Ruling Your World: Ancient Strategies For Modern Life and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more

Buy New

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
or
Amazon Prime Free Trial required. Sign up when you check out. Learn More
Buy Used
Used - Good See details
$8.76 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
   
Kindle Edition
 
   
More Buying Choices
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Ruling Your World: Ancient Strategies For Modern Life
 
 
Start reading Ruling Your World: Ancient Strategies For Modern Life on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Ruling Your World: Ancient Strategies For Modern Life [Paperback]

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)

List Price: $13.99
Price: $11.19 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
You Save: $2.80 (20%)
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Want it delivered Thursday, May 24? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details

Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
Kindle Edition --  
Hardcover --  
Paperback $11.19  
Audio, CD, Audiobook $24.95  

Book Description

October 10, 2006
You’re stuck in the airport security line, late for a flight. The line isn’t moving. You’re angry at the security personnel for taking so long, you’re irritated at the other passengers for having so much stuff, you’re mad at your boss for sending you on this trip in the first place. By the time you get to your gate you’re angry, deflated, and exhausted. Then someone cuts in front of you in the line to board and you snap. “There’s a line, you know!” Is that really you, standing in an airport, yelling at a stranger, emotions raging?

It happens to most of us more than we’d like to admit. In an instant, our lives seem out of control and overwhelming. It’s always something, isn’t it? But what if you could approach every part of your life—from the smallest decisions to life’s biggest setbacks—with total confidence, clarity, and control?

According to Sakyong Mipham, we all have that power. The secret is simple: If you just stop thinking about yourself all the time, happiness and confidence will come naturally. It sounds absurd and, what’s more, impossible. But in Ruling Your World, Sakyong Mipham shares ancient secrets on how to take control of our lives and be successful while cultivating compassion for others and confidence in our own intelligence and goodness. The key to this well-being lies in the ancient strategies of the warrior kings and queens of Shambhala.

The kingdom of Shambhala was an enlightened kingdom of benevolent kings and queens and fiercely trained warriors. No one knows for sure whether this kingdom was real or mythical, but there are ancient guidebooks to this land and practical instructions for creating a Shambhala in your own world, bringing peace, purpose, and perspective into your life and environment.

Sakyong Mipham, the descendant of a warrior king, has inherited these teachings and gives us the lessons and myths of the great rulers and warriors of Shambhala. He makes these teachings relevant to our twenty-first-century lives in a fresh and witty voice and helps us all to realize our potential for power and control in a seemingly uncontrollable world.

For the first time ever, revered spiritual leader Sakyong Mipham brings the lessons of the ancient Shambhala warriors and rulers to the Western world and shows us how to live our lives with confidence.


Most of us are living in a haze—sometimes helping others, sometimes helping ourselves, sometimes happy, sometimes sad. We don’t feel in control of our own lives. The ancient teachings of Shambhala rulership show us that we all have the ability to rule our own world and live with confidence. To do this, we need to use our daily lives to be strong, as opposed to aggressive, and to act with wisdom and compassion. This may sound difficult, but when we begin to mix this ancient wisdom of rulership into our everyday life, we have both spiritual and worldly success. We don’t need to abandon our life and become an ascetic or a monk in order to gain confidence and achieve this success. We can live in the world as a ruler no matter what we are doing.
—from
Ruling Your World

Frequently Bought Together

Ruling Your World: Ancient Strategies For Modern Life + Turning the Mind Into an Ally + Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
Price For All Three: $29.18

Show availability and shipping details

Buy the selected items together
  • In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

  • Turning the Mind Into an Ally $10.00

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

  • Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior $7.99

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details



Editorial Reviews

Review

“This is a wonderful book with teachings to read, reread, practice, and embody.” —Sharon Salzberg, bestselling author of Lovingkindness and Faith

“Sakyong Mipham offers inspirational vision—as well as practical guidelines—for enormously enriching our individual lives in a way that benefits others as well. Highly recommended for the honest and straightforward purity of the teaching and its immediate application in—and beyond—our everyday lives.”

