The Wisdom Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind—a New Perspective on Christ and His Message by Cynthia Bourgeault

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Imagine you’d never heard of a religion called Christianity. What would it be like to encounter the person named Jesus knowing nothing about him, with absolutely no preconceived ideas? That’s exactly what Cynthia Bourgeault asks us to try to do. If you can do that, she says, Jesus will emerge as a teacher of the transformation of consciousness; as someone who understood the truth of nonduality and whose salvation was all about conveying that experience to others. Though this may not sound like what you were taught in Sunday school, it’s all “hiding in plain sight” according to Cynthia, right there in the New Testament, in newly discovered scriptures like the Gospel of Thomas, and especially in the church’s contemplative tradition. She shows you this new way of looking at Jesus that’s actually two thousand years old, and she provides instruction in simple practices that lead to the kind of transformation Jesus taught. These include Centering Prayer and Lectio Divina, “divine reading,” a meditative practice unique to Christianity that involves deep contemplation of a sacred text.

The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner by Michael Stone, foreword by Richard Freeman

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If you’ve practiced yoga for a while, you may have come up against the feeling that this ancient philosophy is about much more than toning and stretching, but the tradition is so vast, where do you begin if you want to go further? Michael Stone’s book is an excellent place to start. He provides an in-depth explanation of ancient Indian yogic philosophy along with teachings on how to bring our understanding of yoga theory to deeper levels through our practice on the mat, as well as through our relationships with others. It’s about exercise, it’s true, but it’s also about discipline, wisdom, and love.

What Makes You Not a Buddhist by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

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The Bhutanese teacher Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse doesn’t really mind it when people have a positive impression of Buddhism. But, he says, “I also feel a little discontented when Buddhism is associated with nothing beyond vegetarianism, nonviolence, peace, and meditation. Prince Siddhartha, who sacrificed all the comforts and luxuries of palace life, must have been searching for something more than passivity and shrubbery when he set out to discover enlightenment.” In this book Khyentse not only spells out what makes you not a Buddhist, but he also, helpfully, points the way to what could make you one: a deep understanding of the truth of the “Four Seals” of existence:

All compounded things are impermanent.
All emotions are pain.
All things have no inherent existence.
Nirvana is beyond concepts.

This is the paperback edition of the popular book whose author is also the writer and director of the films The Cup and Travellers and Magicians.

Between Silence and Light: Spirit in the Architecture of Louis I. Kahn by John Lobell

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The buildings of Louis I. Kahn (1901–1974) stand as vivid testimony to the profound experience great architecture can evoke. If you’ve ever had the chance to look out to sea from the serene central plaza of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, or to stand in the atrium of the Phillips Exeter Academy Library and gaze up at the soaring circles of the upper balconies, you’ll know the feeling. Even seeing pictures of them conveys something of the magic. Between Silence and Light is a collection of striking black-and-white photographs of some of Kahn’s most celebrated buildings—including the Kimbell Museum, the Yale Art Gallery, and the National Assembly Hall of Bangladesh—accompanied by inspirational selections from his writings on his personal philosophy of art. You don’t need to know anything about architecture to appreciate it. In the thirty years since its original publication, the book has introduced thousands to the art and ideas of twentieth-century architecture’s “poet of light.” Nathan Kahn, director of the recent film about his father, My Architect, says: “Between Silence and Light beautifully captures the essence of my father’s spiritual ideas about architecture. It is a luminous book.” This is edition includes a new preface by the author.