The Buddha's Path of Peace: A Step-By-Step Guide

In this book the core of the Buddha's teaching is comprehensively cast in modern models of thought - borrowed from science and philosophy - and informed by contemporary concerns. It sets out the basic instructions for the life-changing way of the Buddha (the so-called 'Noble Eightfold Path') wholly in the context of contemporary and everyday life, personal experience, human relationships, work, environmental concern and the human wish for peace. The reader, who may be completely new to Buddhism, is accompanied along the Path with practical exercises that are fully explained. The Path begins with an introductory overview and then proceeds through Right Speech, Right Acting, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Concentration, Right Mindfulness, Right Understanding and Right Resolve, and concludes with a short chapter on the relevance of the Path to the current global crisis. The reader is mentored throughout by practical meditational and contemplative exercises, with tables, diagrams, analogies and stories. Gradually the reader who has followed this handbook with commitment will feel the benefits of growing peacefulness, wisdom and compassion.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Amaro Bhikkhu Preface Introduction PART ONE Ethics 1 Right Speech: What I say 2 Right Acting: What I do 3 Right Livelihood: How I Live & Work PART TWO Meditation 4 Right Effort: Directing the Mind 5a Right Concentration: Breathing 5b Right Concentration: Objects 6a Right Mindfulness: Refining Attention 6b Right Mindfulness: Anchor & Buoy Model 6c Right Mindfulness: Full Awareness 6d Right Mindfulness: Insight PART THREE Wisdom 7a Right Understanding: Ignorance & Nibbāna 7b Right Understanding: Horizon Model 7c Right Understanding: Mirror Model 7d Right Understanding: Reflections Model 7e Right Understanding: Self & Waveform Model 7f Right Understanding: Emergence Model 7g Right Understanding: Self-Evaluation 8a Right Resolve: A Change of Heart 8b Right Resolve: Silence Conclusion: A Global Awakening? Appendix 1: Posture Appendix 2: Glossary of Neologisms

About the Author :
Geoffrey Hunt is Buddhist Chaplain at the University of Surrey and Visiting Professor in Buddhist Ethics at the same university. In 2002 he founded, and continues to lead, the lay movement New Buddha Way www.newbuddhaway.org.

Review :
Professor Hunt's new book eloquently expounds the age-old wisdom of Buddhism (Dharma) with particular reference to its practical utility of enhancing one's own personal experience of life, thus essentially serving as a guide to individual enlightenment. As the author declares it is in a real sense an 'instruction handbook' to be used for 'seeing things differently'. However, if this transformation can be realistically achieved at the level of the individual, it can also be achieved collectively at a societal and global scale. Buddhist values can then hopefully be reinstated globally and serve to steer the world in the direction of peace, compassion and universal love. Books such as Professor Hunt's The Buddha's Path of Peace may help to bring this process to the fore. Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, Buckingham University, UK In the hundred or so generations that have passed since the Buddha walked among us, people have been left with the challenge of preserving and passing on his teachings in a way that is relevant to their own age. While the causes of our anguishes and woes might have changed in that time, the nature of those feelings has not. Each generation has to find their own way through the particular travails and circumstances of their everyday lives to realize the truth and depth of the Buddha's insights that our unhappiness is a function of our wayward minds and that the road to genuine happiness begins with learning to see into the mind's workings and free ourselves from the hold it has on us. Geoff Hunt is a teacher for our times. With the clear and logical mind of a scientist, he provides a clear scheme of the Buddha's teaching made relevant for our frantic and restless modern world. More important still, he does not only give us the intellectual concepts to absorb as knowledge but leads us to an understanding of how these are to be experienced and lived in our lives. His book will be an invaluable guide to those starting out in their exploration of Buddhism and contains much that will help the experienced practitioner. Dr Michael O'Neill, Member of the Zen Trust (London) and long-time meditation teacher An excellent addition to current materials available on Buddhist practice, particularly those using the language and structures of the Southern Buddhist tradition. From the Foreword by Amaro Bhikkhu