The Buddhist Enneagram: Nine Paths to Warriorship

With wisdom, creativity, and artistry, Susan Piver brings a Buddhist lens to the spiritual map of the enneagram. The results are vibrant and nourishing; a banquet of insights that help us transmute our difficult emotions into pure expressions of our basic goodness. —Tara Brach, best-selling author of Radical Acceptance and Trusting the Gold

By blending her long-time studies of Buddhism and the enneagram, Piver supports us to turn away from incessant self-improvement and relax into our natural brilliance. She assures us that everything we seek . . .is already here. —Mark Hyman, MD, 14-time New York Times best-selling author and founder of “Ultrawellness”

The Buddhist Enneagram is a personal exploration of Buddhist teachings on liberation from suffering and how the enneagram illuminates the way. This work is not an academic overview of interesting correlations between the systems. Rather, it shows how the enneagram gives powerful insight into your unique spiritual journey—and how you can support others in theirs.

Buddhist teacher and New York Times bestselling author Susan Piver has spent nearly 30 years in parallel study of Tibetan Buddhism and the enneagram. Piver masterfully weaves together two ancient schools of wisdom and magic in a compassionate exploration of the nine styles of traveling the path from confusion to wisdom.

With Buddhist teachings for each of the nine types, Piver illustrates that, no matter what your spiritual path is (including the path of no path), the enneagram offers profound support for living a deeply compassionate and fiercely awake life.

In this groundbreaking work, we find a way to untether ourselves from the merciless treadmill of self-improvement to see what is already perfect in ourselves, in others, and in every moment. This is the warrior’s journey.

Note from the author:
My new book is here! It is meant to invoke the enneagram (a system that describes 9 ways of being in the world) as so much more than the parlor game du jour or even a therapeutic tool used for transactional reasons.

It is one of the great wisdom traditions available to us as seekers, lovers, friends, and artists. To look at the enneagram through the lens of Buddhism is a way to recapture the depths.

I’ve been studying Buddhism and the enneagram side by side for close to 30 years. (How did that even happen?!) Practicing both was a very personal investigation, until I began talking about it with friends. And then colleagues. Then students. In each case, I saw how the enneagram brought certain Buddhist teachings to life…and vice versa.

I never thought I’d write about it all, but what do I know. After 3 years of loving and fighting with this material, here it is.

May it open new doors!