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The Everything Essential Buddhism Book: A Guide to the Fundamental Beliefs and Traditions of Buddhism, Past and Present
Your concise guide to Buddhism, mindfulness, and meditation!
The Everything Essential Buddhism Book is your beginner's guide to the Buddhist principles of nonviolence, mindfulness, and self-awareness. Learn about the deceptively simple truths of this enigmatic religion, Also included is instruction for the many forms of Buddhist meditation, including Zen and Tibetan practices. Most important, you will learn how you can apply the tenets of Buddhism to your daily life--and achieve clarity and inner peace in the process.
The Everything Essential Buddhism Book is your beginner's guide to the Buddhist principles of nonviolence, mindfulness, and self-awareness. Learn about the deceptively simple truths of this enigmatic religion, Also included is instruction for the many forms of Buddhist meditation, including Zen and Tibetan practices. Most important, you will learn how you can apply the tenets of Buddhism to your daily life--and achieve clarity and inner peace in the process.
288 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 12, 2015
38 people are currently reading
86 people want to read
About the author
Arnie Kozak
15 books29 followersARNIE KOZAK is the founder of Exquisite Mind, a consultation service for individuals, the community, healthcare and other professionals, and corporations. Exquisite Mind teaches mindfulness, the art and skill of living in the present, as a vehicle for managing stress and enhancing quality of life. He was also a Clinical Fellow in Psychology at the Harvard Medical School, where he completed his doctoral training. He lives in Burlington Vermont."
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 7, 2016
This short book provides a good framework which will help organize future study. It covers a lot of ground, including ancient and modern history, Buddhist philosophy, different traditions, mindfulness as therapy, and recent brain imaging studies. It has a good index, glossary, and bibliography.
Basically, everything I want in a quick reference and review book at this early point in my journey, now that I am seeing differences between teachers. If you are looking for an introduction you might want to start with a beginning meditation book, that covers less breadth with more depth.
Basically, everything I want in a quick reference and review book at this early point in my journey, now that I am seeing differences between teachers. If you are looking for an introduction you might want to start with a beginning meditation book, that covers less breadth with more depth.
October 18, 2018
A wonderfully comprehensive book for an introduction into Buddhism. Kozak's style of writing makes learning and exploring this ancient wisdom so simple, and ensures your curiosity towards this realm will never get bogged down by Buddhist or Pali terms.
January 22, 2021
A look into Buddism. I found it interesting to get another view of the religion as I am trying to understand.
January 23, 2021
Great introduction to Buddhism for a Western mind, particularly if you are looking to bypass most of the mysticism that surrounds the philosophy.
January 6, 2017
Wow. Sorry everyone but I found this book to be terrible.
Don't get me wrong, it is written quite nicely and the layout is easy to understand, but I think this author has no position to be writing an introductory book on such a topic.
I went to the library in search of a book to get me some basic information on Buddhism.
From the things I had read already that mentioned Buddhism, I was very eager, open minded and ready to absorb everything I could. This is the book I picked up.
This entire book is made up of references from other authors (90% of which had very Western names, who obviously didn't grow up with the religion first-hand) which gave the impression that this author didn't have much knowledge about Buddhism himself at all.
It was an early chapter which chronicled the life of Buddha that made me quite annoyed. The author retells the myth of the young Buddha's life, then goes on to point out how very unlikely it is that any of this actually happened at all! He points out after every original piece of storytelling that this is all metaphorical, and shouldn't be taken literally. It really took me out of the zone of wonder and inspiration for which I was reading the book.
I want to shake the author and say that if someone came and picked up this book to read, they already had an open mind. We don't need to be sheltered and have these stories broken down to logic and fact for us to get any value from them. I picked up this book to learn the stories and ideas that have been serving a purpose for thousands of years, not some white guy's interpretation of it that's been covered in a blanket and served with icecream.
Seriously, I wish I had picked up any other book on Buddhism than this one!
Don't get me wrong, it is written quite nicely and the layout is easy to understand, but I think this author has no position to be writing an introductory book on such a topic.
I went to the library in search of a book to get me some basic information on Buddhism.
From the things I had read already that mentioned Buddhism, I was very eager, open minded and ready to absorb everything I could. This is the book I picked up.
This entire book is made up of references from other authors (90% of which had very Western names, who obviously didn't grow up with the religion first-hand) which gave the impression that this author didn't have much knowledge about Buddhism himself at all.
It was an early chapter which chronicled the life of Buddha that made me quite annoyed. The author retells the myth of the young Buddha's life, then goes on to point out how very unlikely it is that any of this actually happened at all! He points out after every original piece of storytelling that this is all metaphorical, and shouldn't be taken literally. It really took me out of the zone of wonder and inspiration for which I was reading the book.
I want to shake the author and say that if someone came and picked up this book to read, they already had an open mind. We don't need to be sheltered and have these stories broken down to logic and fact for us to get any value from them. I picked up this book to learn the stories and ideas that have been serving a purpose for thousands of years, not some white guy's interpretation of it that's been covered in a blanket and served with icecream.
Seriously, I wish I had picked up any other book on Buddhism than this one!
June 10, 2016
After reading The Everything Essential Buddhism Book I feel much more informed on the topic. Antie Kozak, the author, goes into the perfect amount of detail. His style of presenting information does not overwhelm, but instead gives a comfortable job of simply informing you. The structure of which he has presented the information flows very well, and is in very good order. Kozak does a good job of introducing side notes like quotes, facts, essentials, and frequently asked questions to help the reader understand the subject. Kozak teaches about the Buddha, his teachings and ethics, the origins of Buddhism and many more important subjects like the eightfold path and the four noble truths. The topics covered provide a great pathway of how to live a better life, and understand the fundamental beliefs and traditions of Buddhism. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking to learn more about Buddhism, but not be overwhelmed. I would definitely rate it a 5/5 stars, because it includes such a wide variety of information. The Everything Essential Buddhism Book does a great job of informing people with little to a lot of knowledge. It doesn't just provide the opinions of how Buddhism will affect your life, it also provides proven facts about the psychological effects of meditation.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews