Diary of a Holy Fool: A Seeker’s Journey on the Path of Self-Discovery

This is excellent material. I attended a few sesshins Zen meditation retreats with Steve when I was living in Chicago, and I continue to listen to his talks and dip into his books. You can find a wealth of excellent talks and classes by Steve and other Dharma Field teachers I especially recommend Norm Randolph and Cynthia Scott on the Dharma Field website, and Steve's books are not to be missed.

His writing is spare, stripped down to the essence, minimalist and yet poetic, radical to the root , unpretentious, and refreshingly free of jargon or metaphysics. He points to the living reality from which nothing stands apart, showing you that there is no separation or solidity, that the apparently separate self with free will is an illusion, and that everything is as it is and could not be otherwise: Impermanence or what he calls unform is so thorough-going that no separate forms ever actually exist or persist.

This could be called meditation, but Darryl makes it clear that he is not talking about techniques, or being in any particular posture, or doing any sort of intentional concentration or mindfulness practice. This realization is freedom. This openness is often called love Darryl studied with mindfulness meditation teacher Ruth Denison for nine years and spent six years as a Buddhist monk under the guidance of Ajahn Sumedho.

He also had recurring contact with J. Krishnamurti and a significant connection with the Advaita sage Robert Adams. Krishnamurti along with some developmental psychology. Darryl currently lives in Winnipeg, Canada and has worked as an ice fisherman, bus driver, suit salesman, childcare worker, carpenter and maintenance man among other things. He recently retired after many years working in a warehouse. He was offering "explorations" of non-duality in Winnipeg and occasionally elsewhere as well as monthly podcasts, but he stopped all of that, feeling his work is complete.

As far as I know, he is still available for private sessions via Skype, and his archived podcasts are available on his website. In addition to Darryl's wonderful books, other writing plus excellent audio and video is available on his website. Ordinary Freedom — This is one of the clearest and most refreshingly alive articulations of what this is really all about that I've come across. Jon doesn't give you dogmatism or a bunch of abstract mental ideas to think about or believe in, but rather, he invites us to let go into the openness and immediacy of bare presence.

He talks about learning how to let things be exactly as they are, dropping out of conceptual thought and belief into a process of exploration and discovery that is sensory and energetic, being present as boundless awareness and allowing whatever is showing up to move through. He conveys a spirit of open, alive, never-ending discovery, and a gentle and loving approach to our human struggles. But true spirituality is the opposite of that. Jon has a second book, The Unbelievable Happiness of What Is, which is also excellent, and which I also recommend, but of the two, Ordinary Freedom is definitely my favorite.

He teaches from the heart and his whole being seems to radiate boundless love and deep transparent presence. He has a wonderful sense of humor, genuine humility, and he comes across as refreshingly down-to-earth and unbound by tradition or dogma. Anam Thubten is at the nondual edge of the Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. Simple and radical in his approach, Anam Thubten invites us to see through the frozen mirage-world of stories and concepts and to wake up or melt to our True Nature as boundless love and pure awareness, not in some airy-fairy, transcendent, other-worldly way, but right here in the immediacy of what is, as it is.

Clear and full of light, he has this wonderful twinkle of amusement and wonderment in his eyes. He sees our human foibles and imperfections very clearly, but always with humor and genuine empathy, and he encourages us to love ourselves and the world just as we are, to find nirvana in samsara and enlightenment in delusion.

His expression is open, honest, and warm-hearted. Here are some quotes to give you a taste: When we don't believe in our thoughts we are always awakened. When we believe in our thoughts we are unawakened Love is the ability to see every circumstance and every being as perfect just as they are It is the total acceptance of all things In every moment we are absolutely perfect It's okay to fail and to fail continuously, time after time. In fact, every time we fail we should give ourselves a chocolate as a reward The heart of all spirituality is to love this life, to enjoy this life Awareness is like a fire because it burns down all illusions right there on the spot When we start inquiring into what is holding us back from realizing the truth, we come to the realization that there is really nothing there.

There are no obstacles. Nothing is holding us back from awakening. If you have the opportunity to be with him in person, by all means take it. Excellent audio and video is also available. Anam Thubten is a beautiful, rare, amazing jewel. I met him once in Chicago and felt that I was in the presence of a very genuine, warm-hearted, generous, deeply awakened being. Love just pours out of him. He has a wonderful sense of humor as well. He strips away everything that can be stripped away, pointing in a simple, direct, immediate way to what cannot be removed: And it is to this ultimate and in his view most liberating reality that his life is dedicated.

In , an encounter with a Christian mystic led Mooji to "walk out of his life," and a few years later, his spiritual journey took him to India where he met his Master, H. Poonja Papaji , a devotee of Ramana Maharshi. Mooji points to a liberating shift from the constriction of identifying as a separate person to the freedom of recognizing oneself as impersonal boundless presence, and ultimately, as the pure awareness that is subtler even than the first sense of presence.

