Welcome to the Official Website of Author Mark Van Buren!
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Mark Van Buren is a Mental Fitness Trainer and Bergen County's go-to guide for all meditation and mindfulness-based training. With well over fifteen years of experience in the field, he instructs meditation workshops, lectures, professional development days, corporate wellness classes, and silent retreats in a practical, yet accessible way. He offers simple tools and practices that can reduce stress, help with anxiety and depression, manage pain, and transform the many difficult aspects of life.
Check Out Mark's Recent Presentation for Pepsico for Mental Health Day & His Newest Article From Tricycle Magazine!
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Praise for Your Life IS Meditation
“With his unique combination of clarity, humility, humor, and insight,
Mark has written a perfect book with which to start a meditation practice,
or if you're a longtime meditator a perfect book to help dissolve
that imaginary boundary between 'practice time' and the rest of your life.
You can feel Mark’s experiential wisdom coming through each page
and into your own practice— or, rather, your entire life. I really love this book!”
—Jaimal Yogis, author of Saltwater Buddha and All Our Waves Are Water
“Through personal and funny stories Mark makes accessible the path
to beginning to integrate meditation into a way of wellbeing in our daily life.”
—Koshin Paley Ellison, author of Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up
“Friendly, simple, and wise words for those
who would like to bring a little light and kindness into their daily lives.”
—Ben Connely, Soto Zen priest, secular mindfulness teacher and author of Mindfulness and Intimacy
A Fool's Guide to Actual Happiness
Available Where All Book's Are Sold!

Happiness lies within us - but we could all use a
little help finding it. In a refreshing new voice,
A Fool's Guide to Actual Happiness
shows us how to feel and be better - without
having to be perfect.
How to Order A Fool' Guide to Actual Happiness
Praise for A Fool's Guide to Actual Happiness
“This dude really gets it! The Buddha
believed in happiness for everyone,
and Van Buren gets you there in this concise
and simple book that’s just loaded with wisdom.”
—Gerry Stribling, author of Buddhism for Dudes
"Every page of A Fool's Guide to Actual Happiness
is a blissful relief from the self-help hamster wheel
of fantasies and imagined future selves.
A perfect book for starting out your meditation practice.”
—Jaimal Yogis, author of Saltwater Buddha
“For anyone who wants to explore Buddhist meditation,
this book opens the door. Mark makes the practice
accessible, clear, and easy to incorporate in the rest of your life.”
—Lodro Rinzler, author of The Buddha Walks into a Bar
"The Buddha exhorted his disciples to ‘strive with determination’
and to ‘look on with equanimity’ – two complementary modes of
working with the mind. Many people today have a bias towards ‘striving’
with little real equanimity. Mark Van Buren’s warm and clearly-written
book offers an antidote to the trap of inappropriate effort,
providing a guide to a more balanced approach
to following the Buddha’s teachings."
—Paramabandhu Groves, author of Eight Step Recovery:
Using the Buddha's Teachings to Overcome Addiction