"Stress is a sure happiness killer, but the antidote just might be Pocket Peace by Allan Lokos, founder and guiding teacher of the Community Meditation Center in New York City. Lokos brings a calming Buddhist slant to urban angst, doling out creative, easy-as-pie practices (choose a belonging you really like and give it away to discover how you feel about attachment issues) to help soothe your way, offering another great option for turning over new pages in your life."
—Boston Globe
"Allan Lokos' Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living is my new favorite recommendation. Lokos writes in an engaging, accessible style, sharing many personal stories from his own life to elucidate each of the paramitas and the pocket practices.
This is a great book for anyone new to Buddhism who wants to approach it from a down-to-earth, daily perspective. It is also good for those not so new to Buddhism, who need some new ideas or a new way of looking at their daily lives as practice."
—BellaOnline (Read the complete review)
"In his new book, Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living, Allan Lokos offers a blueprint of simple exercises based on the 10 "Paramis," or Perfection Practices, described in Buddhist philosophy. Lokos beautifully articulates these great spiritual teachings and distills them into concentrated dosages to address the realities of everyday life. He skillfully weaves together rich learning moments from his own life experiences with enlightened, yet profound lessons on virtues such as generosity, patience, and loving kindness. Lokos provides action steps to help you become more kind, compassionate, and generous. Beautifully written and incredibly effective, Pocket Peace combines Lokos' poignant personal stories with practical advice making it an irresistible read and an invaluable road map for those looking to reduce their anxiety, improve their relationships, and lead more peaceful, joyous lives."
—Religiology News
"Author Allan Lokos has written a helpful guidebook to help transform everyday living into a conscious journey of practiced peace.There have been many books published that try to teach one how to "live in the moment." And as much as we read about it, as much as we are encouraged to do it, it feels like old news most of the time. Lokos approaches the reader like a friend, sharing stories and personal experiences, with great warmth and compassion. The book feels much like a comfortable conversation. Broken into easy to read chapters, this text shows us how to nurture virtues within ourselves, such as morality, wisdom, patience and many more. Each chapter offers steps to practice these actions with meditative exercises.Pocket Peace - Effective Practices for Enlightened Living can change your life. After all, in the long run, life isn't so much what happens to us, it's how we react and respond to things that happen to us. It is what we make of it."
—Sacramento Book Review
"For days, I carried this book everywhere with me. It fits perfectly in my pocket, goes well with a cup of coffee in a café, opens at just the right page for that moment, and disarms with its simplicity. Its clear compassionate message is that everything we do and think matters. It is so everyday in its stories, its musings, and its suggestions that the "perfection practices" - generosity, wisdom, patience, determination, etc. - become not only attainable, but an absolute delight to try out in our daily lives. The author is an interfaith minister, and the founder and guiding teacher of the Community Meditation Center in New York City. Reading his warm, beautifully written book is like meeting a friend."
—Mandala
"Pocket Peace is a beautifully lucid and heartwarming book. Through many personal stories and simple practices, Allan Lokos shows us the possibility of wise living. His understanding, clarity, and open-heartedness move us from theory to action as we navigate through our lives."
—Joseph Goldstein, author of A Heart Full of Peace and One Dharma: The Emerging Western Buddhism
"Pocket Peace is a beautifully written, practical guide to transforming our everyday experience into one of greater peace. Allan Lokos warmly takes us by the hand and leads us, as a friend, into an exploration of a genuine path to happiness."
—Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness and Faith
"The way up is the way down," said Heraclitus, the giant Greek philosopher, and ever since, for twenty-five centuries, spiritual seekers have found this insight to be deep and true. But how to put it into practice? Allan Lokos hands us a guidebook. His Pocket Peace delivers what it promises: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living. It does so with a winning warmth and with altogether unpretentious wisdom. If we let him show us the way down into everyday spirituality, we may find ourselves raised higher up than we ever dared to hope.
—Brother David Steindl-Rast, author of Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer
Allan Lokos turns the Buddhist Paramis (Perfection Practices) into tools for life for the urban seeker. No matter what religious stance you come from, if you work with these practices they will work for you.
—Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, author of A Heart Afire and Integral Halachah
"A wonderfully heartfelt and pragmatic toolbox of meditative skills that anyone can practice anywhere at any time."
—Stephen Batchelor, author of Buddhism without Beliefs and Living with the Devil
Pocket Peace is a book of little gems for great progress. Hurdle with joy with Pocket Peace in your purse.
—Judy Collins, folk singer/song writer, author
Lokos offers insightful and always practical commentary on many spiritual matters of consequence including the priceless gift of presence, the feeling of pleasure without attachment, the negative fallout from the judgmental mind, and the necessity of recognizing the impermanence of all things.
—Spirituality and Practice (Read the complete review)
Allan's new book, Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living, will be published by Tarcher/Penguin in 2012.