Mooji has no interest in psychological or social problems, personal stories, past history, future hopes, or any of that—he is totally focused on helping people to recognize and abide as pure awareness. While this is definitely a transcendent approach, Mooji doesn't in any way reject the world, which he describes as the dynamic expression of consciousness. The search for truth is not about running away from the things of this world but about understanding their ephemeral nature.

And more than that, it is about discovering our true nature as an inherent stillness from where even the subtlest movements of phenomena are perceived. His satsangs include heart-opening bhajans devotional songs , which I love, and the people around him shine with a wonderful radiance and light—they seem truly filled with love. Mooji teaches in a Hindu guru-devotional style that can be off-putting to those who are not so-inclined, especially skeptical Westerners. This is not my own style, and I would never deny that this kind of devotional-guru-format has potential dangers and pitfalls, but in my experience, it can also be a powerful heart-opening, and ultimately, one is in devotion to impersonal, boundless presence or awareness, not to another person.

My own sense of Mooji and the people close to him is very positive. He has founded an ashram and retreat center, Monte Sahaja, in Portugal, and he offers retreats and satsangs there and sometimes elsewhere. Many of Mooji's satsangs, retreats and intensives are broadcast live over the internet, and many are available on his YouTube channel and on Mooji TV. Even more than his books, which are all wonderful, I recommend watching Mooji live in person or via broadcasting or on video. There is audio, video and written material, as well as information about his events, at his website here.

He points to our true nature as non-localized, unbound, timeless awareness—unconditioned and free: Everything that appears in awareness is nothing other than awareness. They fail to do so because they still convey the notion of a transcendental presence from which this universe emanates as a distinct entity, whereas such a distinction is nowhere to be found in this unveiling. Our self-luminous background, which is the common thread of the dialogues in this book, constitutes the sole reality of all that is.

Many of his talks and guided meditations are available on-line or for purchase. In addition to Jean Klein, Francis was also influenced by J. I attended a one-week retreat as well as a number of satsangs with Francis many years ago and was deeply touched by those, by his writing, and by a number of his videos. A gifted contemporary ceramic artist from the UK and a long-time student of Francis Lucille, Rupert offers retreats, webinars and other events about nonduality around the world.

He is highly intelligent, deeply sensitive, genuine, awake and very clear. Whether we call this fundamental ground of being the open Unknowingness or Consciousness, or whether we call it primordial awareness, or God, or spirit, or intelligence-energy, or unicity, or emptiness, or presence, or groundlessness, or boundlessness, or whatever, matters much less, in my opinion, than the felt-sense of this—and it is this direct recognition and realization, this immediacy here and now, that Rupert is always inviting.

His words, whether spoken or written, and his presence, are saturated with this open presence. He is an extraordinary teacher, a beautiful man, and he uses language in an exquisitely subtle and nuanced way. His words are as "transparent, open, empty and luminous" as the open presence that they so beautifully reveal.

Rupert guides people first to the realization that I as this unbound awaring presence am not confined to any particular form or location. I AM free, boundless, whole, unconditioned. I am nothing not this, not that , meaning that I am not limited to anything perceivable or conceivable. He goes on to show that everything perceivable and conceivable is nothing other than consciousness, that I AM everything. He avoids many of the other common traps that I see some contemporary nondualists falling into, such as making enlightenment into a coveted future attainment, presenting himself as a special "enlightened person," or getting stuck on one side of any apparent duality such as free will vs.

Rupert says at the beginning of one book: I would prefer the form of music, which dissolves as soon as it is uttered, leaving its true content as a formless perfume in the listener's heart. These are truly exquisite books and talks, full of love and light, subtlety and presence.

The Underground River, and you can find audio and video and learn much more about Rupert at his website here. Seeing Beyond the Illusion of a Separate Self -- This is one of the clearest, finest, most lucid and "enlightening" books on nonduality and awakening that I've come across. I recommend it very highly. Nirmala is a contemporary American teacher, who has been a student of Neelam, Adyashanti, A. Almaas and Richard Clarke, and who lives in Arizona. In this wonderful book, Nirmala invites you to, "Say yes to the mystery of every moment," to get curious about whatever shows up, to move from the mind into the Heart, to recognize the boundless aware presence that you truly are, and "to keep diving into this place that is more honest and true and where you know less and less.

Warm-hearted, gentle and clear, Nirmala points beyond getting stuck in special experiences or fixated on either side of any conceptual divide. There is no little 'me' separate from the Mystery But Nirmala is always pointing to what is equally present in every different experience, whether expanded or contracted, clear or confused. He has a lovely sense of lightness, humor, delight and wonderment, and he approaches whatever shows up in satsang with openness and love. I knew Nirmala some years ago and really liked his expression, and I found his first book, Nothing Personal, exceptionally clear.

He has written many other books, most of which I haven't read. I don't doubt Nirmala and Gina's sincerity, their motives, or the reality of their experiences with Jesus as experiences. But I do have a deep appreciation for Nirmala as I knew him, and I continue to very highly recommend Nothing Personal , which is a real jewel in my opinion, one of the best. You can find audio and video on his website as well. The Zen Teaching of Huang Po: On the Transmission of Mind , transl. Huang Po, who lived in the ninth century, cuts through all concepts and leaves you with nothing. Then he takes away any idea of nothing.