—Ken Wilber, author of The Simple Feeling of Being

About the Author

the leader of Shambhala, a worldwide network of meditation and retreat centers. He’s also an avid marathon runner and golfer, he frequently retreats to study at a Tibetan monastery in India, and he writes a regular column in the Shambhala Sun. He is the son of Chögyam Trungpa, who was instrumental in establishing Tibetan Buddhism in the West. The author of the bestselling Turning the Mind Into an Ally, Sakyong Mipham was named one of the thirty global visionaries of our time by Planet magazine. He spends his time teaching all over the world, using his unique blend of Eastern and Western perspectives to the benefit of his students in North and South America, Europe, and Asia.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Three Rivers Press (October 10, 2006)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0767920805
  • ISBN-13: 978-0767920803
  • Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.6 x 7.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #73,240 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
68 of 73 people found the following review helpful
Selfless self-help February 13, 2006
Format:Hardcover
Mipham, the worldwide leader of Shambhala and the son of the late Tibetan teacher Chogyam Trungpa (who wouldn't love to be a fly on the wall in that house?) argues that people need to examine the me-centered spirituality of their lives:

We think, "Will this food make me happy?" "Will this movie make me happy?" "Will this person make me happy?" . . . . Occasionally when I meet with meditation students, their questions show that they are approaching even spiritual practice as a way of making themselves happy. Is my yoga, my tai chi, my meditation making "me" feel better? They are simply using a new guise to perpetuate the old habit of putting themselves first." (pp 11-12)

He offers practical suggestions on how to change this habit, beginning with the realization that change will occur slowly and that we should begin by simply aiming for a ten percent transformation: to be ten percent more compassionate, ten percent less selfish, ten percent more aware of the karmic consequences of our anger. Subsequent chapters discuss four ways to instill compassion for a lifetime: we must strive to for the discernment of the tiger, the delight of the lion, the equanimity or the garuda, and the playful wisdom of the dragon. (And in case you're wondering, a garuda is a mythical bird that hatches fully developed. Who knew?)

I found this book genuinely helpful, and that's saying something. I'm not very forgiving of pop spirituality and the self-help genre. But Mipham is wise and unafraid to call a spade a spade. He's not out to flatter his readers or tell them how to live longer or feel invincible or win friends or influence people. He's a realist, and he only wants to prepare them for the inevitable: death is coming.

Cheerful, eh? But ultimately, I only want to read books that tell it to me straight. So I leave you with this paragraph from the book, striking for its utter lack of romanticism:

Contemplating worldly gain and loss reveals that we spend part of our life trying to get it together, and the other part watching it fall apart. As soon as we have time-"I have a whole hour free"-we are losing it. As soon as we make a friend, we're losing him. As soon as we have fame, it becomes tinged with notoriety. As soon as we have wealth, we're losing it. Looking for something new to gain helps us forget to look but a few seconds back at the last thing that we lost. Fabricating this chain of desire is how we keep ourselves in samsara [the cycle of desire and suffering]. We are using instability to try to make stability. We're investing in hope and fear, banking on denial of a simple truth: all the pleasure the world can offer eventually turns to pain. Everything we gain is subject to loss. Why do we put all that effort into gain when, in the end, we are going to lose it? (p 124)

A damn good question. Because of such realism and candor, this book will probably sell about a tenth of the copies that it should. --Jana Riess

A longer version of this review was posted on December 14, 2005 to The Review Revolution (janariess.typepad.com).
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
45 of 51 people found the following review helpful
Depth and Precision December 25, 2005
By J.F.
Format:Hardcover
If his father's books are like a Molotov Cocktail, capable of blowing your mind with extraordinary skillful language and profound insight into the specific character of the Western mind, then Mipham's books provide the in-depth and serious settling into the teachings and practices that were introduced a generation before.

