11 Books for Working with Difficult Emotions

Anger plagues all of us on many levels and can be a formidable emotion to overcome. Yet, we see people, such as the Dalai Lama, who have faced circumstances far worse than many of us have faced—including exile, persecution, and the loss of many loved ones—but do not burn with rage or seek revenge. Using the teachings and advice presented by beloved Buddhist teacher Thubten Chodron, anyone can learn to calm their emotions, sit with and understand their anger, and peacefully move toward resolution and peace.

We always have a choice in how we react to the circumstances of our lives. We can let them harden us and make us increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and allow our inherent human kindness to shine through. Here Pema Chödrön provides essential tools for dealing with the many difficulties that life throws our way, teaching us how to awaken our basic human goodness and connect deeply with others—to accept ourselves and everything around us complete with faults and imperfections. She shows the strength that comes from staying in touch with what’s happening in our lives right now and helps us unmask the ways in which our egos cause us to resist life as it is. If we go to the places that scare us, Pema suggests, we just might find the boundless life we’ve always dreamed of.

Meditation teacher Oren Jay Sofer shares a pragmatic guide to living a life of meaning and purpose in a time of great social, environmental, and spiritual upheaval. Through touching stories, insightful reflections, and concrete instructions, Sofer offers powerful tools to strengthen our hearts and nourish the qualities that can transform our world. Each chapter guides you to cultivate a quality essential to personal and social transformation like mindfulness, resolve, wonder, and empathy.

We all get stuck in hurtful patterns that continue to create more suffering in our lives. In yoga philosophy, these patterns are known as the five kleshas. In this wise, practical guide, Michelle Cassandra Johnson offers us a path toward developing a deeper understanding of them and how they hijack us emotionally. Johnson offers us a way to find a sense of clarity, groundedness, and equanimity within ourselves by working through the kleshas one-by-one using asana, pranayama, mudra, mantra, reflection questions, and meditation.

Readers will learn to:

• deepen their connection with self and others;
• look at their relationship and attachment to pleasure and aversion to discomfort;
• notice more fully how their actions affect others;
• meet each moment as it arises and ride the waves of life as they come;
• and much more

Acclaimed philosopher Ken Wilber examines our polarization through the lens of Integral Theory to show what led to these fractures, both in America and around the world—as well as what is needed for humanity to move forward. In his provocative analysis, he explores how the arising of support for antagonistic authoritarians represents a backlash against the failure of those at the leading edge of consciousness (postmodernism and pluralism) to acknowledge the challenges that persist amidst our imagined progress: that, to date, society has been not proven to be equal, and liberty and justice have not been consistent for all. But a new Integral force is emerging that can move beyond the narcissism, nihilism, and cynicism to offer genuine leadership and move us all toward greater wholeness. All of us can be part of the movement, and here Ken Wilber shows us how.

Renowned author and National Book Award winner Dr. Charles Johnson writes that his creative work and Buddhist practice are the two activities in his life that have reinforced each other—and have anchored him. In this wide and varied collection of essays, reviews, and short stories, Johnson offers writings that passionately and compellingly illuminate how politics, race, and spiritual life intersect in our changing culture. Throughout his long and varied creative career, Johnson has been a cartoonist and illustrator, screen- and teleplay writer, novelist, philosopher, short fiction writer, essayist, literary scholar, and professor. His work is often philosophically, politically, and spiritually oriented, and he has deeply explored racial issues in the United States, most notably in his novel Middle Passage, which won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1990. Johnson received a MacArthur Fellowship, or “Genius Grant,” in 1998. Taming the Ox is a wonderful reflection of what Johnson has learned during his passage through American literature, the visual arts, and the Buddhadharma.

Communication is key when it comes to relationships and working with conflict. Learn how to communicate with compassion and choose language that reflects your personal values and aims with this essential guide to Nonviolent Communication (NVC). Judith Hanson Lasater and Ike Lasater, longtime students of yoga and Buddhism, had studied the concepts of satya (truth) and the Buddhist principle of right speech for years, but it was not until they began practicing Marshall Rosenberg’s techniques of NVC that the concept of speech as a spiritual practice became real for them.

Can there be hope for a peaceful future in times like these? How can we overcome our sense of helplessness when problems seem so big and tensions so strong? Pema Chödrön here shows us how to look deeply at the underlying causes of these tensions and how we really can create a more peaceful world—by starting right where we are and learning to see the seeds of hostility in our hearts. She draws on Buddhist teachings to explore the origins of anger, aggression, hatred, and war, and offers practical techniques all of us can use to work for genuine, lasting peace in our own lives and in whatever circumstances we find ourselves.

*previously published under the title "Practicing Peace in Times of War"

We’ve all heard platitudes about cultivating love and compassion, but how can we really develop these qualities in ourselves and—crucially—share them in our world? The Power of Mind provides a proven path. Khentrul Rinpoche teaches that regardless of what’s unfolding in our lives, our route to freedom lies in our minds—and how we work with them. A thousand years ago, the Indian saint Atisha endured great hardship to bring the Buddha’s teachings to Tibet, where they flourished. This book introduces a primary text that emerged—the Seven Key Points of Mind Training.

Conflict is going to be a part of your life—as long as you have relationships, a job, or dry cleaning to be picked up. Bracing yourself against it won’t make it go away, but if you approach it consciously, you can navigate it in way that not only honors everyone involved but makes it a source of deep insight as well. Seasoned mediator Diane Hamilton provides the skill set you need to engage conflict with wisdom and compassion, and even—sometimes—to be grateful for it.

All of the world’s major religions emphasize the importance of love, compassion, and tolerance. This is particularly true in the Buddhist traditions, which unanimously state that compassion and love are the foundation of all paths of practice. To cultivate the potential for compassion and love inherent within us, it is crucial to counteract their opposing forces of anger and hatred. In Perfecting Patience, the Dalai Lama shows how, through the practice of patience and tolerance, we can overcome the obstacles of anger and hatred. He bases his discussion on A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, the classic work on the activities of bodhisattvas—those who aspire to attain full enlightenment in order to benefit all beings.