Here are some selections from the book: This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible. It is not green nor yellow, and has neither form nor appearance.

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It does not belong to the categories of things which exist or do not exist, nor can it be thought of in terms of new or old. It is neither long nor short, big nor small, for it transcends all limits, measures, names, traces and comparisons. It is that which you see before you—begin to reason about it and you at once fall into error. It is like the boundless void which cannot be fathomed or measured….

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If you can only rid yourselves of conceptual thought, you will have accomplished everything. Our original Buddha-Nature is…devoid of any atom of objectivity. It is void, omnipresent, silent, pure; it is glorious and mysterious peaceful joy…That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete.

There is naught beside. You will come to look upon those aeons of work and achievement as no better than unreal actions performed in a dream…There is nowhere which is outside the Buddha-Mind…Relinquishment of everything is the Dharma…but the relinquishment of ALL delusions leaves no Dharma on which to lay hold…You must see clearly that there is really nothing at all—no humans and no Buddhas.

The great chiliocosms, numberless as grains of sand, are mere bubbles. All wisdom and all holiness are but streaks of lightning. None of them have the reality of Mind…These mountains, these rivers, the whole world itself, together with sun, moon and stars—not one of them exists outside your minds! Your true nature is something never lost to you even in moments of delusion, nor is it gained at the moment of Enlightenment…Above all, have no longing to become a future Buddha; your sole concern should be, as thought succeeds thought, to avoid clinging to any of them…Do not permit the least movement of your minds to disturb you.

This alone is what is called liberation. Do not seek for the truth, only cease to cherish opinions The Way is perfect like vast space where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess When no discriminating thoughts arise, the mind ceases to appear The Great Way is all-embracing; It is neither easy nor difficult When such dualities cease to exist, Oneness itself cannot exist. To this ultimate finality no law or description applies Each thing reveals the One, the One manifests as all things. To live in this Realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection The Way is beyond language, for in it there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, no today.

Several of the most well-known translations are by Richard B. Clarke, who was one of my professors at Bard College back in the Sixties more on him in an entry below. I still have a very tattered copy of one of his earliest translations of the Hsin Hsin Ming that he handed out in class, and I've been reading this text ever since, finding ever-new nuances within it. Richard Clarke continued to refine his translation over the years, and there are at least two different published versions that I've seen from White Pine Press.

Zen teacher Steve Hagen see separate listing has also done a few different translations of this text that you might find on the Dharma Field Zen Center website. Thirty-Five Essential Texts with Commentary published in see separate listing. I recommend reading many different translations. This is a text that you can read again and again over an entire lifetime and it never stops revealing itself. These are both excellent collections that includes many of Dogen's most well-known works. Like all of Dogen's work, this piece can be read over and over, and with each reading, you will find new dimensions emerging that you hadn't seen or understood before.

Dogen's understanding of nonduality is subtle, nuanced and all-inclusive -- so all-inclusive that it even includes duality: The moon and the pointing finger are a single reality. Long, short, square, and round are mind. The coming and going of birth and death are mind Dream, phantom, and empty flower are mind. Water, foam, splash, and flame are mind. Spring flowers and autumn moon are mind. All things that arise and fall are mind. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water Each reflection, however long or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop, and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky.

His response is that to regard practice as the means by which we attain enlightenment in the future is to miss the point completely. Practice is the expression of enlightenment here and now. The place, the way, has not carried over from the past, and it is not merely arising now In addition to these two collections, there are many other collections and commentaries.

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I very highly recommend listening to and reading Norman Fischer's commentaries on Dogen, especially on Genjokoan and Uji, and Steve Hagen has some excellent classes on Dogen available on CD or download. Some other collections amd commentaries that I have enjoyed over the years include The Essential Dogen: The Sun My Heart is my favorite of all his books and the one I would recommend first and foremost. Thich Nhat Hanh is a poet and his writing is not only exceptionally beautiful and clear, but the words are saturated with silence and mindful presence and seem to transmit the deep ground from which they come.

But that is because we forget that good is made of non-good elements You cannot be good alone. You cannot hope to remove evil, because thanks to evil, good exists, and vice versa. And there is some truly excellent, amazing material in these books. Thich Nhat Hanh was a monk and social activist in Vietnam during the war and has held retreats in America for veterans of that war.

Thich Nhat Hanh encourages people to treat our anger, our depression, our addiction, and all of ourselves with tenderness, not with violence. He is now living in exile in France, where he founded a monastery called Plum Village. I have tremendous respect and appreciation for this man and his work. He certainly walks his talk, as they say. His books offer subtle insight into nonduality as well as wonderful guidance from a Buddhist perspective on living fully here and now. For a basic book on meditation, you might also check out The Miracle of Mindfulness.

More here and here. Not to be confused with D. Suzuki, the Zen scholar and author who also helped to bring Zen to America. I arrived at SFZC too late to meet Suzuki Roshi in person, but I spent a number of years practicing Zen in his lineage, and so he has been a very important teacher for me.

