In American culture at large, anger--particularly among people of color--is delegitimized, demonized, or "supposed to be" suppressed. Social activist and Kagyu lama Rod Owens offers a different understanding. For Owens, the coauthor of Radical Dharma, anger is one of the most important aspects of his personal identity as a Buddhist, social activist, African American, and gay man. Anger serves as a bodyguard for our personal pain and suffering. When recognized and handled with attention, love, and compassion, it can be a powerful mobilizing factor in our solidarity and commitment to enacting social change. However, too many activist communities have an ill-informed, immature, and romanticized relationship to it. What is needed, says Owens, is a relationship to the heartbreak of anger that is embodied, nondestructive, and deeply healing for all. Here he offers personal insights, stories from others, as well as Buddhist teachings and meditations for tapping into anger's liberating potential.

    This book shows us that freedom is a choice we can all make' Gelong Thubten, author of A Monk's Guide to Happiness'A fascinating story of an incredible life, told with unflinching honesty' Dr John Sellars author of Lessons in Stoicism___________________________________________________________________________________Lama Yeshe didn't see a car until he was fifteen years old. In his quiet village, he and other children ran through fields with yaks and mastiffs. The rhythm of life was anchored by the pastoral cycles. The arrival of Chinese army cars in 1959 changed everything. In the wake of the deadly Tibetan Uprising, he escaped to India through the Himalayas as a refugee. One of only 13 survivors out of 300 travellers, he spent the next few years in America, experiencing the excesses of the Woodstock generation before reforming in Europe.Now in his seventies and a leading monk at the Samye Ling monastery in Scotland - the first Buddhist centre in the West - Lama Yeshe casts a hopeful look back at his momentous life. From his learnings on self-compassion and discipline to his trials and tribulations with loss and failure, his poignant story mirrors our own struggles.Written with erudition and humour, From a Mountain in Tibet shines a light on how the most desperate of situations can help us to uncover vital life lessons and attain lasting peace and contentment.

    With contributions by Acharya Gaylon Ferguson, Cheryl A. Giles, Gyōzan Royce Andrew Johnson, Ruth King, Kamilah Majied, Lama Rod Owens, Lama Dawa Tarchin Phillips, Sebene Selassie, and Pamela Ayo Yetunde. What does it mean to be Black and Buddhist? In this powerful collection of writings, African American teachers from all the major Buddhist traditions tell their stories of how race and Buddhist practice have intersected in their lives. The resulting explorations display not only the promise of Buddhist teachings to empower those facing racial discrimination but also the way that Black Buddhist voices are enriching the Dharma for all practitioners. As the first anthology comprised solely of writings by African-descended Buddhist practitioners, this book is an important contribution to the development of the Dharma in the West.

    Marines, Alex tells stories that show how the daily grind of work, traffic jams and family drama is the source of our enlightenment.

    I'm a drop in America, but I'm also America. Every pain, every confusion, every good and every bad and ugly of America is in me. And as I transform myself and heal and take care of myself, I'm very conscious that I'm healing and transforming and taking care of America. I say this for American cynics, but this is also true globally. It's for real." So says Zen Buddhist teacher Dr. Larry Ward.Shot at by the police as an 11-year-old child for playing baseball in the wrong spot, as an adult, Larry Ward experienced the trauma of having his home firebombed by racists. At Plum Village Monastery in France, the home in exile of his teacher, Vietnamese peace activist and Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, Dr. Ward found a way to heal. In these short reflective essays, he offers his insights on the effects of racial constructs and answers the question: how do we free ourselves from our repeated cycles of anger, denial, bitterness, pain, fear, violence? Larry Ward looks at the causes and conditions that have led us to our current state and finds, hidden in the crisis, a profound opportunity to reinvent what it means to be a human being. This is an invitation to transform America's racial karma.

