being Peace about 30 years ago. It’s the first of many books by this Zen Buddhist monk that I’ve read since then.
In one short volume, it captures the essence of what he teaches in his writings, retreats, and videos. Each short segment has layers of meaning and emotion that, over time, settle into the soul.
Despite years of therapy and meditation, my periods of inner peace were few and far between. This book planted a seed that led to more books, a new meditation practice, and eventually to my going to a large retreat, joining a community of Buddhist practitioners, and becoming a therapist myself.
I’ve passed on many of Thich Nhat Hanh’s wise insights and observations to my own clients.
A bestseller with over 250,000 copies sold, Being Peace is the seminal founding work by Zen Master and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Thich Nhat Hanh. With a new introduction by Jack Kornfield and the first update since its release over fifteen years ago, this eloquent meditation on "being peace in order to make peace" is more relevant than ever. A book for everyone concerned about the state of the world and the quality of our lives, it has lost none of its timeliness since it was first published in 1987. It is filled with practical suggestions how to create a…
I’m a lifelong student of philosophy, leadership, and principled living. Having worked with great leaders of today and being an editor-in-chief of a leadership journal (Leader to Leader), I experience how their leadership continues the principles set forth in days long past, and I publish works by authors who are keeping these principles alive in their writing. I am grateful for the opportunity to recommend books that might help others as we grapple with how to be in the world today to create value for all.
If there were two books that I could take with me to a desert island to read until the end of days, they would be this one and My Life in Leadership by Frances Hesselbein. This one because it is the story of the life of Buddha and because Thich Nhat Hahn writes this story in the most engagingly gentle prose.
Presenting the life and teachings of Gautama Buddha, drawn directly from 24 Pali, Sanskrit, and Chinese sources—and retold by beloved Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh
Retold in Thich Nhat Hanh’s inimitably beautiful style, this book traces the Buddha’s life over the course of 80 years—partly through the eyes of Svasti, the buffalo boy, and partly through the eyes of the Buddha himself. Old Path White Clouds is a classic of religious literature.
“I have not avoided including the various difficulties the Buddha encountered, both from his own disciples and in relation to the wider society. If the Buddha appears in…
I’m a psychologist, consultant, author, and father based in Massachusetts, and I am also a former special education teacher. After discovering mindfulness as a young man when I was struggling with my own stress, substance abuse, and mental health challenges, I became determined to share with others. I love reading and writing books, sharing child development and mental health tips in workshops worldwide, and helping kids, families, and schools be their best. I’m also the author of twenty books for adults and kids, including Alphabreaths (2019), Growing Up Mindful (2016), and Feelings are Like Farts (2024).
This book is one of my favorites, and by my favorite mindfulness teacher Thich Nhat Hanh no less. Full of hands on activities, arts and crafts, and beautiful illustrations and simple instructions. I was initially skeptical of some of the instructions and practices, but was amazed at how well they “worked” with kids.
Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children is the fruit of decades of development and innovation in the Plum Village community's collective practice with children. Based on Thich Nhat Hanh's thirty years of teaching mindfulness and compassion to parents, teachers, and children, the book and enclosed CD cover a wide range of contemplative and fun activities parents and educators can do with their children or students. The activities are designed to help relieve stress, increase concentration, nourish gratitude and confidence, deal with difficult emotions, touch our interconnection with nature, and improve communication.
Planting Seeds offers insight, concrete activities, and curricula that…