I have read Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind countless times over the years, and with each new reading, I hear it more deeply and see more in it. Truly, an amazing book. This is Buddha's teaching. I'm no longer drawn to the kind of rigorous, formal Zen practice that Suzuki Roshi taught, but I love these books, especially Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind , and I have great respect and fondness for the San Francisco Zen Center and for Suzuki Roshi and his lineage, and he continues to touch my life very deeply.

More about Shunryu Suzuki and his teaching here and here. And there are some videos like this one on YouTube as well. A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times — Pema's books are jewels that I have found exceptionally clear and helpful. What I love about Pema is her honesty, her humanness, her sense of humor, her willingness to share her own foibles so openly, and her combination of razor-sharp clarity with warm-hearted kindness and compassion. Her books are about the cultivation of open awareness, natural wakefulness, and the ability to stay with difficult states of mind and body without moving away.

She talks about learning how to be with our fundamental discomfort, fear, uncertainty, restlessness and anger without fighting against it or chasing after false solutions and making it worse: Pema talks about embracing the world and this moment just as it is, learning to be present and awake without expecting perfection. She encourages us to approach the apparent problems and setbacks in our lives as opportunities rather than as obstacles or signs of failure. She talks about the importance of groundlessness and not clinging to beliefs.

Pema meets the darkness, the chaos, the difficulty, and the messiness of everyday life with love, humor, and warmth, offering a clear, intelligent, practice-oriented teaching with wisdom and heart. She died in in Arizona. She was one of my most important teachers, and although her approach to practice was stricter and more formal than mine, I'm infinitely grateful to have worked with her. Her approach is practice-oriented, and the practice is very precise awareness in the midst of ordinary life.

As she put it, "All practice can be summed up as observing the mental process and experiencing present bodily sensations; no more and no less. From her perspective, the messier the circumstances and the bigger the disappointments, the richer the opportunities. She wasn't easily impressed, and you couldn't pull the wool over her eyes. She brought everything back to ordinary everyday life and to this moment here and now.

If you tried to talk about your big enlightenment experience, she might say as if dismissing a bothersome fly , that's nice, and how is your relationship with your partner these days? Holding to self-centered thoughts, exactly the dream. Each moment, life as it is, the only teacher.

She resonated with the expressions of many different people including Jean Klein, Toni Packer, Krishnamurti, Nisargadatta and David Bohm, and would often introduce their words into the practice. She liked to try different things to wake people up. One day, it was bow to all your disappointments; another day, it was bow to everything you think is other than you. With each new bow, it was fascinating to see what came up, and then very enlightening to bow to it.

There is a wonderful video that I highly recommend called "Nothing Special" about Joko that beautifully transmits the essence of her teachings as well as her remarkable spirit; it is available here.

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You can see a clip from it on YouTube. An excellent CD of some of Joko's talks, which I very highly recommend, has been produced by Sounds True and is available from them or from Amazon. It's not about changing, or getting somewhere. That in itself is the basic fallacy. But observing this desire begins to clarify it. We begin to comprehend that our frantic desire to get better, to 'get somewhere,' is illusion itself, and the source of suffering.

When we can sit with a simple mind, not being caught by our own thoughts, something slowly dawns, and a door that has been shut begins to open. For that to occur, we have to work with our anger, our upset, our judgments, our self-pity, our ideas that the past determines the present. As the door opens, we see that the present is absolute and that, in a sense, the whole universe begins right now, in each second. And the healing of life is in that second of simple awareness Healing is always just being here, with a simple mind.

Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness — This is a beautiful, grounded, intelligent, down to earth book about the healing power of simple awareness and coming to our senses. His work began by bringing simple mindfulness meditation paying attention to the present moment to patients working with severe chronic pain. From there the concept expanded to working with people in other kinds of stressful situations: This is basic insight meditation present moment awareness stripped of all the religious and spiritual trappings.

If you're spinning your wheels trying to figure out Ultimate Reality intellectually, this book will show you how to realize it directly. And for those who struggle with the apparent contradiction between practices, such as meditation, and the absolute truth that there is nothing to attain and no one to attain it, I highly recommend the following three the chapters in this book: The Importance of Motivation. It is about allowing yourself to be exactly where you are and as you are, and for the world to be exactly as it is in this moment as well…More than anything else, I have come to see meditation as an act of love…a gesture of the heart that recognizes our perfection even in our obvious imperfection…Awareness itself is the teacher, the student, and the lesson…Resting in awareness in any moment involves giving ourselves over to all our senses, in touch with inner and outer landscapes as one seamless whole.

Kabat-Zinn's meditation and body scan CDs are also excellent if you're looking for a simple, basic, awareness meditation. He is also the author of Full Catastrophe Living and several other fine books, and he is the co-author of a book called The Mindful Way Through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness. The Perils and Opportunities of Reality — Tony deMello was a Jesuit priest, psychotherapist, author and workshop leader from India who was influenced by Buddhism and Hinduism as well as by Christianity.

