Blessed Relief What Christians Can Learn From Buddhists About Suffering [Hardcover]

A thoughtful, down-to-earth look at helpful ways to lessen human suffering.

This book takes you on a lively, sometimes light-hearted, journey through nine Buddhist practices that can bring blessed relief to a wide range of human sufferingand teaches you skills to reduce suffering in the long term for yourself and others.

The practices help you:

• Loosen the grip of suffering
• Engage and question limiting views, thoughts and opinions
• Deconstruct ten common assumptions
• Be present in each moment
• Survive emotional storms
• Develop peaceful communication skills
• Deepen communication with your partner
• Appreciate mortality and the preciousness of life
• Cultivate compassion

As you read the chapters and engage in each practice, you will work with your own stories of sufferingstories in which you have felt abandoned, deprived, subjugated, defective, excluded or vulnerableand you will learn how to release yourself from suffering by investigating it with curiosity and kindness.

Introduction ix
The Buddha Way and the Christian Way ix
What Helps and What Doesn't xi
Dropping Your Story Line xii
Finding Freedom xiii

1. Big Mind, Big Medicine 1
Everything Changes 1
The Heart of Mindfulness 5
The Weakest Link 7
Small Mind, Big Mind 10
Renunciation Practice 13
A Refuge from Words 16
Dropping into Freedom 19
Blessed Relief: The Three-Minute Breathing Space24

2. The Cry for Help 27
The Why and the What of Suffering 27
An Exit from Hell 29
Bearing Suffering 32
The Work 36
Clearing the Lens 38
The Judging Mind Goes on Retreat 41
Blessed Relief: The Work45

3. Beyond Belief 49
A Happy Accident 49
Spacious Awareness 52
Incline Your Mind 55
Who's Talking? 57
The Cloud of Unknowing 60
Blessed Relief: The Practilst