The Dharma in Difficult Times: Finding Your Calling in Times of Loss, Change, Struggle, and Doubt

The best-selling author of The Great Work of Your Life shows us the way through our darkest times to our truest calling.

How do we make sense of our lives when our world seems to be falling apart?

In this beautifully written guide, scholar and teacher Stephen Cope shows that crises don’t have to derail us from our purpose—they can actually help us to find our purpose and step forward as our best selves.

The Dharma in Difficult Times extends the message of Cope’s best-loved book, The Great Work of Your Life, which gave readers a roadmap for the journey to their true calling. As in Great Work, Cope here takes the ancient yogic text the Bhagavad Gita—the epic narrative of the warrior Arjuna’s odyssey of self-discovery—as a model for the reader’s journey. Then he builds on that foundation using the stories and teachings of famous figures, as well as stories of ordinary people and his own rich personal experience. Along the way, we find striking examples for finding meaning and purpose in our lives:
• Gandhi shows how to tap our spiritual resources and listen for our inner voice
• Sojourner Truth and Henry David Thoreau inspire us to seek out the unmistakable signs of dharma in the midst of chaos
• Marian Anderson and Ruby Sales shed light on dharma’s mystic power and how we learn to trust in it
• And more

In the spirit of Pema Chödrön’s When Things Fall Apart, this book is required reading when you find yourself forging a path through crisis—or seeking a way through your darkest times to your truest self.