His utterly undogmatic, no-nonsense approach to waking up is one of awareness and direct insight. Tony deMello is funny, straightforward, clear, on the mark and wonderfully direct. But, right now you have everything you need to be in bliss. DeMello has many other excellent books as well as audio and video, and you can find out more here. Moving Beyond Mind to Embrace the Miracle of What Is — This wonderful, clear book points to the vibrant aliveness that is right here in every moment, to be discovered not by transcending what seems ordinary and mundane, but by opening fully to the non-conceptual actuality of this very moment, just as it is.

John invites us to drop out of metaphysical speculation and belief, stop our desperate efforts to grasp reality conceptually, and instead of turning to outside authorities, he suggests listening to actual, naked, unvarnished, present, sensory, energetic experience itself: Meditations on the Inconceivable Nature of Reality.

That captures the book in a nutshell. He is genuinely interested in exploring—and he suggests that there is no end to the infinity of what is and no "final understanding" or end to this ever-fresh discovery. Instead of urgency and oppressive seriousness, he invites approaching this exploration in a light-hearted, playful way. John holds a doctorate in health psychology, has worked as a counselor, consultant, professor, and researcher in the fields of integrative and mind-body medicine. He is also an accomplished singer-songwriter, a poet, and the author of 3 previous books, which I also highly recommend, although his understanding has evolved and changed in significant ways since they were written: You can watch a very lovely interview with John on Buddha at the Gas Pump here that includes some of his music as well.

And you can learn more about John and read his blog at his website here. He has an open mind and a warm heart, and what he points to is not a conceptual or mental understanding, but rather, a directly experienced, felt-sense and embodiment of the open awareness and boundless presence that is our True Nature. Adya beautifully conveys the effortless effort at the heart of true meditation, and the counter-intuitive secret of transformation—allowing everything to be as it is.

He speaks of letting go of the need to control, not only at the level of the mind, but also at the level of the heart and the gut. He doesn't get stuck on one side of any conceptual divide such as free will vs. He makes it very clear that we arrive at the destination only after we stop pursing it "out there. The question isn't, 'Have I had an awakening? When I spoke with him during one of the satsangs that day, I told him that even though I experienced unbound, aware presence and saw clearly that the self was only a story, I still kept getting caught up in old patterns that seemed believable—depression, anxiety, compulsive behavior, defensiveness, and so on—and therefore, there must be some decisive, final awakening that hadn't happened yet for me.

So he was actually very helpful to me in seeing through the "I'm Not There Yet" story and in discovering how I was doing that particular form of suffering. I found him very down-to-earth and right on the mark—a bright light. He's pointing to the possibility that is available only now as aware presence of giving up all control and resistance, dropping the search for something better, allowing everything to be just as it is, being fully present and awake right now—and in that awakeness, discovering that the problem and the one who seemingly had it were both imaginary.

To his credit, Adya always encourages people not to give away their own authority, but to question and look for themselves. He writes that, "The primary task of any good spiritual teaching is not to answer your questions, but to question your answers. When we perceive from an undivided consciousness, we will find the sacred in every expression of life Therefore we must leave the entire collection of conditioned thought behind and let ourselves be led by the inner thread of silence into the unknown, beyond where all paths end, to that place where we go innocently or not at all—not once but continually.

True Meditation is one of the best books ever written about meditation. In fact, one of my teachers, Charlotte Joko Beck, called it the only book on Zen you ever need to read. The Way of Liberation is a short, concise, excellent distillation and summary of Adya's essential teaching, and his first book, The Impact of Awakening , is also quite a wonderful distillation.

Adya has also written a book about Jesus called Resurrecting Jesus: Embodying the Spirit of a Revolutionary Mystic. I found that book quite different from his other books, and although it wasn't entirely my cup of tea, I do love what he sees in Jesus: The message of the Jesus story is that we must fully enter the world. Excellent audio and video is also available in addition to the books, including some excellent guided meditations on CD.

She has a long and deep connection with the teachings of Ramana Maharshi, the path of self-inquiry, and the nondual teachings of Zen, Advaita, and the Christian mystics. She speaks and writes from the Heart, with a tenderness and sensitivity deeply attuned to the subtle nuances of life. Totally authentic and genuine, her perspective is at once transcendent and down-to-earth. She is no stranger to human pain—her mother died suddenly on the day after Christmas when Dorothy was twelve, her beloved husband of over fifty years died—so Dorothy has known grief and heart-break as well as immense joy.

Her most important teachers besides Ramana were Ramesh Balsekar and Adyashanti. Adya asked her to teach in Ending the Search is one of the clearest and best books on nondual awakening and awareness, and her earlier books of poetry and prose are magnificent as well. Wise, heart-felt, eloquent, lucid, crystal clear, right on the mark—very highly recommended. Poet of the Heart a film on DVD — Jelaluddin Rumi, who gave rise to the Sufi order of whirling dervishes, was a passionate 13th century mystical poet.

