Zen in the Age of Anxiety: Wisdom for Navigating Our Modern Lives [Paperback]

Best Spiritual Books of 2018 -Spirituality & Practice

Zen wisdom for identifying the causes of mental and emotional anxiety epidemic in today's world and for finding the path to a peaceful heart in the midst of them--a path that leads directly though the center of the anxiety we're trying to escape.

Wrestling with fear doesn’t have to be a negative experience. This book offers an approach to life that unlocks a new way of thinking and being in the world, one that leads directly through the center of the anxieties we seek to avoid.

Written in the style of an owner’s manual, a guide to being human, Burkett focuses on areas of pain and anxiety as they tend to manifest for modern people: feelings of unworthiness, and issues surrounding sex, money, failure, and even death. Providing wisdom from Zen (channeled through his many experiences as a psychotherapist) and using language and metaphors from popular culture, he takes anxiety and teaches us to turn those fears into the building blocks of a fulfilling life.“This is a book imbued with love and wisdom, full of passages of fluid prose, woven in with carefully chosen Zen stories, poetry, and relevant research findings. It includes clear explanations of the power of diligent meditation practice to transform our various human difficulties into clear seeing, equanimity, and ease, followed by practical exercises about how to go about this work. This is a book about the substance and beauty of Zen practice, a book I will happily read and recommend to my own students.”—Jan Chozen Bays, author ofMindful EatingandHow to Train a Wild Elephant

“I gained so much from reading Tim’s book, especially about how to hold and handle my own anxieties. Here is an encouraging handbook on how Buddhist values and practices can increase our sense of connectedness and foster inner—and outer—peace. I especially liked Tim’s Nine Kl3œ