Wholehearted ― Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up

An inspiring book that will help readers rediscover their values and discover a way to truly live life to the fullest.

Each of us has an enormous capacity for love—a deep well of attention and care that we can offer to ourselves and others. With guidance that is both simple and wholly transformative, Koshin Paley Ellison, Zen teacher and psychotherapist, shows us how to uncover it: pay attention, be of service, and be with others.

With this inspiring and down-to-earth book, drawn from the Zen precepts and illustrated with anecdotes from Koshin’s own life and practice, you’ll learn how to explore and investigate with your own core values, identify the mental habits that could be unconsciously hurting yourself and others, and overcome isolation. Each chapter closes with a contemplation to help integrate the teachings into your life.

This book is about getting back in touch with your values, so you can live energetically, authentically, and lovingly. This an invitation to close the gaps we create between ourselves and others—to wake up to ourselves and the world around us.

It’s time to live wholeheartedly.

Koshin Paley Ellison, MFA, LMSW, DMIN, co-founded the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, the first Buddhist organization to offer fully accredited chaplaincy training in America. The organization delivers contemplative approaches to care through education, direct service, and meditation practice. Koshin teaches in the Integrative Medicine Fellowship program at the University of Arizona Medical School’s Center for Integrative Medicine and is the academic advisor for the Buddhist students in the master in pastoral care and counseling at New York Theological Seminary. He is the co-director of Contemplative Care Services for the Department of Integrative Medicine and the chaplaincy supervisor for the Pain and Palliative Care Department at Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center, where he also serves on the Medical Ethics Committee.

He is the co-editor of Awake at the Bedside: Contemplative Teachings on Palliative and End-of-Life Care (Wisdom Publications, 2016). He’s also the co-author of “Rituals and Resilience” in Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience (Routledge, 2009) and the author of “The Jeweled Net: What Dogen and the Avatamsaka Sutra Can Offer Us as Spiritual Caregivers” in The Arts of Contemplative Care: Pioneering Voices in Buddhist Chaplaincy and Pastoral Work (Wisdom Publications, 2012). He is a senior Zen Buddhist monk, Dharma teacher and student, ACPE supervisor, and Jungian psychotherapist.