    However, to make real progress in any of them, the methods need to be paired with a view of how our minds and our experience of the world around us really work. In this uncommonly practical and experiential guide, Phakchok Rinpoche leads us through how to achieve this correct view and really practice a meditation that can transform our lives, help us abandon our own bad habits and hypocrisy, and make real progress on the path to true freedom from the circles we follow that only lead to unhappiness. Grounding this presentation is The King of Samadhi Sutra – one of the most important in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition – which the author employs as a touchstone throughout. The simplicity will appeal to new and aspiring meditators, while the insightful approach based on living these practices will help seasoned practitioners get unstuck and make swift progress.

    Rachael Wooten combines the ancient Tara tradition with depth psychology to help us connect with each of Tara's manifestations and access her blessings within ourselves and in the external world.In her myriad forms, Tara has the power to protect us from inner and outer negativity, illuminate our self-sabotaging habits, cleanse mental and physical poisons, address emotional trauma, open us to abundance, give us strength and peace, help us fulfill our life purposes, and more.Here, you will explore all 22 manifestations of Tara. Each chapter begins with an epigraph that captures the spiritual and psychological essence of the emanation, explains her purpose, and teaches you specific visualizations, praises, mantra chants, and other ways of invoking her presence in yourself and the world."If ever the voice of wisdom and compassion was needed in the form of an awakened female figure such as Tara," writes Dr. Wooten, "that time is now." This book illuminates the way to her healing, blessings, and aid.

    Enlightened beings are always present here and now if you truly yearn to see them..."Born in India to a prominent Hindu Brahmin family, the Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi was only six years old when he began having visions of a mysterious mountain peak, and of men with shaved heads wearing robes the color of sunset. "It was as vivid as if I were watching a scene from life," he writes. And so at the age of ten, he ran away from boarding school to find this place--taking a train to the end of the line and then boarding a bus to wherever it went. Strangely enough, he ended up at a Buddhist monastery that was the place of his dreams. His frantic parents sent scouts to find him and, after two weeks, located him and brought him home. But he continued to have visions and feel a strong pull to a spiritual life in a tradition that he had never heard of as a child. Today, he is a revered monk and teacher as well as President & CEO of The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he works to build bridges among communities and religions. He is also director of the Ethics Initiative at the MIT Media Lab.Running Toward Mystery is the Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi's profound account of his lifelong journey as a seeker. At its heart is a story of striving for the unseen, the vital importance of mentors in that search, and of the many remarkable teachers he met along the way, among them the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Mother Teresa. "Teachers come and go on their own schedule," Priyadarshi writes. "I clearly wasn't in charge of the timetable and it wasn't my place to specify how a teacher should teach..." But arrive they did, at the right time, in the right way, to impart the lessons that shaped a life of seeking, devotion, and deep human connection across all barriers. Running Toward Mystery is at once the bracing and beautiful story of a singular life compelled to contemplation, and the riveting narrative of just how exciting that journey can be.

    As Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, a Zen priest who has written at length on race, gender, sexual orientation, and homelessness, writes in the introduction: "I have testified many times of my suffering. Before I die, I must speak of peace." The Deepest Peace is a poetic, lyrical ode to the ways contemplative practice illuminates daily life. It is at once a window into Zenju's personal practice, and an invitation to begin our own.

    

    

    While previous volumes focused on our present situation and taking responsibility for creating the causes for the happiness we seek, this volume is about opening our hearts to others and generating the compassion, joy, and fortitude to make our lives meaningful by benefiting them. We are embedded in a universe with other beings, all of whom have been kind to us in one way or another. More than any other time in human history, we depend on one another to stay alive and flourish. We are sometimes oblivious to their kindness, or take it for granted, which leads to feelings of discontent. But when we look closely, it becomes apparent that we have been the recipient of great kindness and naturally we want to repay it. To do this, we begin by cultivating a positive attitude toward others by contemplating the four immeasurables—immeasurable love, compassion, empathic joy, and equanimity—and the altruistic intention of bodhicitta. We learn to challenge the deluded logic of the self-centered attitude that leads to misery and replace it with a more realistic perspective that helps us to remain balanced when we experience either happiness or suffering. This enables us to make all circumstances favorable to the path to awakening.

