It can be hard for those living in the twenty-first century to see how fourteenth-century Buddhist teachings apply to them. When you're trying to figure out which cell phone plan to buy or brooding about something someone wrote about you on Facebook, lines like "While the enemy of your own anger is unsubdued,/Though you conquer external foes, they will only increase" can seem a little obscure.

Thubten Chodron's new book doesn't just explain the verses of Togmay Zangpo's revered text, Thirty-Seven Practices of Bodhisattvas. In dozens of passages, she lets her students and colleagues share first-person stories of the ways that its teachings have changed their lives. Some bear witness to dramatic transformations making friends with an enemy prisoner-of-war, finding peace after the murder of a loved one while others tell of smaller lessons, like waiting for something to happen or coping with a minor injury. One woman who set up a practice with another professional discovered he was deeply in debt and had stolen money from her. "I learned a lot about not feeling like a victim and not being angry.... This man had two small kids. His wife had breast cancer. His suffering was evident. What others do to me is not the issue; it's how I think about their actions."

Thubten Chodron, whose Buddhism for Beginners has been a Snow Lion bestseller since its publication, knows exactly what's on readers' minds and deals adroitly with their weaknesses. Students of Buddhism enjoy her teasing tone ("Can't I just lie down, relax, and have a Pepsi while I listen to the MP3 recording? My life is very busy and at least this way I can learn the Dharma") and her no-nonsense attitude to practice. Enlivened and deepened by the stories from Dharma practitioners of every age and background, this book moves students from reading about Buddhism to actually putting it into practice.

Don't Have to Believe Everything You Think, Thubten Chodron, Snow Lion Publications, Paperback, 256 Pages, $16.95

Thubten Chodron, born Cheryl Greene, is an American Tibetan Buddhist nun, author, teacher, and the founder and abbess of Sravasti Abbey, the only Tibetan Buddhist training monastery for Western nuns and monks in the United States. Chodron is a central figure in the reinstatement of the Bhikshuni ordination of women