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1. The Zen of You and Me: A Guide to Getting Along with Just About Anyone, by Diane Musho Hamilton

How to deal with interpersonal conflict--from a Zen perspective.

The people who get under your skin the most can in fact be your greatest teachers.  It’s not a matter of overlooking differences but of regarding those difficult aspects of the relationship with curiosity and compassion - for those very differences offer a path to profound connection.

Diane Hamilton’s practical, reality-based guide to living harmoniously with even your most irritating fellow humans - spouses, partners, colleagues, parents, children - shows that “getting along” is really a matter of discovering that our differences are nothing other than an expression of our even deeper shared unity.

2. The Mediation Process: Practical Strategies for Resolving Conflict, by Christopher W. Moore

Expensive but the most comprehensive book written on mediation, this text is perfect for new and experienced conflict managers working in any area of dispute resolution family, community, employment, business, environmental, public policy - multicultural, or international.

3. Nonviolent Communication, by Marshall B. Rosenberg

What is Violent Communication?  If "violent" means acting in ways that result in hurt or harm, then much of how we communicate - judging others, bullying, having racial bias, blaming, finger pointing, discriminating, speaking without listening, criticising others or ourselves, name-calling, reacting when angry, using political rhetoric, being defensive or judging who's "good/bad" or what's "right/wrong" with people - could indeed be called "violent communication."

Nonviolent Communication is the integration of four things:

• Consciousness: a set of principles that support living a life of compassion, collaboration, courage, and authenticity

• Language: understanding how words contribute to connection or distance

• Communication: knowing how to ask for what we want, how to hear others even in disagreement, and how to move toward solutions that work for all

• Means of influence: sharing "power with others" rather than using "power over others"

Nonviolent Communication serves our desire to do three things:

• Increase our ability to live with choice, meaning, and connection
• Connect empathically with self and others to have more satisfying relationships
• Sharing of resources so everyone is able to benefit

You can't change how other people act in a conflict, and often you can't change your situation. But you can change what you do.

Changing the Conversation is a graphic, two-colour manual that teaches essential strategies for resolving conflict in your life. Breaking the process down into 17 easy-to-grasp principles, it shows how you can facilitate listening and speaking, build useful dialogue and look for ways forward.

5. Sex and the Spiritual Teacher: Why it Happens and When It’s a Problem, by Scott Edelstein

Looks at the complex of forces that can tempt otherwise insightful, compassionate, and well-intentioned teachers to lose their way--and that tempt some of their students to lose their way as well. It analyses why most of our current efforts to keep spiritual teachers from transgressing sometimes don't work. It includes a set of practices and structures that can build community, encourage healthy student-teacher relationships, increase trust and spiritual intimacy between teachers and their students.