Customer Favorites

A new way to talk about, think about, and treat cancer

Tami Simon speaks with Leigh Fortson about her book Embrace, Release, Heal, an empowering guide to talking about, thinking about, and treating cancer. Leigh spent decades practicing healthy
lifestyle habits, and was shocked to find out, in 2006, that she had cancer. Today she has a clean bill of health and lives in Colorado with her family. In this interview, Leigh speaks about “the morphic field” of cancer, the importance of accepting responsibility after a cancer diagnosis, and her view of “fighting cancer” in order to thrive. (56 minutes)

Turning Towards What’s Difficult

Tami Simon speaks with Lama Tsultrim Allione, an author, former Tibetan nun, internationally known Buddhist teacher, and founder of the Tara Mandala retreat center. Lama Tsultrim has created several audio programs with Sounds True, including The Mandala of the Enlightened Feminine and Cutting through Fear, which helps us meet and release the demons of fears and other unhelpful emotions and obsessions. In this episode, Tami and Lama Tsultrim speak about the sacred feminine within Buddhism and how to understand it without creating duality. They also discuss the eleventh-century Tibetan yogini Machig Labdrön and Lama Tsultrim’s journey through grief over the sudden loss of her husband. (69 minutes)

The Radiance Sutras

Lorin Roche began meditating in 1968, and has sought to bring the joy of the practice to society at large ever since. As the developer of Instinctive Meditation, Lorin has created multiple book and audio projects on the subject—including Sounds True’s Meditation for Yoga Lovers. In this episode, Lorin and Tami Simon discuss his new book, The Radiance Sutras: 112 Gateways to the Yoga of Wonder and Delight and the process that went into its creation. They talk about the hard work of crafting a unique poetic interpretation and the insights Lorin has gained from listening to the personal stories of thousands of meditators. Finally, Lorin shares excerpts from some of his favorite poems within The Radiance Sutras.(71 minutes)

Gustavo Ferrer: Making Peace with Death

Gustavo Ferrer, MD, is a pulmonologist who specializes in end-of-life care and has been named one of the best doctors in the nation—including Most Compassionate Doctor—by US News & World Report. With Sounds True, he has published Graceful Exit: How to Advocate Effectively, Take Care of Yourself, and Be Present for the Death of a Loved One. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon talks with Dr. Ferrer about our society’s anxiety around death and how he tries to alleviate it for both patients and their families. Dr. Ferrer advocates strongly for a conscious approach to dying, especially when it comes to getting one’s affairs in order so that death does not become even more of a burden for loved ones. Tami and Dr. Ferrer also discuss the need for open, honest conversations about dying and why this can actually help alleviate our fears around the process. Finally, Dr. Ferrer recounts the time he spent with the Warao people of South America as a young medical student, describing how their acceptance of death and grieving as a people greatly influenced his current approach to end-of-life care. (60 minutes)

Creating an Altar in Your Home

Creating An Altar in Your Home Sounds True Blog

Most of us come from secularized backgrounds from which spiritual forms, practices, and rituals have been scrubbed away, and we tend to have an aversion toward things like altars. However, most members of the world’s religious population keep a personal altar or shrine in their home, where they connect with and perform rituals to ancestors, saints, and the Divine, even amid modern, urban lives. In Western secular culture, altars have morphed into man caves, home theaters, or packed closets where we worship the gods of fame, beauty, and success. Consider how much time, energy, and prioritization we give these. Sound judgmental? Would it be judgmental for me to say a crisp, fresh kale salad is healthier than a bucket of fried chicken, or a run in the park more vitalizing than a television binge? We’ve been trained to abandon discernment—some things are better for us than others. It’s not all good.

If you can see an altar as psychological or emotional equipment—a bench press for the mind, augmentation for the heart—it might change your opinion. One of my teachers once said, “Clean your house as if the Dalai Lama was coming to visit for tea.” Now imagine sitting down at your altar with the Dalai Lama. It makes for an incredibly different experience if you picture an inspiring person right there with you. This may change your mind, not because of anything magical or special that is out there, but because the visualization shifts the quality of your experience. This altar is not for anybody else. Whose mind improves if you look at your altar and see a real Buddha instead of a bronze statue of a Buddha? Yours.

When Tibetan Buddhists set up altars, they put many objects on them, but three are central:

  • Buddha statue (symbolizing awakened body)
  • Scripture or other text (symbolizing awakened speech)
  • Stupa or other shrine (symbolizing awakened mind)

So when you sit facing an altar, you become familiar with transforming your own body, speech, and mind.

The body or form of a Buddha (rupakaya), particularly the aspects of compassion and engagement, is represented by a statue placed in the middle of the altar. Your Buddha might be a Tibetan thangka painting or a simple stone. It might be a photograph of the Dalai Lama or Pope Francis, an image of Pema Chödrön or Martin Luther King, Jr. No matter who or what it is, imagine it’s the embodiment of a real, living Buddha inviting you to practice, inspiring you to evolve.

Here is how I set up my Buddhist altar, but you can always arrange things and add or take away things as it works for you:

Create Your Own Altar Sounds True Blog

Excerpted from Gradual Awakening: The Tibetan Buddhist Path of Becoming Fully Human, by Miles Neale.

Miles Neale Creating An Alta in Your Home Sounds True Blog

MILES NEALE, PSYD, is among the leading voices of the current generation of Buddhist teachers and a forerunner in the emerging field of contemplative psychotherapy. He is a Buddhist psychotherapist in private practice, assistant director of the Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science, and faculty at Tibet House US and Weill Cornell Medical College.

Dr. Neale is co-editor of and contributor to the groundbreaking volume Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy: Accelerated Healing and Transformation and author of Gradual Awakening: The Tibetan Buddhist Path of Becoming Fully Human. For more visit milesneale.com.

 

 

Gradual Awakening Creating An Altar in Your Home Sounds True Blog

 

Buy your copy of Gradual Awakening at your favorite bookseller!

Sounds True | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound

 

 

 

 

 

 

Creating An Altar in Your Home Sounds True Blog

Alexandra Roxo: Dare to Feel

There are valid reasons why we sometimes guard our hearts. Yet when we keep them closed, we diminish our capacity to live life to its fullest. Alexandra Roxo has a gift for helping people “meet the difficult places” within us, to heal and open our hearts and “dare to feel” the emotions that were once too painful or overwhelming. 

This episode of Insights at the Edge features Tami Simon in conversation with Alexandra about her new book, Dare to Feel. Inviting us to walk the transformational path of the heart and embrace the totality of our emotional experience, Tami and Alexandra discuss: the emotions of relationship and intimacy; being a warrior of the heart; an overlooked—and wholly avoidable— source of emotional overwhelm; the “spiritual illness” of seeking numbness; the willingness to take risks to nurture and express love, especially with strangers; how contemplative practices help us stay with the full range of our feelings; the intersection of human experience and spiritual experience; pain as a portal to the divine; self-awareness and witness consciousness; emotional resilience and self-trust; practicing feeling; and more.

Note: This episode originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

>
Copy link
Powered by Social Snap