Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness: Walking the Buddha s Path

Description

From the best-selling author of Mindfulness in Plain English!

In his classic and engaging style, Bhante Gunaratana delves deeply into the noble eightfold path, the Buddha’s most profound teaching on bringing an end to suffering.

With easy-to-understand and specific advice, Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness offers skillful ways to handle anger, find right livelihood, cultivate loving-friendliness, and overcome the mental hindrances that prevent happiness.

Whether you are an experienced meditator or someone who’s only just beginning, this gentle and down-to-earth guide will help you bring the heart of the Buddha’s teachings into every aspect of your life.Meditation is like walking toward happiness. And Bhante Henepola Gunaratana is like a tireless bricklayer, constructing a path brick by brick that allows us to make that walk. Without the path, he says, all the walking in the world won t help. Of course, as a Buddhist monk, his blueprint was created long ago in the form of the Buddha s so-called Noble Eightfold Path. In the same clear language that has made his Mindfulness in Plain English a perennial favorite, Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness is his attempt to explain this timeless path of morality, concentration, and wisdom. The gist of the book comes down to the use of the word skillful in the heading of each of the book s chapters. Living well is a skill that takes both practice and understanding. With stories, bulleted summaries, quotes from the sutras, and, most of all, a knack for relating to our everyday concerns, Henepola Gunaratana skillfully teaches us how to refrain from causing others to suffer. This, along with ending our own suffering, leads to happiness. --Brian Bruya