Buddhist practice is like making a cup of tea. We prepare by studying and contemplating the teachings, this is like putting tea and sugar in the cup. Then we pour boiling water into the cup and let it steep. The steeping process is equivalent to our meditation practice. The longer we let the tea steep, the stronger, more powerful, and more flavourful the tea will become. What do we need to do to help the tea steep? Nothing. We just rest, relax and wait for it to do its own thing. The same goes for meditation practice. The more we practice relaxing and resting in the stillness of meditation, the more we will experience the deep satisfying joy of our true nature.This book is a collection of short pieces about the heart of the Buddhist path and especially about meditation and compassion. Many of the pieces were answers to questions posed in meditation classes or in online discussion groups, but some are essays written in response to a need for a succinct, accessible explanation of a topic that is essential to Buddhist practice. All of the pieces are concise, grounded in experience and in a simple, unpretentious language that both beginners and advanced practitioners will appreciate.Martin Jamyang Tenphel and Pema Duddul have decades of experience, meditation practice and study behind them, and are well-versed in how to apply the Buddhist teachings in day to day life. They are the Co-Directors of Jalu Buddhist Meditation centre, an organisation that emphasises the path of simple meditation practice rather than of scholarly study or elaborate tantric practices. At Jalu, Jamyang and Pema teach meditation, mindfulness and the core of the Buddha's message in an authentic and accessible way that is appropriate to our modern world. Visit them online: www.jalumeditation.org

Resting in Stillness, Martin Jamyang Tenphel, Pema Duddul, Jalu Publications, Paperback, 2020, 97 Pages, $13.75

Pema Duddul (birth name: Dallas John Baker) is the Buddhist Chaplain in the University of Southern Queensland�s Multi-Faith Service and the Director of Jal� Buddhist Meditation Centre. Pema has been a Buddhist for forty years, discovering at the age of eleven that his personal worldview and the tenets of Buddhism were in perfect accordance. He has practised in the Vajrayana, or Tibetan Buddhist, tradition for more than half of that time. Pema considers Dudjom Rinpoche, Jigdral Yeshe Dorje (1904-1987) to be his Heart Lama. Pema has received teachings from masters in all four schools of Tibetan Buddhism. In 2005 he received the tantric vows of a ngakpa, the Tibetan Buddhist equivalent of a non-monastic religious minister. He received these vows from one of his principle teachers, Ngakpa Karma Lhundup Rinpoche. It was around this time that he was given the Dharma name Pema D�ddul. Pema has decades of experience as a Buddhist practitioner and has taught mindfulness and meditation in Buddhist, educational and corporate settings since 2007. Pema describes himself as 'a completely run of the mill Buddhist, an extremely ordinary person, by no means a Buddhist scholar, certainly not a great meditator, not in any way masterful, just trying, like every other Buddhist, to integrate the path of Dharma into everyday life with all its routine challenges'.

Martin Jamyang Tenphel is an Australian-born Buddhist practitioner, meditation instructor and Co-Director of Jal� Buddhist Meditation Centre. He discovered the dharma in 1995 and then studied and practised in Australia and India for the next decade, primarily in the Tibetan tradition. Since 2005 his focus has been on practice rather than study. His Guru is the late Togden Amtrin, a highly revered yogi of the Drukpa Kagyu lineage from Khampagar Monastery in Eastern Tibet. Jamyang was a monk for a few years during his twenties, but handed back his robes and later took the Tantric Ngakpa ordination with Ngakpa Karma Lhundup Rinpoche. Jamyang has also received teachings from masters in all four schools of Tibetan Buddhism, though practices in the Drukpa tradition. Despite a debilitating and sometimes life-threatening illness of seventeen years duration, Jamyang has maintained his meditation practice, using his sick bed as his retreat place. Jamyang�s heart practice is Guru Yoga and meditation on emptiness. Jamyang is considered by those close to him to be authentically modest, unflinchingly honest, deeply committed to the Dharma and a true renunciate. He lives in informal retreat most of the time, but is not completely cut off from the world. He occasionally reaches out to support fellow practitioners using modern technology. .