    

    

    

    

    His teachings on mind nature and the path of the Great Perfection were unparalled. He had confidence and utterly pure trust based on the personal, direct understanding that buddha nature really is present in every sentient being. Just like oil is present in each and every sesame seed, any sentient being can realize the awakened state and thus has the basis for enlightenment.These pith instructions in Vajra Heart Revisited are concise, brilliant expositions on the path of Trekcho, starting with the ground, the preliminaries, shamatha, and viphashyana, Three Vital Words, up to and including teachings on guru yoga, and bardo. They are extremely clear explanations on all aspect of practice that the Dzogchen yogi can use as a manual of guidance and inspiration. They include key topics such as differentiating mind and awareness and threefold sky practice, among others. It is all that is necessary to attain full mastery and realization.The depth of Kyabje Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche's actual understanding was unsurpassed, and many Nyingma and Kagy� masters stood in awe of his comprehensive knowledge. He had thoroughly studied and practiced the Atiyoga, and his teachings on Dzogchen transformed the lives of those he touched with gentle, penetrating clarity. As a meditation teacher and a master of initiations, he was without peer.As he said, "We should focus our minds on simplicity, the state of buddhahood, nonconceptual wakefulness... Although you will not arrive at enlightenment immediately, if you aim towards it, as if intending to go to Bodhgaya, then no matter what happens on the way, if you never give up you will arrive. Since harm occurs in the mind, whatever disturbances arise in this body from aggregates, elements, and sense factors, just let go again and again into unfabricated naturalness. Then you will reach your destination, the state of Buddhahood".

    Schodt has had a mysterious, half-century-long fascination with the simple mantra that is chanted at the end of the Buddhist “Heart Sutra.” On a normally routine flight that unexpectedly developed mechanical difficulties, he resolved to memorize the sutra and to finally seriously study it.The Heart Sutra, beloved by millions in East Asia for over 1,400 years, is used as solace, protection, and a gateway to another mode of thinking. Schodt realized that it could also be his entry into a world of faith.In My Heart Sutra, Schodt explores his lifelong fascination with the sutra: its mesmerizing mantra, its ancient history, the “emptiness" theory, and the way it is used around the world as a metaphysical tool to overcome chaos and confusion and reach a new understanding of reality--a perfection of wisdom. To help put this ancient sutra into a modern context, Schodt's journey takes him to caves in China, American beats declaiming poetry, speculations into the sutra's true origins, and even a robot Avalokiteśvara at a Kyoto temple.

    This text, consisting of inspiring verses distilling the entire Mahayana path of compassion, continues to inspire modern-day Buddhist masters, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama.One of the most important commentaries on the Thirty-Seven Practices is by the twentieth-century master Dzatrul Ngawang Tenzin Norbu, known as the Buddha of Dza Rongphu, and is translated here along with associated meditation instructions for the first time. Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, who requested this translation by Christopher Stagg, provides an informative overview to the history of the text and commentary, introducing the reader to the world of one of Tibet's most widely studied texts.

    In this book, Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, a beloved Mahamudra teacher, first tells the extraordinary story of Naropa’s life and explains its profound lessons. He follows this with lucid and practical commentaries on two of Naropa’s songs of realization, explaining their precious instructions for realizing Mahamudra, the nature of one’s mind. Throughout, Thrangu Rinpoche speaks plainly and directly to Westerners eager to receive the essence of Mahamudra instructions from an accomplished teacher.

    It is one of the most important Zen Buddhist collections, composed during a period of remarkable religious diversity and experimentation. The text is complex and compelling, famed for its eloquent yet perplexing manner of expressing the core precepts of Zen teachings and practice.This book is a comprehensive introduction to this essential Zen text, offering a textual, historical, literary, and philosophical examination of Dōgen's treatise. Steven Heine explores the religious and cultural context in which the Treasury was composed and provides a detailed study of the various versions of the medieval text that have been compiled over the centuries. He includes nuanced readings of Dōgen's use of inventive rhetorical flourishes and the range of East Asian Buddhist textual and cultural influences that shaped the work. Heine explicates the philosophical implications of Dōgen's views on contemplative experience and attaining and sustaining enlightenment, showing the depth of his distinctive understanding of spiritual awakening. Readings of Dōgen's Treasury of the True Dharma Eye will give students and other readers a full understanding of this fundamental work of world religious literature.

