Enlightened by Design: Using Contemplative Wisdom to Bring Peace, Wealth, Warmth and Energy into Your H ome

This book shows how to use our homes to realign ourselves with the basic forces of nature: heaven and earth, the four directions, and the elemental energies that arise from them. Based on Tibetan Buddhist teachings on energy mandalas and the practice of space awareness, it includes playful quotes, provocative illustrations, and practical exercises for discovering the inspiration and delight hidden in our homes. And it explains the role of wakefulness in contemplative arts and design.

Berliner proceeds from living room to bedroom to kitchen to home office, illustrating with rigorous practicality how we can join space, color, function, harmony, and our senses to create functional, welcoming rooms. She draws on traditional geomantic systems from Celtic wisdom to feng-shui to show that home design and ecology are one and the same, and that intuition and our senses are our most effective decorating tools. Working with wakefulness and natural patterns of energy, we can create enlightened environments—and in this case enlightenment begins at home!

Helen Berliner is a visual artist, a teacher of contemplative arts, and a practitioner of Tibetan-style feng-shui. Her work has been exhibited in Europe, Australia, and North America in museums, corporate collections, and galleries. A senior student of the late Chögyam Trungpa, she now lives in Philadelphia.