Living the Mindful Life: A Handbook for Living in the Present Moment

by Charles T. Tart

Being awake. Why is something that sounds so simple the primary goal of so many of the world's great wisdom traditions? In this workshop-in-a-book, Charles T. Tart shows why: the seeming simplicity of the awakened state belies its transformative effect on the lives of those who strive for it. His easy-to-use exercises put within everyone's reach the elusive art of "waking up" to life in the glorious present moment.

Genres: Spirituality, Nonfiction, Buddhism, Self Help, Psychology

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Charles T. Tart was an American psychologist and parapsychologist known for his psychological work on the nature of consciousness (particularly altered states of consciousness), as one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology, and for his research in parapsychology.

Reviews

[McKenzie]

This only took me 11 months to get through... Charles Tart gave a multi-session workshop on mindfulness, particularly geared towards Westerners, and essentially this book is the transcript of that workshop. Parts of it are very helpful, and other parts do not translate well. I tried not to be skeptical about mindfulness, and thus some parts actually did help me focus on living in the present moment, letting small annoyances go, and paying attention to how I automatically react to daily occurrences; other parts (learn to listen through your kneecap?) were not so helpful for me. Tart's approach does a good job of being approachable for a Western audience, while referring to the Eastern traditions from which this practice originated, when appropriate.

[Anna Pervukhin Sammons]

Meditation is difficult to write about

[Damey]

Just teaches you and gives you exercises to help be present in life.

[Laura]

One very good idea--putting your attention in your body gets you out of your head. That's worth reading, and doing, but it could have been conveyed in a lot fewer pages.

[Falina]

Part of the reason I read this so slowly (over eight months) is because I liked to read a couple of pages before bed. I found it soothing. There are a fair amount of insightful and meaningful passages in it. However, I didn't find it amazing because I disliked the format -- basically a touched-up transcription of a mindfulness workshop. It made the book clumsy, and the questions of the students never seemed to cover the things I REALLY wanted to know about mindfulness. I would rather the entire book had been laid out in a manner similar to the article in the appendix.