Meditation is not just for relaxation but also a gateway to unlocking creative potential. Here are the 10 best meditation books for creative minds.
Does your creativity get blocked by the constant noise in your mind? Does your mind wander when it should be focused on creating? Meditation could be the solution, offering numerous health and creative benefits. Throughout history, creatives have turned to meditation to align their thoughts, body, and spirit, to support the flow of creative energy and well-being. However, establishing a meditation practice can be challenging.
To help get you started, here are the 10 best meditation books for creative minds, from renowned historical visionaries to modern authors, to help you learn and create your own mindfulness practices to support your creative process and lifestyle. Prepare to nourish your creative soul, expand your horizons, and unlock the transformative potential that arises at the intersection of meditation and creativity.
Discover more creative tips, meditation techniques, tools, and guides to guide and support your creative meditation practice.
Goodreads Rating: 4.21
Shunryu Suzuki was a Sōtō Zen monk and teacher who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States. His book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind is one of the most beloved zen books and helpful books for the creative mind.
“In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s, there are few.”
Seldom do books have as powerful and insightful of an opening line as this zen book. The beginner’s mind, also known as a growth mindset, is one of the most important teachings in zen. It carries many benefits not just for creatives but anyone looking to be more productive and happy in their day-to-day life.
In the forty years since its original publication, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind has become one of the great modern spiritual classics, much beloved, much reread, and much recommended as the best first book to read on Zen.
Goodreads Rating: 4.01
Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies, and the Truth About Reality by Brad Warner isn’t your typical Zen book. When most people think of zen books, they might imagine them filled with riddles and poetic prose. However, Zen teachings are usually guided by simplicity, and you don’t get more simple and plain Zen, with no BS, than what you find in Hardcore Zen.
Brad Warner, a young punk who grew up to be a Zen master, spares no one. This bold new approach to the “Why?” of Zen Buddhism is as strongly grounded in the tradition of Zen as it is utterly revolutionary. Warner’s voice is hilarious, and he calls on the wisdom of everyone from punk and pop culture icons to the Buddha himself to make sure his points come through loud and clear.
Goodreads Rating: 4.15
Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art Hardcover by James Nestor is a New York Times Bestseller about the fascinating scientific, cultural, spiritual, and evolutionary history of the ways humans breathe. Improve your meditation practice and bring mindfulness to every action with better breathing techniques that can improve your lifestyle.
How much thought and awareness have you spent thinking about how you breathe? There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.
Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head.
125 Mandalas: An Adult Coloring Book for Stress Relief and Relaxation by Coloring Book Cafe is a great way to relieve stress through creative meditation.
Coloring is a scientifically-proven way of promoting feelings of calmness and tranquility. Great for all ages, this mandala coloring book is inspired by the ancient tradition of mandalas. Find a pattern that inspires and calms you, and meditate with the help of color and your creativity.
Goodreads Rating: 4.25
The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater Mindfulness by John Yates, Matthew Immergut, and Jeremy Graves is the quintessential science book on meditation and features one of the most comprehensive and detailed meditation programs for people looking for a structured approach to meditation.
This revolutionary, science-based approach to meditation is an accessible, step-by-step toolkit for anyone looking to start or improve their daily meditation practice created by an acclaimed meditation master and neuroscientist. Learn how the mind works and the scientific and philosophical steps to overcome mind wandering and dullness, extend your attention span while meditating, and subduing subtle distractions.
Goodreads Rating: 4.30
Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life by Thich Nhat Hanh shows how to make situations that usually pressure and antagonize us an opportunity to grow and be at peace.
In the rush of modern life, we tend to lose touch with the peace available in each moment. Learn the value of mindfulness, the process of keeping your consciousness alive in your present experience and reality to achieve deeper feelings of joy, completeness, and creativity.
Learn the art of mindfulness from commentaries, meditations, personal anecdotes, and stories from the world-renowned Zen master, spiritual leader, and author Thich Nhat Hanh. See what it means to make even the worse part of your day a lesson and opportunity to be present, grateful, and an expression of your creativity.
Goodreads Rating: 4.13
Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness by Jon Kabat-Zinn is a landmark meditation book from the creator of the ‘Stress Reduction Clinic’ and the ‘Center for Mindfulness in Medicine.
Stress is present in all our creative lifestyles. It can sap your energy, hurt creativity, and undermine your health. Based on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s renowned mindfulness-based stress reduction program, Full Catastrophe Living, which gave rise to a whole new field in medicine and psychology, shows how to use medically proven mind-body approaches derived from meditation and yoga to counteract stress, establish a greater balance of body and mind, and stimulate well-being and healing.
Learn mindfulness practices and how to integrate them into your creative lifestyle to stay present, heal, and improve the overall quality of your life.
Goodreads Rating: 4.14
How to Meditate: A Practical Guide to Making Friends with Your Mind by Pema Chödrön is a simple and practical guide to building a meditation habit.
Pema Chödrön is an American Tibetan-Buddhist, treasured for her teachings and practices that bring peace, understanding, and compassion into our lives. In this practical guide for meditation, learn the golden keys of meditation practice and a step-by-step guide to train your mind, embrace the fullness of your experience, and live wholeheartedly.
For the creative mind, learn how to master the monkey mind for clear creative thinking, train your senses, cultivate a sense of wonder, improve collaboration and empathy for others, and much more.
Goodreads Rating: 3.72
Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity by David Lynch is one of the first meditation books by a truly creative mind. Explore the creative mind and meditation practice of filmmaker David Lynch, as well as interviews with fellow creative meditators Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.
Learn about the creative and health benefits of Transcendental Meditation and the creative process in this artistic and personal reflection of nearly 50 years of practice. Learn how the Beatles used this meditation technique in their creative process and became so popular in the 1960s.
Goodreads Rating: 4.20
The Gateless Gate: The Classic Book of Zen Koans by Koun Yamada holds the most influential classic commentaries on the koans and zen stories that masters have studied for thousands of years.
Koans are stories, dialogues, questions, or statements that are used in Zen practice to provoke the “great doubt” and to practice or test a student’s progress in Zen. They have played a major role in zen practices for training problem-solving, creative thinking, collaboration, and more. In this essential meditation book, creatives can not only find peace of mind from the ancient teachings of Zen but also train essential creative skills.
This translation of the commentaries on the Mumonkan, one of Zen’s greatest collections of teaching stories, includes Koan Yamada’s clear and penetrating comments on each case, an introduction to the history of Zen practice, and insights into many of the masters, many with creative backgrounds, connected with the koans and teachings.
Zach is an international writer, photographer, filmmaker, martial artist, and creator of Creative Enso, the Zen art of creative living. His goal is to empower and inspire creatives to live healthier, happier, and more creative lifestyles.
