Natalie Goldberg

Natalie Goldberg

NATALIE GOLDBERG is the author of fifteen books. Writing Down the Bones, her first, has been translated into nineteen languages. Three Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku is her latest book. For the last forty years she has practiced Zen and taught seminars in writing as a spiritual practice. She lives in northern New Mexico.

Natalie Goldberg

NATALIE GOLDBERG is the author of fifteen books. Writing Down the Bones, her first, has been translated into nineteen languages. Three Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku is her latest book. For the last forty years she has practiced Zen and taught seminars in writing as a spiritual practice. She lives in northern New Mexico.

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GUIDES

Women in Buddhism

Women in Buddhism

Throughout history women have played a vital role in the preservation and presentation of Buddhism. The Buddha himself expressed deep respect for his mother and as several contemporary Buddhist scholars have pointed out, women have played a significant role in helping to shape and preserve Buddhism. That is certainly true for Buddhism in today's world.

Today, contemporary Buddhism is largely shaped by a number of women who play vital roles from translation to teaching, to holding highly influential seats in Buddhist sanghas around the world. We are happy to publish a wide range of Buddhist authors from diverse traditions. This guide is certainly not complete in the sense of presenting each and every example of women in Buddhism today, but hopefully it will give readers a place to begin learning from and celebrating the many women who make Buddhism possible today.

Recent and Upcoming Releases

$24.95 - Paperback

Lifting as They Climb
Black Women Buddhists and Collective Liberation

By Toni Pressley-Sanon

The lives and writings of six leading Black Buddhist women—Jan Willis, bell hooks, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, angel Kyodo williams, Spring Washam, and Faith Adiele—reveal new expressions of Buddhism rooted in ancestry, love, and collective liberation.

Lifting as They Climb is a love letter of freedom and self-expression from six Black women Buddhist teachers, conveyed through the voice of author Toni Pressley-Sanon, one of the innumerable people who have benefitted from their wisdom. She explores their remarkable lives and undertakes deep readings of their work, weaving them into the broader tapestry of the African diaspora and the historical struggle for Black liberation.

Dr. Toni Pressley-Sanon is an associate professor in the Department of Africology & African American Studies at Eastern Michigan University, having previously held positions at the University of Buffalo and Pennsylvania State University. Her work dwells on the intersections of memory, history, and culture in both Africa and the African diaspora. She is the author of four books and numerous journal articles and book chapters on these subjects. Toni has practiced Buddhist meditation and mindfulness for the past ten years.

Available 05/21/2024

$26.95 - Paperback

A Dakini's Counsel
Sera Khandro's Spiritual Advice and Dzogchen Instructions

By Sera Khandro
Translated by Christina Monson

Sera Khandro Dewai Dorje was a modern Tibetan Buddhist teacher who single-pointedly pursued a life of Dharma while balancing family life and public teaching. This collection of her advice, prayers, dreams, prophecies, and treasures (terma) is both biographical and instructional. It comes from within the tradition of Dzogchen, replete with practices for resting in the nature of mind. This lineage forms the bedrock of Christina Monson’s own spiritual path, lending a deep intimacy to the translations, which serve as a window into Sera Khandro’s life, teachings, and rich inner experience.

Sera Khandro (1892–1940) was one of the most prolific Tibetan female authors of the past several centuries. At the age of fifteen, she left her home in Lhasa for eastern Tibet, embarking on a lifetime devoted to her spiritual path—she became a spiritual master, a revealer of ancient hidden teachings, a mystic, a visionary, a writer, a mother, and a vagabond. Her written works and spiritual lineage have been preserved and are now cherished worldwide.

Christina Monson (1969–2023) was a Buddhist practitioner and teacher and Tibetan language translator and interpreter. She had over thirty years of study, translation, and practice experience in Buddhism beginning with an interest in Asian philosophy as an undergraduate student at Brown University.

embodying tara

$22.95 - Paperback

Embodying Tara
Twenty-One Manifestations to Awaken Your Innate Wisdom

By Chandra Easton

Tara, the Buddhist goddess of compassion, can manifest within all of us. In this illustrated introduction to Tara's twenty-one forms, respected female Buddhist teacher and practitioner Dorje Lopön Chandra Easton shows you how to invite Tara’s awakened energy to come alive in yourself through:

  • insight into core Buddhist concepts and teachings;
  • meditations;
  • mantra recitations; and
  • journal exercises.

The relatable stories from Buddhist history and the author’s personal reflections will give you the tools to live a more compassionate life, befriend your fears, and overcome everyday challenges.

Chandra Easton is a Dharma teacher, author, and translator of Tibetan Buddhist texts. She has taught Buddhism and Hatha Yoga since 2001. In 2015, she was given the title of Vajra Teacher, Dorje Lopön, for Tara Mandala Retreat Center by Lama Tsultrim Allione and H. E. Gochen Sang Ngag Rinpoche. Lopön Chandra studied Buddhism and Tibetan language in Dharamsala, India, and at UCSB’s religious studies department. During her studies, she cotranslated with her mentor, B. Alan Wallace, Sublime Dharma: A Compilation of Two Texts on the Great Perfection (Vimala Publishing, 2012).

