An Awakened Life

by Titmuss, Christopher

• ISBN13: 9781570625640
• ISBN10: 1570625646
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2000-05-01
• Publisher: Shambhala

Summary

This book presents a collection of practical teachings on how to create a stress-free and genuinely contented existence in the midst of our increasingly hectic lives. Titmuss, an internationally known teacher of insight meditation, argues that our societal obsessions with wealth, beauty, and fame have led us down a false path and created great suffering. His teachings urge us to question these values and rediscover our true nature. Inspired by the twentieth-century classicZen Mind, Beginner's Mind,Titmuss offers practical advice on such subjects as worklife, stress, understanding our feelings, communication, relationships, taking risks, the value of nonattachment, the nature of the self, and the sources of awakening. Excerpted from selected talks and writings,An Awakened Lifeoffers liberating teachings that speak directly to the dilemmas of modern living.

Author Biography

Christopher Titmuss teaches insight meditation retreats worldwide, including at the Insight Meditation Center in Barre, Massachusetts. He is a former Buddhist monk and a founding member of the International Board of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. He lives in England.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(8)
The Opening of the Heart
The Emptiness of Busyness	9	(3)
Starting All Over Again	12	(3)
Bare Bones	15	(3)
Unstoppable Friendship	18	(3)
Fear	21	(3)
Three Terrible Karmas	24	(2)
Small Gestures	26	(3)
Negativity	29	(3)
The Capacity to Love	32	(3)
The Sexual Revolution	35	(3)
Feelings and Thoughts	38	(3)
The Price of Beauty	41	(3)
Suffering	44	(3)
The Challenge of Change	47	(3)
Disillusionment	50	(2)
Objects of Pleasure	52	(2)
Happiness	54	(2)
Living in Freedom	56	(3)
Dropping Out	59	(3)
Ways of Responding	62	(5)
The Depths of Experience
The Shadow of My	67	(2)
Glimpses	69	(2)
The Reward	71	(2)
Deep Time	73	(2)
Signs of Change	75	(2)
What Is the Cost?	77	(2)
Willing to Stop	79	(2)
Wise Speech	81	(3)
The Vulnerability of Kindness	84	(3)
Allowing Ourselves To Be Touched	87	(3)
Beliefs	90	(2)
Habit	92	(3)
Impulses	95	(2)
Finding Order, Taking Risks	97	(2)
Teacher and Student	99	(4)
The Pursuit of Popularity	103	(3)
Seeing Through Thoughts	106	(3)
Individual Psychotherapy	109	(3)
Inner Change	112	(2)
Projections	114	(2)
Miracles	116	(5)
The Practice of Understanding
What Matters?	121	(2)
Love and Attachment	123	(3)
The Substance View	126	(3)
The Proliferation of Thoughts	129	(2)
What Self?	131	(3)
The Ego	134	(3)
The Way of Non-attachment	137	(2)
Meditative Reading	139	(2)
Leaves on a Tree	141	(2)
Religious Forms	143	(2)
Oneness	145	(2)
Dependent Arising	147	(3)
Baba's Will?	150	(2)
Doing Good	152	(2)
Authentic Knowledge	154	(2)
How and Why	156	(2)
Ideals and the Self	158	(2)
Stay Awake!	160	(5)
The Discovery of Liberation
The Seeker and the Sought	165	(2)
A Wave in the Ocean	167	(2)
A Flea in the Mind	169	(2)
Subject and Object	171	(3)
Freedom from Momentary Conditions	174	(3)
Compassion and Liberation	177	(3)
Made in Our Image	180	(3)
The Dance of Shiva	183	(2)
A Profound Opening	185	(3)
The Eye of Wisdom	188	(2)
The Maya of Time	190	(3)
Where Is the Divine?	193	(3)
What Is Freedom?	196	(2)
The Archer	198	(3)
Life Is a Gift	201	(2)
Enlightenment: Near or Far?	203	(2)
Fit to Receive	205