May 2026: Books in Brief

In Buddhism, equanimity is traditionally considered one of the most beneficial states of mind, yet in American Buddhism it is often sidelined by better-known qualities such as mindfulness and compassion. Margaret Cullen corrects this in her new book, Quiet Strength: Find Peace, Feel Alive, and Love Boundlessly Through the Power of Equanimity (HarperOne). She describes equanimity as “holding the ‘full catastrophe’ of life as it is—with tenderness and balance, without forsaking love, passion, and the full range of human experience.” While looking at equanimity primarily from a Buddhist perspective, Cullen has interviewed scientific, religious, and philosophical experts to understand this beneficial state of mind from other viewpoints as well. She offers us exercises and tools to foster equanimity and explores the power of equanimity in the context of both global and personal crises. Her book brims with ideas, positivity, and quiet strength.

Do you consider yourself a meditator, but somehow you only get around to sitting down to meditate from time to time? Sit: 28 Days to a Rock-Solid Meditation Habit (Wisdom Publications) by Bodhipaksa is a guidebook for the well-intentioned meditator who wants to up their game and integrate meditation into their daily routine. It will also be helpful for those who are new to meditation and need a push to start a regular practice. The book is divided into twenty-eight chapters, one per day. Each chapter includes a reminder to sit, strategies to help you establish and maintain your new routine, a section entitled Going Deeper that delves into the Buddhist philosophy behind the practice, and a section where the author invites you to reflect on your practice. You can read the book from start to finish, or you can first focus on the meditations and the chapter summaries and then go back to the more reflective sections.

Mahayana Buddhism says that our original nature is buddhanature and our only job is to find our way back to who we really are. In Nothing to Attain: Zen Stories of Faith and Understanding (Shambhala Publications), Zen teacher Reb Anderson illustrates this foundational teaching with the parable of the destitute child, a key story in the Lotus Sutra about a son who loses touch with his family but eventually feels worthy of his place in it. Anderson returns to this story throughout the book, drawing parallels with events from his own life and integrating other stories from the Zen tradition to flesh out the idea that we must reconnect with our true nature. Reb Anderson is an important teacher in the San Francisco Zen Center lineage who trained with Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and is the author of Entering the Mind of Buddha and The Third Turning of the Wheel.

Coauthors, Buddhist teachers, and life partners for more than twenty years, devon and nico hase bring hard-won, lived wisdom to This Messy, Gorgeous Love: A Buddhist Guide to Lasting Partnership (St. Martin’s Essentials/Sounds True). Their new book is based on their own experience, Buddhist teachings, and nico’s work as a psychologist, and it’s packed with easy-to-implement tips and heartwarming personal stories. The authors include meditation exercises, journaling prompts, partnership exercises, and much more. With good faith and enthusiasm, the two share candid anecdotes of their own failures and successes and the work that they have invested in their relationship. Their message is that long-term relationships are messy and difficult, but worth it. 

Caregiving can be exhausting, lonely, and hard on your confidence. If that’s your experience, Zen Caregiving: How to Care for Yourself While Caring for Others (New World Library) by Roy Remer will help you find ease and comfort in your caregiving duties. Remer is the executive director of the Zen Caregiving Project in San Francisco and a practitioner in the Soto Zen lineage. He outlines the role of meditation in effective caregiving, discusses how to integrate self-care and protect boundaries, looks at how to explore your own relationship to loss and grief so you can hold someone else’s, delves into how to deal with the big emotions that are often found in the context of suffering, and much more. Each chapter concludes with a point-by-point guided practice. Most of us will find ourselves in the role of caregiver at some point in our lives, and it is a role that is notoriously unsupported. This book will provide some of that much-needed support.

The Buddhist nun, teacher, and best-selling author Pema Chödrön was drawn to Buddhism in the 1970s and became a devoted student of the influential and controversial Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (1939–1987). In 2007, she gave a six-week lecture series inspired by one of his seminal works, The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation. Another Kind of Freedom: A Student’s Commentary on The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation by Chögyam Trungpa (Shambhala Publications) is based on that lecture series. Author of the well-known works When Things Fall Apart and The Wisdom of No Escape, Pema Chödrön talks about Chögyam Trungpa’s essential role in her own teaching and dedication to the Buddhist path: “Trungpa Rinpoche’s words have become part of my bloodstream, so much so that I may not always realize when I’m borrowing from him. They have inspired my deep passion for this spiritual path, a passion I hope to share with you.”

“If we dared to look more deeply at what our dreams hold and can inspire, would we live more fully in the presence of all that binds us together as human beings? Might we become more open to seeing the visitations of the holy ordinary as moments of encountering, even inhabiting grace?” asks Terry Tempest Williams in The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary (Grove Press). Williams explores moments of grace and magic in our everyday lives with optimism and generosity of spirit. She finds beauty everywhere, from her home in Southern Utah’s red rock desert to her home away from home at Harvard Divinity School, where she is writer-in-residence. She sees magic in an ant carrying a branch to her queen, the infinite night sky in the desert, a heat wave, an unexpected meeting with an old friend. Williams writes with a passion and a faith that have the potential to heal the worst case of cynicism.

In March 2020, journalist Jo Confino and his wife flew from New York City to Oaxaca, Mexico, on their way home to Europe. Confino had just lost his job, and his U.S. work visa was about to expire. Oaxaca City was supposed to be a short stop on their trip, but then Covid-19 hit. They ended up spending one hundred days in the small village of Mitla, which means “the place of the dead” in the local Nahuatl language. Confino chronicles this accidental sojourn in Between Earth and Sky: 100 Days of Deep Looking in the Place of the Dead (Parallax Press). Confino is cohost of the podcast The Way Out Is In, coauthor of Calm in the Storm: Zen Ways to Cultivate Stability in an Anxious World, and an avid photographer. The book is a collection of meditative photographs and musings from a Buddhist perspective.