$21.95 - Paperback

The Buddhist and the Ethicist
Conversations on Effective Altruism, Engaged Buddhism, and How to Build a Better World

By Peter Singer
By Shih Chao-Hwei

An unlikely duo—Professor Peter Singer, a preeminent philosopher and professor of bioethics, and Venerable Shih Chao-Hwei, a Taiwanese Buddhist monastic and social activist—join forces to talk ethics in lively conversations that cross oceans, overcome language barriers, and bridge philosophies. The eye-opening dialogues collected here share unique perspectives on contemporary issues like animal welfare, gender equality, the death penalty, and more. Together, these two deep thinkers explore the foundation of ethics and key Buddhist concepts, and ultimately reveal how we can all move toward making the world a better place.

Shih Chao-Hwei is a Buddhist monastic, social activist, scholar, and recent winner of the Niwano Peace Prize. A leading advocate for animal rights, a vocal supporter of same-sex marriage, and a key figure in the Buddhist gender equality movement, she is also a professor at Hsuan Chuang University and the founder of Hong Shih Buddhist College.
Peter Singer, the “father of the modern animal welfare movement,” was named one of the most influential people in the world by Time magazine. An Australian philosopher and professor of bioethics, he has contributed to more than 50 books in over 30 languages. Singer is founder of The Life You Can Save nonprofit and a professor of bioethics at Princeton University.
ShangpaV2

$49.95 - Hardcover

Shangpa Kagyu: The Tradition of Khyungpo Naljor, Part Two
Essential Teachings of the Eight Practice Lineages of Tibet, Volume 12 (The Treasury of Precious Instructions)

By Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Taye
Translated by Sarah Harding

This is the second of two volumes that present teachings and practices from the Shangpa Kagyu practice lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. This tradition derives from two Indian yoginīs, the dākinīs Niguma and Sukhasiddhi, and their disciple, the eleventh-century Tibetan yogi Khyungpo Naljor Tsultrim Gönpo of the Shang region of Tibet. There are forty texts in this volume, beginning with Jonang Tāranātha’s classic commentary and its supplement expounding the Six Dharmas of Niguma. It includes the definitive collection of the tantric bases of the Shangpa Kagyu—the five principal deities of the new translation (sarma) traditions and the Five-Deity Cakrasamvara practice. The source scriptures, liturgies, supplications, empowerment texts, instructions, and practice manuals were composed by Tangtong Gyalpo, Tāranātha, Jamgön Kongtrul, and others.

The first part of this series is also available now.

Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Taye (1813–1900) was a versatile and prolific scholar and one of the most outstanding writers and teachers of his time in Tibet. He was a pivotal figure in eastern Tibet’s nonsectarian movement and made major contributions to education, politics, and medicine.
Sarah Harding has been a Buddhist practitioner since 1974 and has been teaching and translating since completing a three year retreat in 1980 under the guidance of Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche. Her publications include Zhije and Chöd, respectively the thirteenth and fourteenth volumes of The Treasury of Precious Instructions series. She was an associate professor at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, starting in 1992, and has been a fellow of the Tsadra Foundation since 2000.

Women in Buddhist Research & Academia

The Woman Who Raised the Buddha
The Extraordinary Life of Mahaprajapati

By Wendy Garling

Mahaprajapati was the only mother the Buddha ever knew. His birth mother, Maya, died shortly after childbirth, and her sister Mahaprajapati took the infant to her breast, nurturing and raising him into adulthood. In this first full biography of Mahaprajapati, Wendy Garling presents her life story, with attention to her early years as sister, queen, matriarch, and mother, as well as her later years as a nun. Garling reveals just how exceptional Mahaprajapati’s role was as leader of the first generation of Buddhist women, helping the Buddha establish an equal community of lay and monastic women and men. Mother to the Buddha, mother to early Buddhist women, mother to the Buddhist faith, Mahaprajapati’s journey is finally presented as one interwoven with the founding of Buddhism.

$18.95 - Paperback

Wendy Garling is a writer, mother, gardener, independent scholar, and authorized dharma teacher with a BA from Wellesley College and MA in Sanskrit language and literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Stars at Dawn: Forgotten Stories of Women in the Buddha’s Life (2016, Shambhala Publications), a groundbreaking new biography of the Buddha that relates his journey to awakening through the stories of Buddhism’s first women.

Illumination
A Guide to the Buddhist Method of No-Method

By Rebecca Li

A modern guide to the transformative practice of silent illumination from Chan Buddhist teacher Rebecca Li.

Silent illumination, a way of penetrating the mind through curious inquiry, is an especially potent, accessible, and portable meditation practice perfectly suited for a time when there is so much fear, upheaval, and sorrow in our world. It is a method of reconnecting with our true nature, which encompasses all that exists and where suffering cannot touch us.

$21.95 - Paperback

Rebecca Li, PhD, is a meditation and Dharma teacher in the lineage of Chan Master Sheng Yen and founder and guiding teacher of Chan Dharma Community. She gives Dharma talks and leads Chan retreats in North America and Europe. She is also a sociology professor and lives with her husband in New Jersey. Her talks, writings, and schedule can be found at rebeccali.org.

