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  • Published: 12 April 2023
  • ISBN: 9780241527870
  • Imprint: Penguin Life
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $32.99

Why We Meditate

7 Simple Practices for a Calmer Mind




A practical guide to meditation based on scientific research and ancient Buddhist practices

In this modern digital age, many of us feel overwhelmed, panicked and exhausted. The practice of meditation is an antidote to that frenzied feeling.

Using scientific research to explain the benefits of ancient practices, this book gives readers an empirically sound and time-proven set of mental exercises that will allow the reader to overcome destructive emotions and patterns of behaviour, and bring inner peace and focus to their lives.

Practical and accessible, faithful to enduring traditions yet innovatively modern, these easy-to-follow techniques will benefit both experienced mediators and novices alike, and explain the wonders of meditation in a way never seen before.

  • Published: 12 April 2023
  • ISBN: 9780241527870
  • Imprint: Penguin Life
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 224
  • RRP: $32.99

About the authors

Daniel Goleman

Daniel Goleman is the author of the bestsellers Emotional Intelligence and Working with Emotional Intelligence. He received his PhD from Harvard and reported on the brain and behavioral sciences for the New York Times for twelve years. He was awarded the American Psychological Association's Lifetime Achievement Award and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Daniel Goleman is an internationally known psychologist and journalist. He is a co-founder of the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning at the Yale University Child Studies Centre (now at the University of Illinois at Chicago), co-chairman of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations, based in the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology at Rutgers University, and a member of the board of directors of the Mind & Life Institute. His book Emotional Intelligence was on the New York Times bestseller list for a year and a half, with nearly 6,000,000 copies in print worldwide in thirty languages.

Tsoknyi Rinpoche

When not teaching and travelling, Tsoknyi Rinpoche lives in Nepal and runs a variety of projects such as preserving and disseminating rare Tibetan Buddhist texts. He also supports the living expenses of 100 nuns in hermitages in Nepal - as well as funding the construction of wells in India. See his website: http://www.pundarika.org/index.html

Praise for Why We Meditate

PRAISE FOR TSOKNYI RINPOCHE - He is a powerful and eloquent link between the great yogi practitioners of old Tibet and our bewildering twenty-first century. He's completely comfortable in both. And he makes us comfortable, too.

Richard Gere

The one meditation tactic that will get you through the toughest times

Oprah Daily

The perfect guide for finding true inner peace

Ruby Wax, author of A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled

Practical, doable techniques for making two game-changing inner moves: getting out of your head, as well as taming your demons [...] all backed up by rigorous science

Dan Harris, author of 10% Happier

This beautiful and inspiring book, arising from the brilliance of two great minds, contains profound yet practical advice on meditation and its power to nourish the world

Gelong Thubten, author of A Monk’s Guide to Happiness

An exciting new book that combines recent research into meditation with fresh, accessible, and profound teachings on the actual practice

Pema Chödrön, author of When Things Fall Apart

A rare blend of genuine, far-reaching meditative wisdom and the cutting-edge neuroscience that both explains and supports it. This book is an extraordinary collaboration and a great jewel that will benefit all who read it

Joseph Goldstein, author of Seeking the Heart of Wisdom

Highly recommend

Dan Harris, bestselling author of 10% Happier

Goleman offers hope for us all

The Times

[Why We Meditate] shows how we can regain our innate rhythm

Sainsbury's Magazine

Each chapter is a kind of antidote for the scepticism...read this book

New Scientist