“To be a buddha is not a difficult job. It is not some achievement for which you need a Nobel Prize”. Commenting on anecdotes and haikus by the Zen masters, Osho explains that being a buddha is the easiest thing in the world - it has already happened without you knowing. The empty heart, a place beyond thoughts and feelings, is within everyone. Meditation, and becoming truly thoughtless, is the key. Osho presents Zen as potent, alive, and relevant to the modern world.

Osho speaks about George Gurdjieff, one of the most significant masters of this age. He used to say, "You are in prison." If you wish to get out of prison - the first thing you must do is realize that you are in prison...or you are the prison. Osho emphasizes this as something to be always remembered as one of the first principles for any seeker of truth.

Happiness, pleasure, joy, bliss are addressed here by Osho and we learn the different levels of development: "Let us start from the lowest because that will be easier to understand, that’s where man biologically is born. Pleasure is physical"....

In Zen, Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing, Osho responds to questions on love, freedom, morality, women’s role in society, nostalgia, a child’s right to privacy, the purpose of life, and more. Again and again he nudges the listener back to the essential: Zen – awareness, being here and now. While responding to the concerns of the questioners, Osho also illustrates how nonessential their preoccupations are.

Osho describes love as transformation. It is painful because it transforms and transformation is going to be painful because the old has to be left for the new. While the old is familiar, secure, safe, the new is absolutely unknown. With love we will be moving in an uncharted ocean.

When he is asked how to be happy, Osho responds by questioning the very logic of the question. How can wanting to be happy ever lead to happiness? Osho springs back and forth between exploring the neurotic American dream of happiness, and describing what it actually takes to be happy.

Osho responds to questions on "Relaxing and Waking Up" and "The Difference Between Instinct and Intuition". "In meditation you are not going anywhere. You are simply being here, relaxed, utterly centered in yourself. Everything stops. For this, no 'how' is needed."

Osho responds to a question related to compassion. "Only compassion is therapeutic - because all that is ill in man is because of lack of love. All that is wrong with man is somewhere associated with love. He has not been able to love, or he has not been able to receive love. He has not been able to share his being. That’s the misery. That creates all sorts of complexes inside."

In this talk Osho is asked whether or not he is ever bored with life. In reply he says it is one of the most significant questions to be asked. He says only man can be bored; no other animal has the capacity. Boredom is a by-product of intelligence, and nothing is wrong with boredom. No animal is bored because no animal is bothered about meaning, no animal is concerned about creativity. Only idiots are not bored – or the enlightened ones, but they are few and far between. What is the secret behind boredom?

Osho sees Zen not as a historical spiritual tradition but as the future spirituality of a humanity that has matured to the point that people no longer need religions controlled by priesthoods and based on fearful superstitions that cripple people's innate intelligence and divide them from one another. This series of talks offers a deeper understanding of the underlying differences between Eastern and Western approaches to religion and the nature of consciousness.

Here Osho deals with the difference between the intellectual, logical mind and the more encompassing realm of spirit or intuition. Mind knows reality through logic while intuition is how the spirit experiences reality. Osho describes the three different levels of the ladder of consciousness: the lowest and the first is instinct; the second, the middle, is intellect; and the third, the highest and most subtle, intuition.

Humans have an inbuilt drive to search for their inner power and potentiality. This search is the search for life itself. We are here, we have life - but we don't know what life really is. We can feel our energy but don't know where this energy comes from and to what goal this energy is going. We are that energy; we have glimpses of its true source and our connection to it, and those glimpses keep us going even when it seems we will never find what we are seeking - but still we do not know what that energy is.

In The Secret, Osho introduces us to the world of love, and initiates us into the ways of love.

Today, humanity is caught up in the mad complexity of the mind and there is an urgent need to rediscover simplicity and innocence. Here, the contemporary mystic Osho brings to life the inherent and timeless wisdom of traditional Zen stories, showing that Zen is a way of dissolving philosophical problems, not of solving them - a way of getting rid of philosophy, because philosophy is a sort of neurosis.

In these delightful and playful talks, Osho introduces the mystery, the wonder and the emptiness that is Zen, not comparable to anything else and a completely different approach to life. The chapters alternate between elaborating original excerpts by the 14th Zen master, Ikkyu, taking us into the world of Zen – and responding to personal questions, which brings the world of Zen into our lives, connects with our issues and questions.

Osho sees Zen not as a historical spiritual tradition but as the future spirituality of a humanity that has matured to the point that people no longer need religions controlled by priesthoods and based on fearful superstitions that cripple people's innate intelligence and divide them from one another. This series of talks offers a deeper understanding of the underlying differences between Eastern and Western approaches to religion and the nature of consciousness.

