Blessed Relief: What Christians Can Learn from Buddhists about Suffering
A thoughtful, down-to-earth look at helpful ways to lessen human suffering.
This book takes you on a lively, sometimes light-hearted, journey through nine Buddhist practices that can bring "blessed relief" to a wide range of human suffering—and teaches you skills to reduce suffering in the long term for yourself and others.
The practices help you:
- Loosen the grip of suffering
- Engage and question limiting views, thoughts and opinions
- Deconstruct ten common assumptions
- Be present in each moment
- Survive emotional storms
- Develop peaceful communication skills
- Deepen communication with your partner
- Appreciate mortality and the preciousness of life
- Cultivate compassion
As you read the chapters and engage in each practice, you will work with your own stories of suffering—stories in which you have felt abandoned, deprived, subjugated, defective, excluded or vulnerable—and you will learn how to release yourself from suffering by investigating it with curiosity and kindness.
We earn a commission for purchases made through the following links.
Book details
- Author
- Charles Gordon Peerman
- Imprint
- SkyLight Paths, an imprint of Turner Publishing Company
- Published
- Formats
- Paperback, Hardcover
- Subjects
- Self-Help › Personal Growth
Religion › Buddhism - Topics
- Buddhism · Christian spirituality · mindfulness · suffering and healing · compassion · interfaith dialogue · emotional resilience · meditation practices
- ISBN-13
- 9781594732522 (Paperback)9781681629964 (Hardcover)
About the author
GORDON PEERMAN is an Episcopal priest, psychotherapist, and mindfulness meditation teacher, and the author of Blessed Relief: What Christians Can Learn from Buddhists about Suffering and The Body Knows the Way: Coming Home through the Dark Night.
Peerman has taught Buddhist-Christian Dialogue and Pastoral Theology at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction at the Vanderbilt Center for Integrative Health, as well as mindfulness practices to Vanderbilt Law School and Medical School students.
When he’s not writing, Peerman leads retreats and workshops at the intersection of contemplative practice and psychological growth, including meditation retreats at St. Mary’s Sewanee. This work forms the foundation of his exploration of suffering, contemplative practice, and psychological transformation.
Gordon lives in Nashville, Tennessee.