    It explores our unexamined adherence to the materialistic worldview and its ignorance of the primacy of consciousness. Nirvana—mental liberation—is then presented as the most meaningful goal to strive for, with the Buddhist path shown to be the ultimate expression of self-improvement and spirituality.

    Sara E. Lewis's research reveals how those who cope most gracefully may indeed experience deep pain and loss. Looking at the Tibetan diaspora, she challenges perspectives that liken resilience to the hardiness of physical materials, suggesting people should bounce back from adversity. More broadly, this ethnography calls into question the tendency to use trauma as an organizing principle for all studies of conflict where suffering is understood as an individual problem rooted in psychiatric illness.Beyond simply articulating the ways that Tibetan categories of distress are different from biomedical ones, Spacious Minds shows how Tibetan Buddhism frames new possibilities for understanding resilience. Here, the social and religious landscape encourages those exposed to violence to see past events as impermanent and illusory, where debriefing, working-through, or processing past events only solidifies suffering and may even cause illness. Resilience in Dharamsala is understood as sems pa chen po, a vast and spacious mind that does not fixate on individual problems, but rather uses suffering as an opportunity to generate compassion for others in the endless cycle of samsara. A big mind view helps to see suffering in life as ordinary. And yet, an intriguing paradox occurs. As Lewis deftly demonstrates, Tibetans in exile have learned that human rights campaigns are predicated on the creation and circulation of the trauma narrative; in this way, Tibetan activists utilize foreign trauma discourse, not for psychological healing, but as a political device and act of agency.

    [But] you can become it. Becoming your true Self is zazen.” Profound Zen Buddhism teachings explained in ordinary language from one of the most respected Zen masters of the 20th century, Kodo Sawaki.Having come of age as an orphan in the slums of Tsu City, Japan, Kodo Sawaki had to fight his way to adulthood, and became one of the most respected Zen masters of the 20th century. He had a great understanding of Dogen Zenji’s teaching and he knew how to express Dogen’s philosophy in clear, easily-understood language. Sawaki’s primary mission was to bring all people to an awareness of the Self, which he believed came through Zen meditation.His humor and straightforward talk garnered Sawaki followers from all walks of life. Though he remained poor by choice, he was rich in spirit. Two of his disciples who became known in America as well as in Japan were Kosho Uchiyama, abbot of Antaiji Temple and author of Opening The Hand of Thought, and Gudo Nishijima, Zen teacher and translator of Dogen’s Shobogenzo.A student of Kosho Uchiyama, Arthur Braverman has compiled an anthology of Sawaki’s writings and a garland of sayings gathered from throughout his lifetime. One of a few collections of Sawaki’s teachings published in English, his life and work bracket the most intriguing and influential period of modern Zen practice in Japan and America.

    The work is celebrated both for its poetic style and philosophical depth. The simplicity and consistency of the writing makes it ideal for teaching Classical Japanese. For its reflection on impermanence and non-attachment, Hōjōki is a model of Buddhist thought. Mindful of the fleeting nature of this world, Chōmei demands that readers reconsider what is most important in life. The message is as evocative as it is universal.

    Can a New Age guru save his cult without losing his soul?In an ill-conceived effort to bring his once-popular meditation group and its teachings back into the limelight, Rinpoche Edward Schwartz heads to Taiwan to fabricate an improvised “religious oppression” video – starring a group of clueless language students who think they’re taking part in an English conversation class.The video goes viral and the scheme succeeds beyond Schwartz’s wildest expectations, triggering a media-driven propaganda war between the United States and China that spirals out of control.Before long, everybody from spiritual seekers in China and America to the Chinese government itself wants a piece of Schwartz’s cult – and of Schwartz himself.