SHAMBHALA SUNB U D D H I S M C U LT U R E M E D I TAT I O N L I F E M A R C H 2 0 1 4

“You can connect with the mind of nowness at any moment”

RUTH OZEKI • NATALIE GOLDBERG • GETTING BEYOND BLAME • DOES THE BUDDHA EVER LIE ?

Pema Chödrön’s 4 Keys to

Waking Up

Rise Up!bell hooks & Eve Ensler

GPS for the MindSylvia Boorstein

Thanks to YokoLisa Carver

By AndreA Millerbooks in brief

UNFINISHED CONVERSATIONHealing from Suicide and Loss

By Robert E. Lesoine with Marilynne Chöphel

Parallax Press 2013; 176 pp., $14.95 (paper)

Longtime Buddhist practitioner Robert Lesoine was at the den-

tist with his mouth full of equipment when his cellphone rang.

It was his best friend’s ex-wife calling, but she was screaming and

crying so hard that she was incomprehensible. Finally Lesoine

understood: his best friend had killed himself. For two years fol-

lowing this loss, Lesoine kept a journal to help him work through

his profound grief—the shock and disbelief, the rage and sorrow.

Unfinished Conversation incorporates moving sections from the

journal, plus writing prompts, meditations, and other practical

suggestions for finding support in the wake of a loved one’s sui-

cide. Lesoine’s collaborator, Marilynne Chöphel, is a marriage

and family therapist who specializes in the treatment of acute

and relational trauma.

WIND AND RAINThe Life of Ikkyu

Story by Ven. Miao You, art by Yan Kaixin

Buddha’s Light Publishing 2013; 160 pp., $9.95 (paper)

Buddhist Light Publishing is translating a series of Chinese

graphic novels telling the life stories of great Buddhist monas-

tics. Wind and Rain is the biography of the Rinzai Zen monk

and poet Ikkyu. Rumored to be the illegitimate son of Emperor

Go-Komatsu, he was a fifteenth-century vagabond who is cel-

ebrated for attaining enlightenment at Lake Biwa when a crow

cawed. Wind and Rain is the sanitized, all-ages version of his

story. There’s no mention of his notorious consumption of alco-

hol or his late-life lover, Mori, a blind singer. The emphasis is

instead on Ikkyu’s deep commitment to justice. From a young

age, he criticized the corruption he saw in both the aristocracy

and Buddhist institutions and he sought out teachers who, like

him, shunned material wealth and titles. Amid the hardships

of war, he organized relief for the poor and helped create and

rebuild temples. Ikkyu passed away in his eighty-eighth year in

the middle of autumn.

BUDDHA’S BOOK OF STRESS REDUCTIONFinding Serenity and Peace with Mindfulness Meditation

By Joseph Emet

Tarcher 2013; 224 pp., $15.95 (paper)

The first noble truth in Buddhism is dukkha, which is most com-

monly translated as “suffering.” But as Joseph Emet points out,

some leading translators are now rendering this Pali word as

“stress.” Buddha’s Book of Stress Reduction begins by exploring

the stressful impact of our to-do lists. The average toddler smiles

six hundred times a day, but as we grow up our focus shifts from

the present to future goals, which limits our happiness. Emet is

not suggesting we throw away planning or any of our other adult

life skills, but he is recommending that we take more time to

enjoy the present moment, even in the face of the need to get

things done. Emet goes on to address the myriad elements of

stress, such as past wounds, worry, irritation, anger, fear, work,

and relationships.

LOVE LETTER TO THE EARTH

By Thich Nhat Hanh

Parallax Press 2013; 144 pp., $14.95 (paper)

Environmental activists get a bad rap for being dour. Zen master

Thich Nhat Hanh, however, is anything but. Instead of finger-

pointing and calling for austerity, his solution to our environ-

mental crisis is mindfulness. Through mindfulness, he says,

we realize that the Earth is not simply the ground beneath our

feet—we are the Earth. Every cell in our body comes from the

Earth and is part of it. “We are a living, breathing manifestation

of this beautiful and generous planet,” he says. When we know

SHAMBHALA SUN MArcH 2014 75

this, we fall completely in love with the Earth, and as with any-

thing we love, we naturally do whatever we can to take care of it.

I particularly appreciate Thich Nhat Hanh’s heartfelt description

of seeing for the first time photos of the Earth taken from space.

He saw a glowing jewel and recognized the Earth’s fragility. “Dear

Earth,” he thought, “I didn’t know that you are so beautiful. I see

you in me. I see me myself in you.”