Tales of a Mad Yogi
The Life and Wild Wisdom of Dukpa Kunley

By Elizabeth L Monson

The fifteenth-century Himalayan saint Drukpa Kunley is a beloved figure throughout Tibet, Bhutan, and Nepal, known both for his profound mastery of Buddhist practice as well as his highly unconventional and often humorous behavior. Ever the proverbial trickster and “crazy wisdom” yogi, his outward appearance and conduct of carousing, philandering, and breaking social norms is understood to be a means to rouse ordinary people out of habitual ways of thinking that leads them toward spiritual awakening.

Elizabeth Monson has spent decades traveling throughout the Himalayas, retracing Drukpa Kunley’s steps and translating his works. In this creative telling, she has reimagined his life based on historical accounts, autobiographical sketches, folktales, and first-hand ethnographic research. The result, with flourishes of magical encounters and references to his superhuman capacities, is a poignant narrative of Kunley’s life, revealing to the reader the quintessential example of the capacity of Buddhism to skillfully bring people to liberation.

$19.95 - Paperback

Elizabeth Monson, PhD, is the spiritual codirector of Natural Dharma Fellowship and the managing teacher at Wonderwell Mountain Refuge. She is a Dharma teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, has lectured at the Harvard Divinity School, and teaches meditation throughout New England.

living theravadaLiving Theravada
Demystifying the People, Places, and Practices of a Buddhist Tradition

By Brooke Schedneck

An illuminating introduction to the contemporary world of Theravada Buddhism and its rich culture and practices in modern mainland Southeast Asia.

Theravada translates as “the way of the Elders,” indicating that this Buddhist tradition considers itself to be the most authoritative and pure. Tracing all the way back to the time of the Buddha, Theravada Buddhism is distinguished by canonical literature preserved in the Pali language, beliefs, and practices—and this literature is often specialized and academic in tone. By contrast, this book will serve as a foundational and accessible resource on Theravada Buddhism and the contemporary, lived world of its enduring tradition.

$24.95 - Paperback

Brooke Schedneck, PhD, is an assistant professor in the department of religious studies at Rhodes College. Her work focuses on contemporary Buddhism in Thailand, and she spent years teaching and conducting research in Chiang Mai. She has presented her research internationally, and her work has been featured in academic journals and publications such as TricycleAeon, and The Conversation.

An inspiring and intimate tale set against the turmoil of recent Tibetan history, Inseparable across Lifetimes offers for the first time the translations of love letters between two modern Buddhist visionaries. The letters are poetic, affectionate, and prophetic, articulating a hopeful vision of renewal that drew on their past lives together and led to their twenty-year partnership. This couple played a significant role in restoring Buddhism in the region of Golok once China’s revolutionary fervor gave way to reform. Holly Gayley, who was given their correspondence by Namtrul Rinpoche himself, has translated their lives and letters in order to share their remarkable story with the world.

$24.95 - Paperback

Holly Gayley, Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies, is a scholar and translator of contemporary Buddhist literature in Tibet. She is author of Love Letters from Golok: A Tantric Couple in Modern Tibet, co-editor of A Gathering of Brilliant Moons: Practice Advice from the Rime Masters of Tibet, and translator of Inseparable Across Lifetimes: The Lives and Love Letters of Namtrul Rinpoche and Khandro Tāre Lhamo.

Black and Buddhist
What Buddhism Can Teach Us about Race, Resilience, Transformation, and Freedom

Edited by Cheryl A. Giles and Pamela Ayo Yetunde

Leading African American Buddhist teachers offer lessons on racism, resilience, spiritual freedom, and the possibility of a truly representative American Buddhism.

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.

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.

$19.95 - Paperback

Cheryl A. Giles, Psy.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist and the Francis Greenwood Peabody Senior Lecturer on Pastoral Care and Counseling at the Harvard Divinity School. Giles is the author of several articles and co-editor of The Arts of Contemplative Care (Wisdom, 2012).
Pamela Ayo Yetunde, J.D., Th.D. is a Community Dharma Leader in the Insight Meditation tradition. She teaches pastoral care and counseling and has taught at University of the West, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, and Upaya Institute and Zen Center. Ayo has written for BuddhadharmaLion’s RoarReligions, and Buddhist-Christian Studies. She is the author of Object Relations, Buddhism and Relationality in Womanist Practical Theology and Buddhist-Christian Dialogue, U.S. Law, and Womanist Theology for Transgender Spiritual Care.

Red Tara
The Female Buddha of Power and Magnetism

By Rachael Stevens

Tara is one of the most celebrated goddesses in the Buddhist world, representing enlightened activity in the form of the divine feminine. She protects, nurtures, and helps practitioners on the path to enlightenment. Manifesting in many forms and in many colors to help beings, Tara’s red form represents her powers of magnetization, subjugation, and the transformation of desire into enlightened activity. She is considered to be particularly powerful in times of plague and disharmony.

