Note: This event is free to attend and will be held in the courtyard at DIESEL, A Bookstore in Brentwood.
Free seating is limited. To reserve a seat, please purchase one copy of a book for one seat.
Experience a transformative evening exploring authentic confidence through Buddhist wisdom and heart-centered spirituality. Ethan Nichtern, renowned teacher and author of Confidence: Holding Your Seat through Life's Eight Worldly Winds, delves into finding inner strength amidst life's dichotomies. He's joined by Sah D'Simone, the candid voice behind Spiritually, We: The Art of Relating and Connecting from the Heart - a manifesto on releasing loneliness through radical compassion and community. Together, they'll share profound insights on self-acceptance, connection, and spiritual awakening. Guided by these pioneering authors, you'll engage in interactive exercises and discover a path toward newfound self-assurance, meaningful relationships, and the "brilliant, highly honest" wisdom lauded by author Robert Thurman.
In today’s culture of intense polarization and constant change, how do we find the confidence to navigate life’s challenges? How can we respond mindfully to this moment in history without being emotionally reactive? Is this really the time for meditation, for looking inward?
Author Ethan Nichtern, described by Vogue.com as “a supercool, deeply kind brainiac,” and one of the leading meditation teachers of our time, tackles these questions head-on in Confidence: Holding Your Seat through Life’s Eight Worldly Winds
“In talking to thousands of people over the years I’ve been teaching, I’ve found that just below an initial set of attractions to Buddhist practice lurk questions of self-confidence and self- worth,” writes Nichtern. “If we have confidence in one area of life (like our career), then we lack it in another (like intimate relationships). Except for the famous rappers and indicted ex- presidents among us, almost all of us struggle mightily to proclaim ourselves as confident about what we offer to this world.”Nichtern examines confidence through the lens of the Buddhist concept of the Eight Worldly Winds, the four paired opposites of praise and blame, pleasure and pain, fame and insignificance, and success and failure. They are known as winds because whenever we become attached to some plateau of stillness or ease, these experiences can far too easily knock us off balance.
“The ability to stay present with a difficult moment or uncomfortable emotion is called ‘holding your seat.’” writes Nichtern. “To hold your seat means to demonstrate confidence without bluster. This power comes from presence, from knowing that life is full of forces that can make you either howl at the wind or go hide in a corner, and understanding that these forces are never going to stop moving.”
Confidence takes contemporary considerations of power, identity, ethics, and confidence to new heights as it offers readers an essential guide to self-discovery. The four transformative meditation exercises Nichtern offers throughout empower readers to cultivate and access their innate confidence and wisdom in response to whatever challenges life throws their way. “Confidence is a practice, not an end point. And if there is such a thing as enlightenment, then it can be defined only by a perpetual willingness to engage in the practice itself,” writes Nichtern. “We are here. This is happening. Let’s begin.”
Ethan Nichtern is the author of Confidence: Holding Your Seat through Life’s Eight Worldly Winds and several other titles, including the widely acclaimed The Road Home: A Contemporary Exploration of the Buddhist Path. A renowned contemporary Buddhist teacher and the host of The Road Home Podcast, Nichtern has offered meditation and Buddhist psychology classes at conferences, meditation centers, yoga studios, and universities, including Brown, Yale, and NYU. He has been featured by CNN, NPR, the New York Times, Vogue, and Business Insider and has written for the Huffington Post, Beliefnet, Lion’s Roar, Tricycle, Buddhadharma, and more. He lives in Brooklyn.
Sah D'Simone is a spiritual revolutionary, artist, and the internationally bestselling author of Spiritually, We and Spiritually Sassy. He’s known for hosting the top-rated Spiritually Sassy Show podcast and for creating the Somatic Activated Healing® (SAH) Method. Sah works in the Spiritual Care Department at Cedars-Sinai Hospital and is a guest lecturer at Columbia University. His remarkable contributions to homeless youth in Venice Beach, California, earned him the CARE award from the city and county of Los Angeles.
Event date:
Wednesday, July 3, 2024 - 6:30pm
Event address:
225 26th St
Suite 33
Santa Monica, CA 90402