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Buddhism in Prisons Canada has launched a Buddhist Book Donation Program for Canadian Prisons in 2022.
The 20 books (listed below) by the late Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh are being donated to Canadian prisons. These books are popular among Buddhists and the general public alike. They will also be useful for prison chaplains who wish to offer spiritual care service to Buddhists incarcerated in their institutions. Prison chaplains may email [email protected] to request this donation. 

Study Partnership Correspondence Program.   Beginning in the fall of 2023, a Certificate Program in "Understanding and Transforming Anger with Mindfulness" will be offered to prisons which had received our book donations.  In this program, four selected books - 1. Taming the Tiger Within; 2. No Mud No Lotus; 3. Reconciliation; 4. How to Love - authored by Thich Nhat Hanh will be studied by inmates with the guidance of their study partners. This correspondence program is designed to help inmates understand and transform their anger which may have prevented healing, mending of relationships and rehabilitation.

1. The Miracle of Mindfulness: In this beautiful and lucid guide, Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh offers gentle anecdotes and practical exercise as a means of learning the skills of mindfulness–being awake and fully aware. From washing the dishes to answering the phone to peeling an orange, he reminds us that each moment holds within it an opportunity to work toward greater self-understanding and peacefulness.
2. Taming the Tiger Within is a handbook of meditations, analogies, and reflections that offer pragmatic techniques for diffusing anger, converting fear, and cultivating love in every arena of life-a wise and exquisite guide for bringing harmony and healing to one’s life and relationships.
3. Anger: It was under the bodhi tree in India twenty-five centuries ago that Buddha achieved the insight that three states of mind were the source of all our unhappiness: wrong knowing, obsessive desire, and anger. All are difficult, but in one instant of anger—one of the most powerful emotions—lives can be ruined, and health and spiritual development can be destroyed. With exquisite simplicity, Buddhist monk and Vietnam refugee Thich Nhat Hanh gives tools and advice for transforming relationships, focusing energy, and rejuvenating those parts of ourselves that have been laid waste by anger. His extraordinary wisdom can transform your life and the lives of the people you love, and in the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, can give each reader the power “to change everything.”
4. No Mud No Lotus: The secret to happiness is to acknowledge and transform suffering, not to run away from it. In No Mud, No Lotus, Thich Nhat Hanh offers practices and inspiration transforming suffering and finding true joy. Thich Nhat Hanh acknowledges that because suffering can feel so bad, we try to run away from it or cover it up by consuming. We find something to eat or turn on the television. But unless we’re able to face our suffering, we can’t be present and available to life, and happiness will continue to elude us. Nhat Hanh shares how the practices of stopping, mindful breathing, and deep concentration can generate the energy of mindfulness within our daily lives. With that energy, we can embrace pain and calm it down, instantly bringing a measure of freedom and a clearer mind.
5. Fragrant Palm Leaves: Regarded by many as Thich Nhat Hanh’s most personally revealing and endearing book, these collected journals chronicle the first-hand experiences of the Zen Master as a young man in both the United States and Vietnam, just as his home country is plunged into war and turmoil. A rare window into the early life of a spiritual icon, Fragrant Palm Leaves provides a model of how to live fully, with awareness, during a time of change and upheaval.
6. The Energy of Prayer: Thich Nhat Hanh looks at the applications and effectiveness of prayer in Buddhist and other spiritual traditions and closely examines the question of why we pray. The Energy of Prayer introduces the reader to several meditation methods that re-envision prayer as an open, inclusive, and accessible practice that helps create healthy lives through the power of awareness and intention.
7. Awakening of the Heart is a comprehensive, single volume collection of the Buddha’s key sutras, translated with contemporary commentary by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. It is an essential complement to Happiness, the bestselling collection of meditation and mindful practices released in 2009. Awakening of the Heart captures the heart of Buddhist wisdom and Thich Nhat Hanh’s unique talent to make the Buddha’s teachings accessible and applicable to our daily lives and times.
8. The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching Thich Nhat Hanh introduces us to the core teachings of Buddhism and shows us that the Buddha’s teachings are accessible and applicable to our daily lives. With poetry and clarity, Thich Nhat Hanh imparts comforting wisdom about the nature of suffering and its role in creating compassion, love, and joy–all qualities of enlightenment. The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching is a radiant beacon on Buddhist thought for the initiated and uninitiated alike.