Although his father's approach was effective in causing many to suddenly wake up and change course, Mipham provides the patient, applied, and deep transmission that we need to stay the course and follow the path with skill and precision. Mipham's spiritual tradition also place emphasis on applying these principals in our homes and communities, that the living wisdom be applied to society. Here his discussion of the dignities is far more powerful than a new-age "Have power over your life, Now!" story. It is the basis around which ensure that out lives enrich and support those around us.

This text is perhaps the more profound and detailed discussion of the dignities of the warriorship in the modern world that is available to a general audience. It is beautifully written, extremely personal and direct, patient and disciplined.

One of the finest texts available by a living teacher. Until recently people reviewing his work or attending a public program would refer to him as a "Young Lama" as if people this young couldn't be this wise. Some of the "Young Lama" image may fade now that he has married and turned 40, but the wisdom and percision keep getting deeper.
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
54 of 63 people found the following review helpful
Mipham is the Man October 25, 2005
By Sol
Format:Hardcover
I'm not really sure what it is because when you look at this man he doesn't have a lot in common with me. In his first book, his analogies for meditation are about horseback riding and golfing, and I don't really know many people who actually do those things. In this book, he talks about living our lives like a king/queen and I don't believe in monarchy. On the surface, this book looks like it's written for a self-help crowd, and I hate books that look like that. So on the surface, this wouldn't be the book for me.

Except that his words connect with my mind. They interface and form new pathways of thinking about things. They leave me to contemplate new depths of meaning for years after the fact. And they help me be a better person. So you could say I'm a fan. It's not so much that this is a really good book to read once, although it is. It's about the way these teachings begin to sink in when you make them your own. Sakyong Mipham has done that and it's clear and inspiring to witness. If you can ever do a meditation program with him, you'd be a lucky one.
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Not that enlightening
I reached out for this thinking it would be more enlightening but I guess I'll stick with my Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Hopeful-Disbeliever
Pragmatic understanding of our power within
RULING YOUR WORLD is an unintrusive, practical, and heart-warming modern treatment that gently bridges ancient Buddhist philosophy with our modern world -- a world that is seeing... Read more
Published 6 months ago by D. Ursillo
Meditative
Both this book and Turning the Mind into an Ally are meditative, and encourage contemplation. While I am mostly turned away by "self-help" books, or books resembling these,... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Elementality
Best book out on how to bring mindfulness into daily life
I found this book refreshing. It covers the teachings of mindfulness and meditation in a way geared towards applying them in your everyday life. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Nick
'Ruling Your World' review
Very good book. I am impressed with the quality of Sakyong Mipham's thought and the organization of his chapters to illustrate the spiritual concepts. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Maria Mikhailas
A better world
I truly think that the world would be a better place if everyone read this book and took it to heart.
Published 22 months ago by Roberto
Basis for life
Sakyong Mipam's presentation of the Shambhala teachings in "Ruling Your World" is deceptively simple. Read more
Published on March 3, 2010 by Paul R. Steel
Wonderful!
This is my favorite book. It can change your life by teaching you to be more in control of your thoughts. I read it at least once a year. It is simply written. Read more
Published on August 20, 2008 by T. Haggard
really good read
This book is Life changing. Sheds light on ways to continue to move forward in a positive direction regardless of your past. A must read.
Published on August 7, 2008 by Harry C. Alford
~ Simply Illuminating Brilliance ~
Of all the amazing books of this genre I've read, I return to this more often, refer it to more people and just all around appreciate it more than any other. Read more
Published on July 23, 2008 by Shawn B. Phillips
Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

Inside This Book (learn more)
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
knowing selflessness, ruling our world, blessing energy, basic goodness, exerting ourselves, truth about existence, understanding karma
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Great Eastern Sun, The Shambhala, Dawa Sangpo, Khyentse Rinpoche, The Tibetan
Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Surprise Me!
Search Inside This Book:

Citations (learn more)
1 book cites this book:

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?


Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 

Your tags: Add your first tag
 

Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   
Related forums





Look for Similar Items by Category


Look for Similar Items by Subject