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  • Published: 1 February 2016
  • ISBN: 9781611801002
  • Imprint: Shambhala
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $38.00

The Vow-Powered Life

A Simple Method for Living with Purpose



How making a vow—consciously setting an intention—can be a powerful tool for achieving all sort of goals, from the author of the best-selling Mindful Eating.

Winner of the 2016 IPPY Gold Medal Award for Self Help 

How making a vow—consciously setting an intention—can be a powerful tool for achieving all sort of goals, from the author of the best-selling Mindful Eating.

Making a vow is a powerful mindfulness practice—and all you have to do to tap into that power is set your intention consciously. A vow can be as "small" as the aspiration to smile at someone at least once every day, or as "big" as marriage; as personal as deciding to be mindful when picking up the phone or as universal as vowing to save all sentient beings. It can be deeply spiritual, utterly ordinary, or both. Zen teacher Jan Chozen Bays looks to traditional Buddhist teachings to show the power of vows—and then applies that teaching broadly to the many vows we make. She shows that if we work with vows consciously, they set us in the direction of achieving our goals, both temporal and spiritual.

Bays presents secular and spiritual wisdom from both East and West, highlighting figures such as Martha Graham, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Buckminster Fuller. She helps us examine the vows we have already made for ourselves and the vows we’ve unconsciously inherited. She supports us in repairing broken vows, crafting new intentions, and exploring what’s truly on our bucket lists.

  • Published: 1 February 2016
  • ISBN: 9781611801002
  • Imprint: Shambhala
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 192
  • RRP: $38.00

About the author

Jan Chozen Bays

A practicing Buddhist for more than thirty years, Jan Chozen Bays is a Zen master in the White Plum lineage of the late Japanese master Taizan Maexumi Roshi. She serves as priest and teacher at the Jizo Mountain-Great Vow Zen Monastery in Clatskanie, Oregon. She is also a practicing pediatrician who specializes in the evaluation of children for abuse and neglect.

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