Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart: A Buddhist Perspective on Wholeness [Paperback]

An intimate guide to self-acceptance and discovery that offers a Buddhist perspective on wholeness within the framework of a Western understanding of self.

For decades, Western psychology has promised fulfillment through building and strengthening the ego. We are taught that the ideal is a strong, individuated self, constructed and reinforced over a lifetime. But Buddhist psychiatrist Mark Epstein has found a different way.

Going to Pieces Without Falling Apartshows us that happiness doesn't come from any kind of acquisitiveness, be it material or psychological. Happiness comes from letting go. Weaving together the accumulated wisdom of his two worlds--Buddhism and Western psychotherapy—Epstein shows how the happiness that we seek depends on our ability to balance the ego's need to do with our inherent capacity to be. He encourages us to relax the ever-vigilant mind in order to experience the freedom that comes only from relinquishing control.

Drawing on events in his own life and stories from his patients,Going to Pieces Without Falling Apartteaches us that only by letting go can we start on the path to a more peaceful and spiritually satisfying life. [Epstein] elegantly describes how psychotherapy and meditation can help us manage our most powerful emotions—and make us feel more alive and whole in the process.
—Psychology Today

Exhilarating . . . brilliant and original. . . . Important because it shows how work on the pains and pleasures of our own lives can be a means of transformation.
—New Age

A daring and profound synthesis of intelligence about emotions East and West . . . establishes Mark Epstein as one of psychology's most dazzling thinkers.
—Daniel Goleman, author ofEmotional Intelligence

Plato's Socrates once wondered whether he should be a politician or a physician—that is, whether he should try to l“2