Let Go: A Buddhist Guide to Breaking Free of Habits

In Letting Go Martine Batchelor gives us a Buddhist handbook for liberating ourselves from compulsive habits. She clearly describes the process of habituation, from experiencing an emotion, "there is fear in my mind", through identification with the emotion, "I am afraid", to solidification of this into fixed identity, "I am a fearful person", which then colors and restricts all our subsequent experience. The rest of the book presents antidotes and practices to unlink these steps. Wearing lightly her years of experience as a Buddhist nun and meditation teacher, she presents practices and stories with simplicity, humor, clarity and compassion. I cannot imagine anyone who would not benefit from reading this seemingly simple but deeply wise book.