This comprehensive overview focuses on the origins, forms, and practices of Tara, providing the reader with insightful information and inspirations relating to the goddess. Its second part focuses on Red Tara, a powerful and liberating form of Tara that is particularly important to connect with in a time of crisis. These chapters cover various forms of Red Tara found throughout the Tibetan Buddhist world, the particular qualities she represents, and how through prayers and meditation we can embody her principles and truly benefit beings.

$29.95 - Paperback

Rachael Stevens holds a doctorate from Oxford University, is an early education teacher, and is a long-term Buddhist practitioner. Rachael’s research focuses on Red Tara, and she has studied and practiced with Buddhist communities in Europe, Asia, North America, and Brazil.

Dakini's Warm Breath
The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism

by Judith Simmer-Brown

The primary emblem of the feminine in Tibetan Buddhism is the dakini, or "sky-dancer," a semi-wrathful spirit-woman who manifests in visions, dreams, and meditation experiences. Western scholars and interpreters of the dakini, influenced by Jungian psychology and feminist goddess theology, have shaped a contemporary critique of Tibetan Buddhism in which the dakini is seen as a psychological "shadow," a feminine savior, or an objectified product of patriarchal fantasy. According to Judith Simmer-Brown—who writes from the point of view of an experienced practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism—such interpretations are inadequate.

$39.95 - Paperback

Judith Simmer-Brown, Ph.D., is professor and chair of the religious studies department at Naropa University (formerly the Naropa Institute), where she has taught since 1978. She has authored numerous articles on Tibetan Buddhism, Buddhist-Christian dialogue, and Buddhism in America. She is an Acharya (senior teacher) in the lineage of Chögyam Trungpa. A practicing Buddhist since 1971, she lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Art of ListeningThe Art of Listening
A Guide to the Early Teachings of Buddhism

by Sarah Shaw

The Dīghanikāya or Long Discourses of the Buddha is one of the four major collections of teachings from the early period of Buddhism. Its thirty-four suttas (in Sanskrit, sutras) demonstrate remarkable breadth in both content and style, forming a comprehensive collection. The Art of Listening gives an introduction to the Dīghanikāya and demonstrates the historical, cultural, and spiritual insights that emerge when we view the Buddhist suttas as oral literature.

Each sutta of the Dīghanikāya is a paced, rhythmic composition that evolved and passed intergenerationally through chanting. For hundreds of years, these timeless teachings were never written down. Examining twelve suttas of the Dīghanikāya, scholar Sarah Shaw combines a literary approach and a personal one, based on her experiences carefully studying, hearing, and chanting the texts. At once sophisticated and companionable, The Art of Listening will introduce you to the diversity and beauty of the early Buddhist suttas.

$18.95 - Paperback

Sarah Shaw is a faculty member and lecturer at the University of Oxford. She has published numerous works on the history and practices of Buddhism, including Mindfulness and The Art of Listening.

Women in Tibetan Buddhism

Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo was raised in London and became a Buddhist while still in her teens. At the age of twenty she traveled to India, becoming one of the first Westerners to be ordained as a Buddhist nun. The international bestseller Cave in the Snow chronicles her twelve years of seclusion in a remote cave. Deeply concerned with the plight of Buddhist nuns, she established Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery in India. In 2008 His Holiness the Twelfth Gyalwang Drukpa, head of the Drukpa Kagyu lineage, gave her the rare title of Jetsunma (Venerable Master).
reflections mt lake cover

$21.95 - Paperback

Khandro RinpocheKhandro Rinpoche - Born in India in 1967, Khandro Rinpoche is the daughter of Tibetan meditation master His Holiness Mindrolling Trichen and is herself a renowned teacher in the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. She is the head of a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery in India and divides her time between teaching in the West, running the nunnery, and supporting charity projects for Tibetan refugees in India.

$22.95 - Paperback

Pema Chödron served as the director of Karma Dzong in Boulder, Colorado, until moving in 1984 to rural Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, to be the director of Gampo Abbey. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche gave her explicit instructions on establishing this monastery for Western monks and nuns. She currently teaches in the United States and Canada and plans for an increased amount of time in solitary retreat under the guidance of Venerable Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. She is interested in helping to establish Tibetan Buddhist monasticism in the West, as well as continuing her work with Western Buddhists of all traditions, sharing ideas and teachings.

$24.95 - Hardcover

Thubten Chodron - Ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun in 1977, Venerable Thubten Chodron is an author, teacher, and the founder and abbess of Sravasti Abbey. Sravasti Abbey is the only Tibetan Buddhist training monastery for Westerners in the US and holds gender equality, social engagement, and care for the environment amongst its core values. Ven. Chodron teaches worldwide and is known for her practical (and humorous!) explanations of how to apply Buddhist teachings in daily life.

$19.95 - Paperback

Lama Tsultrim Allione is an author, internationally known Buddhist teacher, and the founder and resident lama of Tara Mandala Retreat Center. She is the author of Women of Wisdom, the national best-seller Feeding Your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict, which has been translated into seventeen languages, and Wisdom Rising: Journey into the Mandala of the Empowered Feminine.