He was born in what is now Afghanistan and lived most of his life in Konya, Turkey. His poetry is profound and beautiful, brimming with love and the ecstasy that embraces absolutely everything. The foremost translator of Rumi's work into English is the poet Coleman Barks, but there are many other translations and collections available. The Essential Rumi , translated by Barks, is an excellent, comprehensive collection of Rumi's work. The Illuminated Rumi is a gorgeous book that weaves together Rumi's words, translated by Barks, with stunning visual images by the artist Michael Green, who later came out with a second "Illuminated Rumi" book called One Song , which also includes a CD of music by the Illumination Band setting Rumi's poems to bluegrass, gospel and blues.

These two "Illuminated Rumi" books are definitely worth buying and savoring over a lifetime. Other favorite collections of mine include Rumi: There are many others. Silence of the Heart: Robert grew up in the Bronx, where he had a spontaneous awakening as a teenager while taking a math test. This changed the course of his life.

He later spent several years in India with Ramana. At the end of his life, Robert lived in Sedona, Arizona, where he died of Parkinson's disease in Robert comes from the Heart, from silence, and there is a powerful transmission of open presence and freedom that comes through whenever I read or hear his words. He had a unique and sometimes humorous way of talking about Ultimate Reality, and I find something very beautiful and true in his message.

Friends who knew him have described him to me as unassuming and ordinary. There are no mistakes Trust the Power that knows the way You are that Power yourself There's nothing to fix in your life. Except to abide in the Power that knows the way Only the Self exists When you love yourself, you love God You are total freedom, right this instant, right this minute Feel the Presence within yourself.

Feel the happiness and the joy that you really are You are already Self-realized The truth is you have nothing to transcend, nothing to overcome You are the Imperishable Self.

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You can also find many of his talks on YouTube now. Listen with your heart, not with your mind. Awakening to the Dream: Leo died in from pancreatic cancer, but his books remain. In simple, plain language, Leo deconstructs the illusory sense of being a separate entity with free will and choice. He shows you that there is no independent self authoring your thoughts, making your choices and performing your actions.

No effort, no trying, no seeking is needed; but if you want to make an effort or want to seek a little more, it is perfectly all right. Whether you stress and strain or become very quiet, Pure Awareness reflects it all without the slightest effort or judgment. Leo conveys this ultimate truth with brilliant clarity and simplicity.

For a long time, Leo put out a wonderful newsletter, and his second book, From Self to Self , is an excellent collection of writings from this newsletter. Bob points to the unbroken, nondual wholeness the One-without-a-second from which no-thing stands apart, and to the fact that there is nothing to do or not do other than exactly what is already choicelessly happening. Bob communicates this radical message in a clear and simple way, drawing from Advaita, Dzogchen, and his own direct seeing. With Bob, there are no carrots being dangled in front of you, no ego candy, no frills, no sidetracks or compromises, no guru-posturing, no bullshit, no glossy fanfare, no Bob.

His message is direct, clean and clear. Bob encourages you to have a look for yourself and see that there is always only presence-awareness, the intelligence-energy that vibrates into different patterns but is always the One-without-a-second from which no separation is ever possible: Bob never for a moment buys into any story that "this isn't it," and he never holds out the fantasy of some final finish-line to be crossed in the future. I met him in person in Chicago in , and I thoroughly enjoyed being with him.

I found him to be a very generous, kind, sincere, awake, down-to-earth, no-nonsense guy with genuine humility, completely devoted to sharing this simple and profound realization. Nothing Else that I very highly recommend. It goes deep and is exquisitely done. And there is a book about Bob that contains photos and many dialogs with him called Living Reality: You can learn more about Bob and find other video and audio as well at his web site here.

Teachings of Self-Realization; and Elementary Cloudwatching — Robert Wolfe offers a very clear, simple, straight-forward, direct, no-nonsense, right-to-the-heart-of-the-matter expression of non-duality that I really appreciate. Robert is a nondual author and teacher living in Ojai, California.

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He is a very quiet, unpretentious, ordinary, down-to-earth guy whose biggest influences were Ramana Maharshi, J. Krishnamurti, and Zen Buddhism. He says, "To exclude any aspect of Reality is obviously dualistic. The enlightened sage does not go halfway in the Way. Consistency, integrity, honesty are markers of the open path; and the recognition 'all is That, doing what it does' is applied to both negative and positive circumstances without equivocation.

He lived on a farm in a Zen community in California, and later worked as a landscaper, a financial consultant, and a janitor. Following a divorce, Robert bought a camper van and moved into a redwood forest where he lived for several years in solitude contemplating the inner life intensely, and in particular the teachings of J.

There something "fell into place," and eventually Robert settled in Ojai and began writing and sharing, mostly through one-on-one meetings with people. I resonate deeply with both his message and his teaching style. There are other books as well, and some of his books are available for free download on his website. Discovering the Dance of the Divine; The Way IT Is ; and Seeds for the Soul -- Chuck has a wonderful sense of lightness and humor, and a fabulous ability to convey the essential message of radical nondualism with the utmost simplicity and clarity, in plain language.

