25 BOOKS ON MINDFUL LIVING
There are so many wonderful books that can support us on our journey into living more mindfully each day. Here are 20 – some conceptual, some ethnographic, some tales, and some narratives – that we feel offer something unique to all of us:
2. The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (by Don Miguel Ruiz)
A text that explicates how we can try to change our self-limiting perceptions that create discord and move toward new experiences of love, independence and joy.
3. Loving-kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness (by Sharon Salzberg)
This is a book that shows us how the Buddhist path of lovingkindness (metta in Pali) can be a path to liberate our heart and experience the many meanings of happiness.
4. Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life (by Lilian Cheung and Thich Nhat Hanh)
Offering pragmatic practices, nutritional counsel and Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh teach us how to gently adopt and integrate mindfulness in relation to our food habits in our everyday lives.
5. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (by Jenny Odell)
An in-depth account of how different fields and personal experiences can express the limits and power of our attention, here Jenny Odell shares with us how we can work to leave behind the productivity-obsessed cultures we are all a part of, and come to a more collectively shared understanding of the ecosystems that are connected with us.
6. Mindfulness : Connecting with the Real You (by Vinay Dabholkar)
A learning into our unconscious practices of self-deception to become more self-aware in the process and dissolve thoughts that are untrue or unproductive.
7. Soulful Simplicity: How Living with Less Can Lead to So Much More (by Courtney Carver)
A text that looks into how we can simplify our lives by allowing ourselves to focus on what’s important and how we can create space for it.
8. Our Only Home: A Climate Appeal to the World (by Franz Alt and The Dalai Lama)
A plea by The Dalai Lama for us to stand up for a renewed and more climate conscious world, and to let younger generations assert our rights to an optimistic future.
9. Inward (by Yung Pueblo)
A collection of quotes, poetry and prose that traverse the journey to unconditional love and the wisdom of self knowledge.
10. The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere (by Pico Iyer)
A look into the surprising and counterintuitive adventures of slowing down and sitting quietly in a room in an age of constant movement.
11. The Practice of Not Thinking: A Guide to Mindful Living (by Ryunosuke Koike)
A mapping of how embracing simple Zen practices into our daily lives, can allow us to reconnect with our five senses and live in a more peaceful, optimistic way.
12. Mindful Eating On the Go: Practices for Eating with Awareness, Wherever You Are (by Jan Chozen Bays)
A pocket-sized book on some of the principles underlying mindful eating to understand the “nine aspects of hunger” that we feel, while going deeply into our needs and cravings without judgment to heal our relationship with food.
13. Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication (by Oren Jay Sofer)
Thinking about how “what we say matters”, Oren Jay Sofer pens in this discursive book how observing our interpersonal relations can help us carve three fundamental skills for mindful communication: leading with presence; coming with care and interest; focusing on what matters.
14. Seven Practices of a Mindful Leader (by Marc Lesser)
A thoughtful workbook for cultivating a more intuitive approach to mindfulness, Marc Lesser shares how and why he believes living from our heart shapes powerful leadership both individually and professionally.
15. The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to Be Calm and Mindful in a Fast-Paced World (by Haemin Sunim)
An invitation to deepen mindfulness and joy in eight foundational areas of our lives.
16. Destination Simple (by Brooke McAlary)
An elementary and succinct introduction to the features of slow living.
17. Mindful Zen Habits: From Suffering to Happiness In 30 Days (by Marc Reklau and Manuel Villa)
A 30 day exercise guide for us to try to cultivate new habits that support us in giving room to our emotions, slow down our thoughts, and listen to our heart and body.
18. Slowness (by Milan Kundera)
One of Milan Kundera’s earliest fictional works in French, this book is a thoughtful contemplation of contemporary life and the ways in which our innate connections with slowness, memory, desire and speed intersect and conflict with each other.
19. Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything (by James Gleick)
A humorous look at the unlikeness of our hurried world slowing down in the near future, this is a work that displays our responsibility to reflect on the meanings of ramifications of our lifestyles.
20. Loving My Actual Life: An Experiment in Relishing What’s Right in Front of Me (by Alexandra Kuykendall)
An insight into the disillusionments of comparison and loving our ordinary, “actual” lives and selves.
21. Zen: The Art of Simple Living (by Shunmyo Masuno)
Simple rituals designed to practice through the business of our modern world over a 100 days.
22. The Lazy Genius Way: Embrace What Matters, Ditch What Doesn’t, and Get Stuff Done (by Kendra Adachi)
A conscious way of overcoming conventional narratives of what it means to live rightly and healthily, this is a text that inspires us to live by our personal definitions of well being and what matters to us, and lazily letting go of who we are not.
23. 24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week (by Tiffany Shlain)
Lessons on how rest and living 24/6 positively affects our productivity, feelings of connection, and cognitive presence.
24. Mind Full to Mindful: Zen Wisdom From a Monk’s Bowl (by Om Swami)
An exposition on the art of happiness with Om Swami’s humor, stories and wisdom as he walks us from being mind full to mindful.
25. Joy at Work: Organizing Your Professional Life (by Marie Kondo)
A mindful process of simplifying and organizing our work life. Are there any you’d add to our selection? We’d love to hear from you and know about the ones that you love and have made a difference to your experience in living consciously. We look forward to hearing from you at zine@ikkivi.com and our Instagram, where you can join our conversation as we share the books we have been reading every month.
CREDITS
Writer MALINI MATHUR
Layout and Graphic Design VEDHIKA HV
Editor RHEA GUPTE
IKKIVI zine is a property of IKKIVI by Founder NIVI MURTHY