Nightly Wisdom

Book excerpt: Human beings the world over have always found the nighttime-and its attendant activities of sleeping, dreaming, and waking up-mysterious, mystical, and rich with meaning and metaphor. The name Buddha means the one who has awakened and enlightenment itself is often portrayed literarily as the luminous full moon, lighting our way through the blinding black of night. Nightly Wisdom goes deep into the wealth of Buddhist inspirations on these powerful topics: offering encouragement and clear teaching on lucid dreaming and Tibetan dream yoga, the art of extending one's meditation practice into the boundary-less world of dreamtime; gentle guidance on relaxing into restful sleep and awakening from the suffering dream of separateness; as well as poetry and prose whose sources span time and space from ancient Japan and the Buddha himself to some of the brightest lights of Buddhism today. A book unlike any other, Nightly Wisdom is designed to be placed on the bedside table and read last thing in the evening so that one's sleep may be infused with a virtue that can be renewed in the morning and carried on throughout the day. Nightly Wisdom represents perhaps the first effort to bring all of these Buddhist inspirations together in one welcoming volume and is an ideal guide for anyone who has ever dreamed of waking up to the entirety of life or wondered how best to suffuse this wisdom into that third of our lives we all spend in bed.