The Courage to Feel: Buddhist Practices for Opening to Others

When circumstances are challenging how do we react? This book offers methods to help us develop greater inner strength and openness to life by changing the habit of what Rob Preece calls "self-preoccupation"—the tendency to act from a narrow perspective dominated by insecurity and isolation. When we learn to look outside this mentality and truly cherish others as well as ourselves, we create a happier, relaxed mind and more fulfilling relationships, as well as realizing our life's purpose in a meaningful way. A long-time Buddhist practitioner and psychotherapist, Preece shares traditional meditations and practices for awakening the mind and heart, including tonglen, but he also offers a Jungian perspective on these and his own sense—cultivated during many years experience—of the ways in which Westerners may need to re-see these practices to benefit most from them. Preece's insightful fusion of East and West will help readers tap inner resources of compassion and integrity in order to flourish in times of uncertainty, and ultimately generate the altruistic aspiration to realize the awakened mind for the benefit of all living beings. Preece offers meditation practices at the end of many chapters to help the reader digest and integrate the book's information.