$29.95 - Paperback

Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel has studied and practiced Mahayana Buddhism, as well as the Vajrayana tradition of the Longchen Nyingthik, for over 30 years under the guidance of her teacher and husband, Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. She has been intimately involved with Rinpoche’s work in bringing Buddhist wisdom to the West, in particular the development of Mangala Shri Bhuti, an organization dedicated to the study and practice of the Longchen Nyingthik lineage.
The Logic of Faith

$16.95 - Paperback

Anne Carolyn Klein is Professor and a former Chair of the Department of Religion at Rice University. She is also a cofounding director of the Dawn Mountain Tibetan Temple, Community Center, and Research Institute. Her publications include Path to the Middle (SUNY Press), Unbounded Wholeness, coauthored with Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche (Oxford University Press), and Knowledge and Liberation (Snow Lion Publications).

$29.95 - Paperback

Sangye Khandro is an American woman who studied Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan language with Tibetan masters in India and Nepal. She has studied and translated many important Tibetan Buddhist texts. She is a cofounder of Light of Berotsana, a nonprofit organization for translators of Tibetan texts.
Essence of Clear Light

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Carolyn Rose Gimian is a teacher of meditation, mindfulness, and Buddhism, as well as a writer, book editor, and archivist. She edited Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior in close cooperation with Chögyam Trungpa. After his death, she compiled and edited two additional books of his Shambhala teachings: Great Eastern Sun: The Wisdom of Shambhala and Smile at Fear: Awakening the True Heart of Bravery. She is also the editor of the ten-volume Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa, Mindfulness in Action, and many other volumes of his work.
Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Women in the Zen Tradition

"By being keen observers of our planet, we are more connected to the world around us and in a better position to prevent harm and improve the health of the earth."
Stephanie Kaza, Mindfully Green

Joanna Macy, PhD, teacher and author, is a scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking, and deep ecology. As the root teacher of the Work That Reconnects, Macy has created a groundbreaking framework for personal and social change that brings a new way of seeing the world as our larger body. Her many books include World as Lover, World as SelfWidening Circles, A MemoirActive Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in without Going Crazy; and Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects.

$27.95 - Paperback

Stephanie Kaza is Professor Emerita of Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont. A leading voice in Buddhism and ecology, her most recent book is Green Buddhism: Practice and Compassionate Action in Uncertain Times.

$18.95 - Paperback

Joan Halifax, PhD, is a Zen priest and anthropologist who has served on the faculty of Columbia University and the University of Miami School of Medicine. For the past thirty years she has worked with dying people and has lectured on the subject of death and dying at Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Medical School, Georgetown Medical School, and many other academic institutions. In 1990, she founded Upaya Zen Center, a Buddhist study and social action center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 1994, she founded the Project on Being with Dying, which has trained hundreds of healthcare professionals in the contemplative care of dying people.

$27.95 - MixedMedia

Natalie Goldbergis the author of fifteen books. Writing Down the Bones, her first, has been translated into nineteen languages. Three Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku is her latest book. For the last forty years she has practiced Zen and taught seminars in writing as a spiritual practice. She lives in northern New Mexico.
Writing Down the Bones

$16.95 - Paperback

Paula Arai was raised in Detroit by a Japanese mother and did Zen training in Japan. She obtained her Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Harvard University in 1993 and is now the Eshinni & Kakushinni Professor of Women and Buddhist Studies at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, California. She is the author of Bringing Zen Home: The Healing Heart of Japanese Women’s RitualsWomen Living Zen: Japanese Soto Buddhist Nuns, and Painting Enlightenment: Healing Visions of the Heart Sutra.
little book of zen cover

$19.95 - Hardcover

Jan Chozen Bays, MD, is an ordained Zen teacher and a pediatrician who specializes in the evaluation of children for abuse and neglect. She has trained in Zen for forty-five years with Roshis Taizan Maezumi and Shodo Harada. With her husband she serves as co-abbot of Great Vow Zen Monastery, a residential center for intensive Zen training in Oregon.
Mindful Eating Left

$16.95 - Paperback

Zenju Earthlyn Manuel is an author, poet, and ordained Zen Buddhist priest. She is the author of Deepest PeaceSanctuaryThe Way of TendernessTell Me Something About Buddhism, and Black Angel Cards: 36 Oracles and Messages for Divining Your Life. She compiled and edited Seeds for a Boundless Life: Zen Teachings from the Heart by Zenkei Blanche Hartmann and is a contributing author in Dharma, Color, Culture and The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women.

