Different ways people have found peace.

Situations

• When I don't know what to believe4 passages
• When my mind will not settle8 passages
• When something hurts and I can't stop it6 passages
• When I feel I am running out of time7 passages
• When someone I love has died7 passages
• When someone I love is suffering and I cannot fix it4 passages
• When someone has wronged me8 passages
• When I can't stop thinking about what might happen7 passages
• When I am worn out8 passages

Traditions in this collection

Astrology5 passages

A practice of reading meaning from the positions of the sun, moon and planets, attested in Babylonian, Hellenistic, Indian and Chinese forms and continuous in the West since antiquity. Western astrology divides the year into twelve signs and reads the movement of the planets as a description of timing, season and disposition.

Buddhist9 passages

A tradition originating with the teaching of the Buddha in northern India and preserved in several textual collections. The discourses gathered here come from the Pali canon, recorded as talks given to particular people in particular circumstances.

Christian10 passages

A tradition rooted in the Hebrew scriptures and in the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, carried through two millennia of churches, commentaries, liturgies and practices. Its texts are read as scripture by their communities.

Confucian3 passages

A tradition originating with Kongzi in China in the sixth century BCE and carried through the classics, commentaries and schools that grew around them. Its concern is conduct: how a person becomes reliable, how ritual and family order a life, and what composure under difficulty looks like in someone who has done the work. Its teaching survives mostly as recorded remarks, often answers to a named questioner rather than statements made to nobody.

Folk custom and novelty0 passages

Customs and objects people use to mark a moment or prompt a thought — a fortune handed out after a meal, a toy that answers questions, a paper novelty that curls in the palm. They circulate as entertainment and as small rituals of everyday life.

Hindu4 passages

A tradition spanning the Vedic scriptures, the Upanishads, the epics and a long history of philosophical schools, devotional movements and practice. The texts collected here come from the Upanishads and the Vedanta reading of them, which is concerned with the self, with action and its fruits, and with what remains when the senses are stilled. They are read as revealed scripture by their communities.

Jewish5 passages

A tradition carried in the Hebrew scriptures and in the rabbinic literature built around them — Mishnah, Talmud, commentary and law — read and argued over continuously for more than two thousand years. Its teaching arrives as much through recorded disagreement between named teachers as through statement, and its texts are read as scripture by their communities.

New Thought2 passages

A movement that began in the United States in the late nineteenth century, from the teaching of Phineas Quimby and writers who followed him, and which holds that thought is causal — that the content and quality of a person's thinking shapes their character, their circumstances and their health. It produced a large popular literature in the decades around 1900, and the modern vocabulary of manifestation, affirmation and the law of attraction descends from it directly.

Research3 passages

Findings from published psychological and neuroscientific work, summarised for this collection rather than reproduced, with the study named on each entry so a reader can go to the source. What is collected here is what has been measured about attention, habit, sleep, emotion and change — including, where it applies, how large the measured effect is and how well it has held up when other groups have tried to repeat it.

Secular reflection7 passages

Reflection that does not appeal to a religious or philosophical authority. The pieces here were written for this collection and make no claim to be anything other than one way of putting a question.

Stoic12 passages

A school of Greek and Roman philosophy taught from the third century BCE onward, concerned with judgement, action and the distinction between what a person controls and what they do not. Its surviving handbooks were written as practical training rather than theory.

Taoist5 passages

A tradition originating in China and gathered around the Tao Teh King and the writings attributed to Zhuangzi, with a later history of monastic practice, ritual and internal alchemy. Its central term, the Tao, names the way things go of themselves; much of its counsel concerns acting without forcing, and the strength of what is yielding.