Awakening the Buddhist Heart: Integrating Love, Meaning, and Connection into Every Part of Your Life

Surya Das's breezy delivery makes his teachings come off like colorful conversation. In the third installment of his bestselling "Awakening" series, America's most popular lama shows us how to integrate inner and outer practices. Our inner spirituality, he says, can never be separate from our relationships with others. With his trademark clarity, he integrates his teachings with light- hearted anecdotes and down-to-earth practices. Basic meditation, for instance, can help us create a gap between our knee-jerk judgments and our reactions, allowing for calm, wise relations. Likewise, one can try authentic listening ("opening the third ear") or exploiting the power of speech to build deeper connections. And beyond human relations lies our connection to the natural world, for which Surya Das also includes a few lovely meditations. Taking that extra step in our practice from the self to the world requires more than just individual persistence, it takes compassion and teaches more than you'd expect. --Brian Bruya

• Awakening the Buddha Within : Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World
• Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be: Lessons on Change, Loss, and Spiritual Transformation
• Awakening to the Sacred
• Make Me One with Everything: Buddhist Meditations to Awaken from the Illusion of Separation
• Buddha Standard Time: Awakening to the Infinite Possibilities of Now
• Awakening to the Sacred: Creating a Personal Spiritual Life
• Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be: Lessons on Change, Loss, and Spiritual Transformation
• Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism