This is a book about worthiness…

I’ve become really interested in Buddhism in recent years - partly because my husband was brought up in the Buddhist / Shinto religions, and partly because I just find the Buddhist teachings so accessible and applicable to our every day life.

In ‘Tea and Cake with Demons’, Limbach looks at Buddhism through the lens of modern life, and all the challenges and distractions that we face that block us from feeling present, fulfilled, and worthy. We have a tendency to lug around the continual fear that we are ‘not enough’ and desperately try to avoid the ‘demons’ such as shame, perfectionism, self-doubt, fixation (err…yep) that we simply need to meet and embrace:

“The allegory of inviting our demons to tea suggests that we don’t ignore the dodgy parts; rather we learn how to work with them, skilfully and directly.”

The book uses the The Four Noble Truths (suffering exists; it has a cause; it has an end; and it has a cause to bring about its end) and The Eightfold Path (beneficial view, beneficial intention, beneficial communication, beneficial action, beneficial livelihood, beneficial effort, beneficial mindfulness and beneficial concentration) of Buddhism as a guide to help us understand our own self worth. There are a lot of practical meditations and awareness exercises throughout the book, and easy ‘on the spot’ practices at the end of each chapter. 

I found this book to be a helpful, practical and often funny reminder of my ‘enoughness’ (and yes, I have quite some demons to invite to tea) but it’s also a great introduction to Buddhism if you’re interested in learning more.