There’s a joke that goes something like this:

A monk walks up to a hot-dog stand and says “make me one with everything”…you’ve heard this one before?

Well, you may have heard that corny joke about the hot-dog stand, but you haven’t read a book like this before…unless you’ve read some of the late Chogyam Trungpa’s works, in which case you’re ahead of the crowd. And even then, what author Lodro Rinzler has to say is new, fresh and definitely unique.

Appealing to a younger crowd, “The Buddha Walks Into a Bar” brings some key Buddhist concepts about meditation and compassion into a delightful discussion on how you can integrate the teachings of the Buddha (specifically in the Vajrayana tradition of Tibet) into your daily life.

With chapter titles such as, “Your Life is a Playground,” “Sex, Love, and Compassion,” and “Studying for Your Buddhist Bar Mitzvah,” the author weaves basics of Buddhism into how to live your daily based on a compassionate and open heart and mind without giving up the spice and zest of it all.

To give you an idea of how this book approaches its subject, here’s an excerpt from the introduction to the book:

“This isn’t your grandmother’s book on meditation. It’s for you. That is, assuming you like to have a beer once in a while, enjoy sex, have figured out that your parents are crazy, or get frustrated at work…Do you have to become a Buddhist to like this book? Hell, no…”

While non-Buddhists may glaze-over at times when the concepts drift into the meat of the Vajrayana tradition, there’s enough of an ecumenical approach to entertain you if you have even the slightest interest in how to apply Buddhist sensibilities to life’s joys and sorrows, successes and foibles.

Even though this book is touted as a guide for a “new generation,” there are those of us in the oldie-but-moldy crowd who appreciate a fresh approach to an age-old wisdom tradition.  Check out this video trailer with the author (he’s in a bar):

Lodro Rinzler is a meditation practitioner and teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist lineage. Over the last decade he has taught numerous workshops at meditation centers and college campuses across the US. His column, What Would Sid Do?, appears regularly in the Huffington Post and the Interdependence Project. He writes from his apartment in New York City.

If you’re interested in learning more about this book, check it out on the Shambhala website. If you decide that you’d lke to purchase it, get a 20% discount by using the link to the lower right-side of this page and enter the code, “LS01” at checkout.

Since the topic of this blog/site is about integrating meditation and compassion into your life, I thought that you might like to learn about a book that takes Buddhist concepts about meditation and compassion and adds a new twist to them. This is the first time that I’ve presented a book in a post on this site and have promoted its author, please let me know what you think and whether its content is useful to this site.

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For more information on how to meditate, please see the Related Posts below. Also, don’t forget to download the free ebook, Can Meditation Change the Way that You View Your World?, for help with getting started in you meditation practice, and download the ebook, How to Work with the Four Distractions to Meditation to learn how to deal with some of the obstacles to meditation.

ALSO, visit the Media, page where you can find articles, MP3 tracks for downloading, and videos on the subject of meditation.

As always, please feel free to share your comments. And, as always, please feel free to contact me if you’d like to see additional content or other discussions on this site.