$18.95 - Paperback

Laura Burges(Ryuko Eitai) is a lay entrusted Buddhist teacher in the Soto Zen tradition. She lectures, offers classes, and leads retreats at the San Francisco Zen Center and at other practice places in Northern California. She is the abiding teacher at Lenox House Meditation Group in Oakland. Laura taught children for 35 years and now mentors other teachers.
Zen Way of Recovery

$21.95 - Paperback

Susan Moon is a writer, editor, and Buddhist teacher in the Soto Zen tradition. For many years she has taught and led Zen retreats nationally and internationally. Her books include This Is Getting Old: Zen Thoughts on Aging with Humor and Dignity; the groundbreaking collection, The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women, with Florence Caplow; and What Is Zen? with Norman Fischer.
alive dead

$17.95 - Paperback

Women in the Insight and Theravada Tradition

Ven. Ayya Khema was born into a Jewish family in Berlin in 1923 and escaped the Nazi regime in 1938. She was ordained a Theravadin Buddhist nun in 1979 and established a forest monastery near Sidney, Australia; a training center for nuns in Colombo, Sri Lanka; and, later, Buddha-Haus, a meditation center in the Allgäu, Germany. Among her books are When the Iron Eagle FliesBeing Nobody, Going NowhereWho Is My Self?; and an autobiography, I Give You My Life. She passed away in 1997.
Path to Peace

$18.95 - Paperback

Sharon Salzberg is one of America's leading spiritual teachers and authors. A practitioner of Buddhist meditation for over thirty years, she is a co-founder of the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies and the Insight Meditation Society, and she directs meditation retreats throughout the United States and abroad.

Lovingkindness

$16.95 - Paperback

Christina Feldman - In the early 1970s, Christina Feldman spent several years in Asia, studying and training in the Buddhist meditation tradition. She has led insight meditation retreats in the West since 1974. A cofounder of Gaia House, in Devon, England, she is a regular teacher at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts and at Spirit Rock in Woodacre, California. In addition, she leads retreats in Europe.
Boundless Heart The Buddha’s Path of Kindness, Compassion, Joy, and Equanimity By Christina Feldman

$16.95 - Paperback

Additional Resources on Women in Buddhism

Sera Khandro: A Reader’s Guide

Sera Khandro (1892 - 1940), also known as Kunzang Dekyong Wagmo,  was one of the great masters of the early 20th century and the English speaking world is fortunate now that both her story and her writings have been emerging more and more over the past few years. Her story is at once fascinating, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting. Tulku Thondup Rinpoche, in his remarkable Incarnation: The History and Mysticism of the Tulku Tradition of Tibet gives a superb overview: "This...

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Mandarava Reader’s Guide

This series of blog posts are meant to be resources guides to complement the biographies of the great masters and scholars on the Treasury of Lives site. Mandarava Mandarava Mandarava was one of the great 8th century adepts and was one of the main consorts of Guru Rinpoche. As such a central figure at the time of Guru Rinpoche, she is a focus of many works. A wonderful complete biography was published by our friends at Wisdom Publications as The...

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On Translation: Sarah Harding and Larry MermelsteinIn our second On Translation video series cosponsored with the Tsadra Foundation, we are pleased to share this recording of Sarah Harding (Naropa University and the Tsadra Foundation) & Larry Mermelstein (Nalanda Translation Committee).   This session is for any student, practitioner, or translator of Tibetan Buddhism and is an opportunity to enter the world of translators of the Buddhadharma with two of the most experienced Tibetan translators. Most people encounter the Buddhist teachings through translations of texts, so like...

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Yvonne Rand: A Profile of a Life of Zen

A Remembrance of Yvonne Rand

Yvonne Rand, a leading teacher and figure in Zen Buddhism in the US, passed away on August 19, 2020.

While not the author of any books, her writing appears in several books including:
A White Tea Bowl: 100 Haiku from 100 Years of Life which includes a piece by Yvonne about Shunryu Suzuki-roshi's wife, Mitsu Suzuki which appears in the later's book of Haiku, 
Buddhism Through American Womens' Eyes includes an essay by  her on abortion.
 
Yvonne also appears in several other books including:
 
We at Shambhala Publications are full of appreciation to Yvonne for her immense contribution, unwavering dedication, and a life well-lived.

The following profile of  is an excerpt from Meetings with Remarkable Buddhist Women by Lenore Friedman


Yvonne Rand from cuke.com

Yvonne Rand (image credit: Cuke.com)

For twenty years, ever since she met Shunryo Suzuki-roshi in 1966 and became Zen Center secretary four months later, Yvonne Rand has been intimately involved with the San Francisco Zen Center. She has held virtually every administrative office one can hold there, as well as working closely with Suzuki-roshi in a hundred ways for the rest of his life. Most recently she has lived and worked at Zen Center's facility in Marin County, Green Gulch Farm. Yvonne is an articulate, forthright, down-to-earth woman with whom it is invigorating to talk.

Shunryu SuzukiAmong her most important teachers, she told me, have been a series of older, ill, and dying people-both ordinary and extraordinary- with whom she's worked closely over the past fifteen years. The first was Suzuki-roshi, who died in 1971. Two years ago it was Lama Govinda, the renowned author and scholar of Tibetan Buddhism. Before he died, he said to her: "Be willing to give up all the forms we've been accustomed to following, and go back to the original teachings of the Buddha." Yvonne was struck by this advice and it has guided her ever since. As a result, she has been incorporating into her own practice and teaching a variety of methods originating not only from Zen, but from the vipassana and Tibetan traditions as well.