Written more than 25 centuries ago, the Diamond Sutra is the first text to record the Buddha's own teachings, and it remains one of the most popular. Osho comments in a series of talks on these sutras and brings Buddha's teachings into the 21st century. One day, after the Buddha finishes his daily walk to collect alms, a senior monk steps forth to ask how he can best help humanity. Buddha responds, and thus begins a dialogue regarding the nature of perception.

Nirvana has become an idealized word associated with the juxtaposition of a cult rock celebrity who died before his time and a vague new age version of Eastern religion. An altered state to be hoped for but likely unattainable, reinforcing that all too familiar uneasiness associated with never being able to have what we truly desire in life.

Moving beyond the usual interpretations of this classic Chinese text - that of using it as an indicator of what to do next or attempting to predict the future - Osho is using the Tao Te Ching as Lao Tzu intended: to ignite the flame of individual awareness and insight. His commentaries on these seven verses burn through every idea we may hold about ourselves until we can see with the same crystal-clear light as Lao Tzu.

On the surface, this is a biography of an accomplished seeker who mastered the practices of yoga and brought a system for understanding the mysteries of body, mind, and spirit to students in the West. But, like the life of Swami Rama, this audiobook offers more than a sequence of astonishing events. As you read the stories of authentic guru-disciple relationships Swami Rama had both with his master and with his own students, you will see how the spiritual wisdom is transmitted through generations. This book also serves as a guide to advanced practices of yoga and tantra not commonly understood in modern times.

“Question your assumptions; lean far into the unknown. Question it all.” So says Adyashanti in The Most Important Thing, Volume 1 - an invitation to look past the surface of our personal stories to discover the timeless truths within. Across eight hours of intimate talks, Adyashanti encourages you to open to the possibility of grace, embrace those aspects of life that call you to serve, and discover the innate vitality in every single moment.

This is the story of Tenzin Palmo, the daughter of a fishmonger from London's East End who became a Tibetan nun. After meditating for 12 years in a cave 13,000 feet up in the Himalayas, she became a world-renowned spiritual leader and champion of the right of women to achieve spiritual enlightenment.

Spring Washam is a founder of the East Bay Meditation Center, the most diverse and accessible meditation center in the United States. In A Fierce Heart, she shares her contemporary, unique interpretation of the Buddha's 2,500-year-old teachings that get to the heart of mindfulness, wisdom, and compassion. Woven throughout the book are stories from her life, family, and community, along with soulful and unexpected stories of compassion in action from all over the world.

At the beginning of his career, Joseph Campbell developed a lasting fascination with the cultures of the Far East, and explorations of Buddhist and Hindu philosophy later became recurring motifs in his vast body of work. However, Campbell had to wait until middle age to visit the lands that inspired him so deeply. In 1954, he took a sabbatical from his teaching position and embarked on a year-long voyage through India, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and finally Japan.

In this unabridged audiobook of Walking in Wonder, John O’Donohue’s friend and frequent collaborator John Quinn collects a series of talks and essays from the poet-philosopher on humanity’s relationship with the land, the ache of absence, our place in an often mysterious universe, and the great adventure of death itself.

Two and a half decades ago, Ascended Master Teachers Arten and Pursah appeared to Gary Renard and held a series of conversations with him that elaborated on the teachings of two spiritual classics, The Gospel of Thomas and A Course in Miracles. Gary immortalized what he learned in the books of his best-selling series. This fourth book, a companion to the original trilogy, explores six of the lifetimes in which the incarnations of Jesus and Buddha lived together, beginning in 700 BC when they were known as Saka and Hiroji.

The life of Jesus offers each one of us a map to the direct realization of our eternal and divine nature. On Resurrecting Jesus, Adyashanti excavates the deep, mythic underpinnings of the Gospels to show how we can all find in the story of Jesus the spark for our own spiritual unfolding. Jesus crossed all of the boundary lines that separated the people of his time because he viewed the world from the perspective of what unites us, not what divides us.

We tend to think of faith as a commodity you either have or you don't. But in many of the world's wisdom traditions, faith isn't something you possess; it's something you do. "Faith is a willingness to take the next step, to see the unknown as an adventure, to launch a journey," teaches Sharon Salzberg. Now this beloved meditation teacher and author shares her unique understanding of faith, distinguishing it from belief and dogma, to help you cultivate this profound force in your life.

Hermann Hesse’s classic novel Siddhartha, takes place in ancient India around the time of the Buddha (6th century BC). Siddhartha and his companion Govinda set out in search of enlightenment. Siddhartha goes through a series of changes and realizations as he attempts to achieve this goal. Siddhartha joins the ascetics, visits Gotama, embraces his earthly desires, and finally communes with nature, all in an attempt to attain Nirvana.

An exhilarating journey into the mind and spirit of a remarkable man, a legendary teacher, and a masterful storyteller, conducted by TV journalist Bill Moyers for their acclaimed PBS series.