9. Peace Is Every Step contains commentaries and meditations, personal anecdotes and stories from Thich Nhat Hanh’s experiences as a peace activist, teacher, and community leader. The deceptively simple practices of Peace Is Every Step encourage the reader to work for peace in the world as he or she continues to work on sustaining inner peace by turning the “mindless” into the mindful. 
10. No Death, No Fear examines our concepts of death, fear, and the very nature of existence. Through Zen parables, guided meditations, and personal stories, he explodes traditional myths of how we live and die. Thich Nhat Hanh shows us a way to live a life unfettered by fear.
11. How to Love distills one of our strongest emotions down to four essentials: you can only love another when you feel true love for yourself; love is understanding; understanding brings compassion; deep listening and loving speech are key ways of showing our love.
12. Present Moment Wonderful Moment:  Developed during a summer retreat in Plum Village, Thich Nhat Hanh’s meditation center in France, these poetic verses were collected to help children and adults practice mindfulness.
13. Chanting from the Heart: This Plum Village Chanting and Recitation Book is a most valuable resource for anyone interested in liturgy and everyone who just wants to celebrate life and practice the art of mindful living. It contains chants and recitations for daily spiritual practice and for such occasions as blessing a meal, celebrating a wedding, comforting the sick and remembering the deceased.
14. Be Free Where you are: Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. This compendium of the core teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, based on a talk given at a prison, shows how mindfulness practice can cultivate freedom no matter where you are.
15. Living Buddha, Living Christ:  Buddha and Christ, perhaps the two most pivotal figures in the history of humankind, each left behind a legacy of teachings and practices that have shaped the lives of billions of people over two millennia. If they were to meet on the road today, what would each think of the other's spiritual views and practices? 
16. The Pocket Thich Nhat Hanh Paperback: Taken from his many published works, this book offers a concise introduction to the Hanh’s major themes—such as mindfulness, enlightenment, and compassion—and distill his teachings on the transformation of individuals, relationships, and society.
17. Old Path White Cloud presents the life and teachings of Gautama Buddha. Drawn directly from 24 Pali, Sanskrit, and Chinese sources, and retold by Thich Nhat Hanh in his inimitably beautiful style, this book traces the Buddha’s life slowly and gently over the course of 80 years, partly through the eyes of Svasti, the buffalo boy, and partly through the yes of the Buddha himself.
18. Understanding Our Mind  A finalist for the 2001 Nautilus Award, Understanding Our Mind is Thich Nhat Hanh’s profound look at Buddhist psychology with insights into how these ancient teachings apply to the modern world. Based on the fifty verses on the nature of consciousness taken from the great fifth-century Buddhist master Vasubandhu and the teachings of the Avatamsaka Sutra, Thich Nhat Hanh focuses on the direct experience of recognizing, embracing, and looking deeply into the nature of our feelings and perceptions. 
19. Reconciliation Based on Dharma talks by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and insights from participants in retreats for healing the inner child, this book is an exciting contribution to the growing trend of using Buddhist practices to encourage mental health and wellness. Reconciliation focuses on the theme of mindful awareness of our emotions and healing our relationships, as well as meditations and exercises to acknowledge and transform the hurt that many of us experienced as children. The book shows how anger, sadness, and fear can become joy and tranquility by learning to breathe with, explore, meditate, and speak about our strong emotions. Reconciliation offers specific practices designed to bring healing and release for people suffering from childhood trauma. The book is written for a wide audience and accessible to people of all backgrounds and spiritual traditions.
​20. How to Live when a Loved One Dies This book offers relief to anyone moving though intense grief and loss, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh shares accessible, comforting words of wisdom on how to transform our suffering in the face of death. In the immediate aftermath of a loss, sometimes it is all we can do to keep breathing. Internationally-beloved Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh’s down-to-earth teachings challenge our conventional ways of looking at dying, and show us the gentle path to healing and transformation. This book offers guidance on how to work through the storm of emotions surrounding the death of a loved one and offers simple but powerful practices–starting with mindful breathing and mindful walking–that can help us. The book is rounded out by concrete ways to help us reconcile with death (and loss), feel connected to our loved one long after they have let go of their physical form, and transform our grief into joy.