IMS Book Club

Each month, the IMS Book Club brings together authors and readers for a facilitated discussion on the featured dharma-book-of-the-month. Our book club offers participants a deeper experience and engagement with Theravada Buddhist teachings and practice through the lens of the selected book.

Essential Information:

  • The IMS Book Club is entirely free of charge.
  • All Book Club meetings will be held online  through the IMS Online Learning Center.
  • Each monthly Book Club event will feature a new book and one or more group meetings with the book’s author.
  • Beyond these basic guidelines, authors will be able to tailor their book club meetings as they see fit, so the structure of book club gatherings may vary from month to month.
  • Dana:  If you enjoy this free offering and would like to give to IMS, we will include donation links when we email the video recordings of each Book Club meeting to registered members after each session. Note: authors/teachers benefit from the promotion and sale of their books. If other teachers, or assistant teachers, help support a Book Club, IMS will compensate those teachers directly for their time.

Want to Join?

To join the IMS Book Club, simply register hereYou will receive monthly invitations to sign up for the book-of-the-month discussions that interest you. Although there is no charge to join the book club, participants will need to secure their own copies of the books prior to the start of the monthly discussion group.

How Are Books Chosen? 

All titles featured in the IMS Book Club are selected by IMS staff and Guiding Teachers. Selections must align with IMS’s mission and values. Rooted in the Theravada Buddhist teachings of ethics, concentration, and wisdom, chosen titles will support the development of awareness and compassion.

2025 Schedule 

Untangled
Walking the Eightfold Path to Clarity, Courage, and Compassion
By Koshin Paley Ellison

Loneliness is on the rise, with detrimental effects on our mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual wellbeing. How do we look past the surface, to discover a life filled with meaningful connection and genuine relationships? Untangled is a welcoming guidebook to finding expansive ease and true joy through the eightfold path–one of Buddhism’s foundational teachings.

Psychotherapist and meditation teacher Koshin Paley Ellison compassionately walks readers down these eight roads, leading them to discover true joy. Combining teachings from both Eastern and Western traditions, Paley Ellison equips readers with the tools needed to make profound change, inside and out. Infused with Paley Ellison’s own anecdotes of his own life, this guide will help you transform your relationships and offers a path for social healing.

“In Koshin Paley Ellison’s wonderful book Untangled, he places the classical framework of the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path in the context and complexity of our daily lives. The clarity of his open heart and deep wisdome shine on every page.”―Joseph Goldstein

Date: Thursday, February 6, 7- 8:15 PM ET

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Finding Venerable Mother
A Daughter’s Spiritual Quest to Thailand
By Cindy Rasicot

When Cindy moves to Thailand with her husband and teenage son, she finds herself strangely adrift in a foreign culture, unprepared for the challenges she encounters there. On an impulse she signs up for a conference where she unexpectedly meets a Thai Buddhist nun, Venerable Dhammananda Bhikkhuni, who leads her on a spiritual journey from which there is no turning back. Along the way she discovers the beauty of the Thai people and culture.

This soulful and engaging memoir is the story of one woman’s journey of physical, emotional, and spiritual healing through her connection to a loving Buddhist teacher who fully accepts and nurtures her in a way her own mother never did. Finding Venerable Mother is a testimony to the power of faith, forgiveness, and love.

“Cindy Rasicot’s loving account of her own transformation through knowing Bhikkhuni Dhammananda is a joy to read.”—Sylvia Boorstein

Date: Tuesday, March 18, 7- 8:15 PM ET

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Meeting Faith
The Forest Journals of a Black Buddhist Nun
By Faith Adiele

Reluctantly leaving behind Pop Tarts and pop culture to battle flying rats, hissing cobras, forest fires, and decomposing corpses, Faith Adiele shows readers in this personal narrative, with accompanying journal entries, that the path to faith is full of conflicts for even the most devout. Residing in a forest temple, she endured nineteen-hour daily meditations, living on a single daily meal, and days without speaking. Internally Adiele battled against loneliness, fear, hunger, sexual desire, resistance to the Buddhist worldview, and her own rebellious Western ego. Adiele demystifies Eastern philosophy and demonstrates the value of developing any practice―Buddhist or not. This “unlikely, bedraggled nun” moves grudgingly into faith, learning to meditate for seventy-two hours at a stretch. Her witty, defiant twist on the standard coming-of-age tale suggests that we each hold the key to overcoming anger, fear, and addiction; accepting family; redefining success; and re-creating community and quality of life in today’s world.

Date: Thursday, April 17, 7- 8:15 PM ET
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Previous IMS Book Club Authors Include

  • Sharon Salzberg
  • Gregory Kramer
  • Rodney Smith
  • Joseph Goldstein
  • Sebene Selassie
  • Pamela Ayo Yetunde, Lama Dawa Tarchin Phillips, Kamilah Majied, Gyozan Royce Andrew Johnson
  • Judson Brewer
  • Narayan Helen Liebenson
  • Bhikkhu Bodhi
  • Pam Weiss
  • devon hase
  • nico hase
  • Lama Rod Owens
  • Chenxing Han
  • Mark Coleman
  • Kaira Jewel Lingo
  • George Mumford
  • Mark Epstein
  • Rhonda V. Magee
  • Martin Aylward
  • Dan Harris
  • Kate Johnson
  • Guy Armstrong
  • Oren Jay Sofer
  • Richard Shankman
  • Marisela B. Gomez
  • Thenmozhi Soundararajan
  • Jacoby Ballard
  • Allan Cooper
  • Christina Feldman
  • Rima Vesely-Flad
  • Amita Schmidt
  • Shaila Catherine
  • Valerie Brown
  • yung pueblo
  • John Teasdale
  • Kimberly Brown
  • Rev. Liên Shutt
  • Ruth King
  • Constance Casey
  • Kim Allen
  • Cindy Rasicot, Bhikkhuni Dhammananda
  • Anu Gupta
  • Vanessa R. Sasson
  • Toni Pressley-Sanon
  • Rebecca Bradshaw