YOGAThe Art of Transformation

Edited by Debra Diamond

Smithsonian Books 2013; 328 pp., $55 (cloth)

Yoga: The Art of Transformation is the sumptuous catalogue of a

recent exhibition at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smith-

sonian Institution. A visual feast, it also offers essays by scholars

tackling the convoluted history of yoga. In today’s yoga studios,

it’s commonly believed that the earliest evidence we have for

yoga is a third-millennium BCE clay seal from the Indus River

Valley. According to scholar David Gordon White, however, this

depiction of a figure seated in a cross-legged posture is not con-

clusive evidence that yoga was practiced at that time. After all,

images of figures in this very same posture also hail from ancient

Scandinavia and other locales. Additional thought-provoking

angles covered in this book include the fact that European body-

building influenced modern yoga, and that yoga is not just con-

nected to Buddhism and Hinduism but is also deeply connected

to Jainism and Islam. Indeed, Muslim interest in yoga dates back

a thousand years to the scholar al-Biruni, who translated Patan-

jali’s Yoga Sutras into Arabic.

EVERYTHING IS WORKABLEA Zen Approach to Conflict Resolution

By Diane Musho Hamilton

Shambhala Publications 2013; 218 pp., $16.95 (paper)

When she was growing up, Diane Musho Hamilton’s extended

family had parties at her grandmother’s house. By 9 p.m. the

conversation was always lively, but by 1 a.m. arguments were

brewing and soon someone was storming out the front door.

Hamilton was sometimes at the heart of the fray, at times an ally

in the fight, and at other times an unbiased observer. Curious

about these different roles, she went on to study mediation, and

Everything Is Workable comes out of her many years of work in

that field. This book offers readers a new way of thinking about

conflict. It unpacks what Hamilton believes are the three per-

sonal conflict styles and the three fundamental perspectives

in any conflict situation. Conflict is an inevitable part of life,

Hamilton teaches, and if we try to eradicate it in one area, it will

simply manifest elsewhere. What we can do—what we will ulti-

mately find more useful and satisfying—is to accept conflict and

integrate it into our spiritual path.

THE BUDDHA’S APPRENTICE AT BEDTIMETales of Compassion and Kindness for You to Read with Your Child—to Delight and Inspire

By Dharmachari Nagaraja

Watkins Publishing 2013; 128 pp., $16.95 (paper)

Some monkeys had a penchant for stealing the king’s peaches

and plums, and they were so wily that the gardener was never

able to catch them. One day, the cook’s daughter suggested lay-

ing an enticing trap of cake. Sweets, she said, would make the

monkeys sleepy, and sleepy monkeys would be easier to catch.

The shoemaker’s son also had an idea: he’d make dazzling high

heels, which the vain monkeys would be unable to resist. It’s

difficult to run away, he said, when wearing impractical shoes.

A few days later, the monkeys slipped into the orchard and

found a cake stand weighted down with cream-filled cupcakes

and tree branches hung with pumps. Indeed, the monkeys

could not resist. They ended up trapped in the king’s zoo and it

took them a good long while to escape. “The Monkey Thieves”

is just one of the stories from the children’s book The Buddha’s

Apprentice at Bedtime. Like every story in the collection, it’s a

modern retelling of a Jataka Tale and it exemplifies a principle

of the noble eightfold path. Do not be greedy or vain is what

this story teaches. ♦

SHAMBHALA SUN MArcH 2014 76

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Always Beginner’s Mind

San Francisco Zen

Center at 50

The Novelist’s Path

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Pema Chödrön

Feminine PrincipalWomen teachers changing Buddhism

ICU for the SoulPico Iyer on the healing power of retreat

Don’t Go ThereA Jewish Buddhist in Germany

B U D D H I S M C U LT U R E M E D I TAT I O N L I F E N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 2

A Greater HappinessThe compassionate life of the bodhisattva-warrior

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RAM DASS • HOW TO PRACTICE MET TA • ARE YOU TRULY L ISTENING? • ANYEN RINPOCHE

Joyful Giving’Tis always the seasonWhat Makes Us Free?Practical and profound guidance from

Jack Kornfield & Joseph GoldsteinBe a Lamp Unto Yourself Unpacking the Buddha’s famous exhortation

Thich Nhat HanhSit in on a transformational retreat—and exclusive interview—with this masterful teacher of Zen and mindfulness.

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