For her personally, two of the most important have been the practices of breath-walking and of the "half-smile," each of which she learned from the gentle Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. "Learn to walk as a Buddha walks, to smile as a Buddha smiles," he says. "You can do it. Why wait until you become a Buddha? Be a Buddha right now, at this very moment!" Yvonne now practices the half-smile at stoplights and in grocery lines. Having breath-oriented practices that can be done for one to three breaths in the midst of activity has helped her experience a connectedness between the states of mind that arise in formal meditation and those arising in everyday life.

Other practices, especially with the precepts ( or rules for conduct), have been useful in examining deeper levels of herself, levels beyond action and language and thought. Layers of resistance and denial had to be plumbed, but now she experiences a much wider range of connection with other people. A vipassana forgiveness meditation, for example, has been useful in working with her "fierce, judging voice"-that voice so peculiar to American and Western minds, which Yvonne perceives as a wall or hindrance to being awake.

The precepts are "absolutely necessary ground" for her. "I can't be calm if my behavior is 'off.' " Sometimes she will use one precept as a mantra. Or she will hold, in the background of her mind, the image of a sieve, each of whose wires are the precept, through which she passes everything she does or thinks or says during the day. This ''creates a grid-large holes or smalldepending on the gross or subtle material which I intend to pass through it." This image came out of her working in her garden and noticing how different gradations of sieves determine the soil one can make. Images have more liveliness, she believes, if they come out of concrete experience.

Yvonne respects the way "practice grabs us. One of the precepts often jumps off the page at me, from an intuitive, barely conscious awareness of exactly where an 'edge' is at any moment." For instance, the precept about not stealing, or not taking what is not given (a translation Yvonne prefers), has expanded for her into an acceptance of things-as-they-are, which has been "very, very powerful." She says the precept acts like a rope along a pathway, and has allowed her to move through and be done with old patterns more effectively than any other single practice she has done up to now.

With its constant reminders of impermanence, she says, Buddhism helps us cultivate nonpossessiveness toward everything, including our personalities, or ''who it is we think we are."

Mindfulness practice, with its emphasis on being awake to whatever arises, teaches us to relate to our "stickiness and corruptibility" as grist for the mill. Aversion is an obstacle to seeing things as they are. Seeing leads to the possibility of transformation. "We're all corruptible," she says. But the degree to which we know our capacity for corruptibility ( that is, the roles and masks we wear that cause disharmony or harm to ourselves and others) is the degree to which we don't act on it.

The Teacup and the Skullcup

There is a Tibetan practice called the "inner offering" that Yvonne finds very useful here. Imagine, she said, a bowl carved out of a human skull. ( She recently brought one back from India.) Fill it with whatever stands for the "dark side" in you: blood, bones, shit, instruments of mayhem and torture, whiskey, demons. With a chopper, chop it all into tiny bits until it is transformed into nectar-which then can be an offering. In the same way we can chop up our corruptibility and transform it into an offering, says Yvonne.

Working with these different approaches from other schools of Buddhism has brought her back, refreshed, to traditional Zen practice. She is now interested in reexamining some of its formal aspects, such as dokusan and certain rituals in the zendo. She asks penetrating questions about power, authority, dependency, and relationships within the community of practitioners. How can we cultivate interdependence while, for example, we are doing retreats and giving lectures?

"Over and over, in meditation centers all over the U.S., issues of authority and projection are coming up. In our understanding of the Zen tradition as coming from Japan, we include robes from Tang-dynasty China, shaved heads, formality in meeting, hierarchy in the authority structure, and a tradition which, in its ideal form, includes long periods of living a daily monastic life with one's teacher. If I give a lecture in my traditional robes, I can feel an increase in the degree of authority which the people listening to my lecture attribute to me. They edge toward accepting what I say as true, without really examining and questioning it. Subtle changes, but they go deep, begetting a kind of handing-oneself-over. This is sometimes useful in one's learning process, but it is also dangerous to student and to teacher alike if not really conscious and within clear boundaries.

"Each of us needs to be in a feedback system. Without that we can fool ourselves about what we are actually doing to ourselves and to others. I find a deep resonance with the Buddhist tradition of being a spiritual friend. I can be on the path with another and offer what I have found in my practice. If my experience can be helpful to another, that is great. And if it is not useful or helpful, that is all right too. We can, in any event, walk this path together." Some very specific, bold, and concrete questions have been surfacing. For example, Yvonne wants to know, "How do those of us in teaching positions get others to shed light on our shadow side so that we ourselves can see it?" She's been encouraging students to do this recently, but that's not enough, she feels. It needs to be done with peers as well. "We need to hear what our peers have to say, no matter how discomfiting." One suggestion she makes is for weekly peer consultation groups for people at Zen Center who conduct practice interviews with students. What, she wonders, would constitute an environment safe enough for looking at our shadow side? The group would have to be small, but not too small ( five people would be the perfect size, she believes). There would have to be agreements about process-for example, a commitment to self-revealing and real contact with each other, a shared interest in each other's development, a willingness to attend each other's lectures and interviews and to share critiques: in other words, a totally open process that would be revolutionary in most traditional Zen settings, and certainly at Zen Center.