His books use words and pictures, and in one case even a hole in the center of the book, to point to the heart of the matter directly and to offer a resounding YES to everything. Whatever Chuck does, it is always fun, wise, and completely liberating. A Thousand Names for Joy: Four Questions that Can Change Your Life -- Katie is a refreshingly unique contemporary teacher who has come up with a simple method for seeing through the mirage world created by thoughts, beliefs and story-telling.

I'm not usually an enthusiast for methods and techniques, but I find "The Work" as she calls it truly liberating and definitely worth exploring. Every belief, story, and projection is exposed and deconstructed by putting it out and investigating it. Instead of encouraging us to try to be spiritual, Katie instead invites us to be as petty and unspiritual as possible -- bring out all our worst, most judgmental, most unenlightened, most spiritually incorrect thoughts -- and then investigate them by asking 4 simple questions.

This questioning is done not on a purely cognitive level, but by feeling deeply into the answers. This simple process can be a tremendously effective wake up from the thought-created mirage that is our human suffering, and while this whole process might, at first glance, look like another self-improvement project, if you really take it all the way, it deconstructs everything and leaves nothing. Katie is very radical in her approach, and she definitely gets into some edgy territory that can feel quite threatening, especially when dealing with such highly-charged issues as incest, the Holocaust, or the election of Trump.

She is always inviting people to question their story of being a victim, or their story of what "shouldn't" have happened, which can be very challenging and easily misunderstood, but clearly she's not condoning abuse or genocide. She's simply not arguing with reality, and she's questioning every story and belief about it. If you are open to this, in my experience, it is very liberating.

Loving What Is is perhaps the clearest and best introduction to The Work. A Thousand Names for Joy has so far been my personal favorite of her books, offering stories from Katie's own life woven around verses from the Tao Te Ching. That book provides a kind of living portrait of the awakened mind in action in daily life.

In the words of Stephen Mitchell, A Thousand Names for Joy is "a portrait of a woman who is imperturbably joyous, whether she is dancing with her infant granddaughter or finds that her house has been emptied out by burglars, whether she stands before a man about to kill her or The book includes some of Katie's awakening story which was pretty far out as well as some excellent examples of people doing The Work, and it points beyond all concepts and imaginings to the absolute no-thing-ness of what is.

There were also a few earlier books, probably all out of print now, including Losing the Moon: I find Katie's work very helpful whenever I find myself caught up in anger, resentment, self-pity, or other forms of upset and entrancement. With this simple form of inquiry, every upset becomes a doorway to waking up. Just reading these books can be eye-opening and enlightening, and I very highly recommend the books and more importantly actually doing The Work. Audio, video, and more information on The Work here.

He also holds a PhD in Jungian psychology. John approaches Zen, koan work, and life in general in a very nontraditional, open, playful and imaginative way, with a wonderful sense of humor and a deep feeling for both the darkness and the joy in life. Bring Me the Rhinoceros is a tiny and explosive jewel with an amazing ability to flip you in your tracks and enlighten everything. It is a book that can unlock your heart and bring a rhinoceros into your life. It is without doubt one of the very best and most unusual, outside-the-box Zen books I have ever read. John uses koans, along with Aboriginal stories and events from his life, as springboards for imaginative explorations that wake you up again and again to the absolute perfection of your life exactly as it is.

I love the way John seems to find the wonder and the love and the possibility in everything, including the things we usually think are shameful mistakes, erroneous detours, distractions, or flaws in our character everything from the drunken one-night stand that gave us AIDS to the endless interruptions of our busy lives. He has a way of entering everything with his heart open and inviting us to do the same.

There is a great sense of kindness in his work, genuine compassion and love. In that book, John brings together the transcendent dimension of life that he calls spirit, and the down-to-earth dimension that he calls soul, knowing that both are vitally important. I love both of these books, but if I had to choose only one, I'd recommend Bring Me the Rhinoceros first and foremost. I have attended several retreats with John and other wonderful teachers from PZI with whom he often co-teaches, and these retreats were truly magical events, very outside-the-box and amazing.

John is a frequent contributor to various Buddhist magazines. I love John and very highly recommend his writing, talks and events. Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism — This brilliant book points to right here, right now—the raw actuality of this moment, just as it is. That chapter is a real gem. I also highly recommend the chapter on Tantra, where he talks about "the luminosity of form," transmutation alchemistic practice , and working with energy. Trungpa sees very clearly the ways we fall into self-deception, and he sees the spiritual path not as one where we aim for blissful states.

It involves insult after insult. He fled Tibet as a young monk, lived for a while in India and Scotland and eventually settled in the USA, where he gave up being a monk and became a lay teacher instead. He was an immensely creative man who founded Vajradhatu, the Naropa Institute and Shambhala. He was also a controversial character who drank heavily and had a long-standing habit of coming on sexually to female students and sleeping with many of them—like so many other great spiritual teachers, he was both profoundly realized and humanly flawed—but whatever you think of all that, this book has some excellent material in it.

Another book of his I also enjoyed and would recommend is The Myth of Freedom. I'm not into all the whistles and bells and practices of Tibetan Buddhism, but for the most part, Trungpa comes across in these books as very down to earth and direct. Krishnamurti, an Indian-born man who lived during the 20th Century and spent much of his life in California.

Krishnamurti was groomed from early childhood by members of the Theosophical Society to be their promised World Teacher, but as a young man Krishnamurti renounced this mission and famously declared that "Truth is a pathless land. He offered no prescriptions, practices or methods, insisting that any form of repetition or control is deadening and false.

He pointed out that "the observer is the observed," that there is no thinker apart from thought, that the thinker is itself a thought. He questioned the belief in free will and the apparent self who supposedly has this. Krishnamurti belonged to no religious organization, sect or country, nor did he subscribe to any school of political or ideological thought. On the contrary, he maintained that these are the very things that divide human beings and bring about conflict and war.

He questioned all the absurdities of organized religion with its priests, gurus, dogmas and beliefs, and saw himself not as a guru or a teacher, but as a friend. He showed a way of exploration and discovery that is free of dogma and reliance on the authority of the past.

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Krishnamurti had tremendous sensitivity and depth, and he saw through our human confusion, delusion and suffering with remarkable clarity and subtlety. Reading him and truly hearing him requires great sensitivity, attention, and a high level of participatory looking and listening. No quick or comforting fixes or easy answers are on offer here. Krishnamurti's passionate intensity, combined with his old-school formality and often very serious and rather humorless way of talking can sometimes come across as gruff, abrasive, stern or critical, but in the next instant, he smiles with the most delightful, childlike openness and warmth.

If you listen openly to what he is saying, you may come upon an unbounded and unconditioned freedom and possibility that is priceless and life-changing. He had a very big impact on me and on my main teacher and friend, Toni Packer. Excellent video and audio is also available. Zen Laughter -- Drawn and written by cartoonist and Zen Master Donald Ta Hui Gilbert, these two delightful, wise and humorous books convey the message that the truth is right here, right now, in this very moment, just exactly as it is. The story is told largely in cartoons about animal characters including a bumbling bloodhound named Unk who is constantly searching for what is already present.

The books do a masterful job of exposing all the ways the seeker typically avoids waking up by seeking it "out there" or trying to grasp it intellectually, all the blind alleys we go down in our pursuit of what is ever-present here-now. Form is not other than emptiness, emptiness not other than form. Leaping clear of the many and the one. These are the Zen lessons these brilliant books convey in such a magnificently simple and direct way.

He was born in California in and died there in , and he founded the Blue Dragon Buddhist Order. Reflections on the Heart of Enlightenment; and Universal Radiance: Illuminating the Sayings of Jesus of Nazareth -- J's first book, Radically Condensed Instructions, is an exceptionally clear, succinct, lucid, jargon-free, wise and intelligent expression of non-duality, with a sense of humor to boot.

It is the book of J's that I most highly recommend. It explores how we create dissatisfaction and confusion by "abandoning what we actually see, hear, and feel which is always dissolving, always falling apart in favor of concepts, which hold together nicely, but which are mere conventions. It is with you and in you. No it never takes a break; no it never goes out for just one cigarette. It is the wholeness you can never fall out of. Not in your drunkest, sorriest, most hysterical moments, not even then can you fall out of this clear and sacred perfection. Matthews has graduate degrees in philosophy and theology, worked for many years in social services with homeless people in Massachusetts, and currently works in the chemistry department at M.

You can find more on his Amazon Author Page and on J's website. The first book, Radically Condensed Instructions, is especially highly recommended. Barry challenges our "curative fantasies" of transcendence, perfection and imperviousness, pointing us instead to this very moment, just as it is.

How can I tell them that there is really nothing wrong with them? Everyone who comes to therapy or meditation practice feels something is wrong and wants something to be fixed. But before we too glibly arrive at that conclusion we will have to investigate thoroughly all the ways we feel that we are broken and be honest about just what kind of fixing, treatment, or salvation we think we need.

He recognizes the reality of both wholeness and multiplicity, boundlessness and boundaries, self and no self. But true nondualism is a dialectical balance, a recognition that both polarities work together. Barry conveys the ever-changing nature of this living reality and the emptiness or non-solidity and interdependence of everything.

He writes honestly and intelligently, uncovering many of the common pitfalls into which different nondual forms of spirituality can unwittingly tumble. I'm no longer drawn to the kind of rigorous, formal Zen practice that Barry offers, but the essence of what he's doing is spot-on. There is a huge amount of subtle, mature, nondual wisdom and insight in these books, and I recommend them all very highly.

Plain Talk for a Beginner's Mind -- Jon Kabat-Zinn sums up my feelings about this wonderful gem of a book perfectly in his endorsement blurb: The book is in the form of a conversation in which Sue poses wonderfully unpretentious, candid questions, and Norman provides exceptionally generous and lucid responses.

We will all die. And we are clueless about the real nature of this sad, beautiful, immense human life. Yet looking for something stands in the way of getting what you are looking for. This is an odd paradox: And what you get may not be exactly what you thought you were after in the beginning. I feel that zazen is essentially creative. It clears the heart, returning it to presence, to zero, to emptiness, which is the ground of creativity.

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