🌿📖 BOOK CLUB > KOKORO — THE WAY OF THE HEART (Wisdom & Inner Peace Book Club)

🌿📖 KOKORO — THE WAY OF THE HEART WITHIN (8:30 pm - 9:15 pm)

When you are finished your day get ready for rest with our > Free Online Book Club & Guided Community Meditation.
We’re a community that practises together and stays connected.
No need to sign up on the page. Just message Sunim at 416-797-7553 to add your name.

Through in-person and virtual classes, workshops, retreats and special gatherings, we explore mindfulness, Zen, energy work and Qigong. Each gathering offers a way to learn useful practices, deepen your skills and spend time with others on a similar path.

Our regular book club is one more way we gather. We read and reflect together, share how these teachings apply to daily life, and close with guided meditation. It’s a relaxed evening of learning, practice and connection.

This gathering explores Kokoro, a Japanese word that brings together heart, mind and spirit. We’ll consider what it means to live with more presence, compassion and openness. You don’t need to have read the book or have any meditation experience to take part.

Who can join for free? Anyone who has attended one of our classes or retreats at any time in the past.

New to our community? We’d love to meet you at an in-person class or workshop. We offer Inner Peace Qigong with Tea Circle at several locations in Southern Ontario, plus virtual classes from home. Message Sunim at 416-797-7553 with your area. I’ll help you find a class or workshop to begin with. Once you’ve joined us, you’re welcome at free community gatherings like this book club.
💻 Location: This One is Online by Zoom. Join From Home!

Attending the book club? Please message Sunim at 416-797-7553 for the current reading and practice materials. Tell us which location we met at.. If this is your first online gathering, please also confirm at least 24 hours beforehand so you can be added to the attendance list. Become a regular to our Book Club.

Please have your camera on so we can connect as a group.
📧 [innerpeaceqigong@icloud.com](mailto:innerpeaceqigong@icloud.com)
Zoom meeting: Click here to join
Meeting ID: 899 8941 9619
Password: 216900

Click the link about five minutes before we begin. Settle into a quiet space and bring a cushion, blanket or cup of tea if you like.
☯️ See our upcoming gatherings on Meetup

Past Books Include:

Eckhart Tolle
The Power of Now — Presence, awareness, and freedom from compulsive thinking.
A New Earth — Understanding ego, awakening, relationships, and more conscious living.
Michael A. Singer
The Untethered Soul — Learning to observe thoughts and emotions without becoming trapped
or identified with them.
Living Untethered — Releasing inner resistance and learning to live with greater freedom,
openness, and peace.

Together, they provide a shared foundation for understanding awareness, ego, identification,
resistance, suffering, presence, acceptance and letting go. You do not need to agree with or
fully understand every teaching. The goal is to become familiar with the principles and language
which also appear throughout our Book Club discussions and practices. The books above are a
valuable starting point.

FOR SUPPORT AROUND THE TOPICS OF EMOTIONAL HEALING, STRESS AND SHAME
TO SELF-COMPASSION I RECOMMEND

Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha — Tara Brach, PhD
Releasing shame, self-judgment and the feeling that something is wrong with us.

Full Catastrophe Living — Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD
Using mindfulness to work with stress, pain, illness and everyday pressures.
Upcoming Events: https://www.meetup.com/innerpeaceqigong/

Pema Chödrön’s books offer practical wisdom for meeting uncertainty, fear, anxiety, anger,
heartbreak and emotional reactivity while developing greater compassion, courage, patience
and resilience.

The Wisdom of No Escape — Staying present rather than seeking escape.

Start Where You Are — Beginning compassion exactly where you are.

When Things Fall Apart — Meeting heartbreak without closing the heart.

The Places That Scare You — Moving toward fear with compassion.

Comfortable with Uncertainty — Short teachings on fearlessness and openness.

Don’t Bite the Hook — Working with anger, resentment and emotional triggers.

This Moment Is the Perfect Teacher — Letting present difficulties become part of the path.

Taking the Leap — Breaking repetitive habits and emotional patterns.

Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change — Living wholeheartedly without
guarantees.

Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better — Meeting mistakes and setbacks with resilience.

The Compassion Book — Practices for awakening compassion.

Welcoming the Unwelcome — Remaining openhearted in a difficult world.

Perfect Just as You Are — Loving-kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity.

Another Kind of Freedom — Freedom that does not depend on circumstances.
Unconditional Confidence — Meeting experience with trust, courage and presence.
The books above remain valuable support / companions for working with ego, stress, pain,
uncertainty, compassion and conscious living.

Our Book Club Journey So Far — This Year We Have Explored:
Ordinary Wonder: Zen Life and Practice by Charlotte Joko Beck

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki
Beyond Happiness: The Zen Way to True Contentment by Ezra Bayda