Yvonne's teaching activities at present include Sunday lectures at Green Gulch once every four or five weeks; leading a day of mindfulness once a month (including zazen, breath-walking, half-smile, and simple physical work); periodic workshops and weekend retreats on Zen and mindfulness practice at Green Gulch and elsewhere; retreats on death and dying, and workshops using pain as a teacher; and profession-specific retreats for people in the helping professions, lawyers, nurses, and doctors. She is primarily interested in working with "householders"-lay people practicing in ordinary life.

Since she was a child Yvonne has felt a special affinity for adolescents and old people, when "developmentally things are up for grabs, challenging and yeasty," and she wants to continue working with these age groups. In the future she also wants to work with people in mainstream work situations, giving longer, more intensive retreats in business and industrial settings. She says she wants to explore "visible versus invisible practice," and her trajectory seems to be to extend herself farther and farther into the ordinary world from the intentional community that has been her base for twenty years.

Yvonne is also profiled in Jan Chozen Bays' Jizo Bodhisattva

Jizo Bodhisattva

$29.95 - Paperback

By: Jan Chozen Bays

In response to my "updating" questions, Yvonne Rand wrote me the following letter, which I have lightly edited:

Tara Tulku

Dear Lenore,
You ask me where is my life right now? Where is my practice? "My home path continues to be Soto Zen, with significant amplifications from the stream of the Elders and the heartcentered practices of Himalayan Buddhism. Beginning in the winter of 1985-86, I was fortunate to meet and begin studying with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Venerable Tara Tulku, then the abbot of the Tibetan monastery in Bodh Gaya, India. Over the years, until Tara Tulku died, I was able to study closely with him and, most important, to study him and his life. I learned more than I probably yet know from his great and deep mind and heart and especially from his continuous expression of boundless compassion. He supported me in staying with my home path in a way that now seems remarkable. He took interest in teaching me about how and what to teach. And with him, I had a taste of what a truly androgynous person looks and feels like.

I have been teaching at Redwood Creek Dharma Center in Marin County since the late eighties. Our center is small and eccentric, set in the midst of a beautiful garden with places to meditate both outdoors and in. Developing this center has given me a chance to express my artistic inclinations to create a place filled with beauty and fun. The situation has grown slowly and organically and is small enough so that I can know the people I practice with quite well.

I also have the great good fortune to be studying with a Zen teacher who is a real yogi, Shodo Harada, Roshi, from Sogenji Temple in Japan.

Since the early nineties, I have met regularly with a number of teachers from various Buddhist schools and traditions. The contact and friendship that have grown out of these meetings help me keep an eye on my own capacity for self-deception and other pitfalls that lie in wait for anyone occupying a teaching seat. I value the company and feedback from colleagues and friends willing to speak up when they notice something I might need and want to notice myself. We discuss our teaching lives and give each other suggestions and inspiration.

In the fall of 1997, I was diagnosed with a cancer and subsequently had surgery. The entire journey from diagnosis through recovery was a great teaching and a chance to go deeply into breath practice of the most ancient and reliable sort. I found affirmation that dharma practice is exactly the resource I have always known it to be. The challenge of this time was learning to receive help, to be helpless with grace, and to taste the extraordinary experience of being prayed for.

I am now old enough for the teachings on impermanence to have become more than theoretical ( as though they were ever other than what is so). My mother died last year, in her nineties, after a long and unhappy life. Despite all the experiences I have had being with people as they die, I found her passing remarkable and difficult.

Today, I lead retreats, both long and short, give dharma talks fairly often, enjoy working both individually and in groups with all sorts of people, cultivating an authentic spiritual life. I continue to lead a ceremony for children who have died through abortion, miscarriage, and sudden infant death. I do this ceremony once a season and find that more and more people, as they hear about it, respond to the container it can provide for the grief and suffering that otherwise may linger unresolved for years.

In the past several years, I have been invited to teach in situations that are not identified as Buddhist and have found the forays into the larger American secular world quite stimulating. A long-standing interest for me has been to find ways of talking about the Buddha dharma in language and with images that arise out of our own cultural context and to find ways to make Buddhism accessible to people in the mainstream. I am currently writing a book on right speech. I find writing as another form of teaching quite enjoyable, and at the same time, the process of writing is teaching me.

Recently, I have been exploring how to live a life that is less busy and less scheduled and has, consequently, more opportunity for spontaneity. The long time I had for recovering from surgery taught me a lot about the high price we Americans pay for our dense and busy lives. I have worked all of my life since I was thirteen years old. This is the first time I have truly 'just stopped' for an extended period of time. I notice a vast difference in my life, inner and outer. For example:

I am meeting individually with a rather small number of students these days, and I notice that with few appointments, I have large blocks of time that I can now spend writing or studying or working in the garden. I have time to sit in the morning sun or to watch the birds. I experience creative energy arising often and in ways that leave me surprised and delighted. For years, I have aimed to do more of less. Now I am beginning actually to get the taste of what this way of living feels like. There is an enriching of the day's experiences that seems to come without any special bidding or expectation on my part.

And my teaching is different, goes deeper, as a result. There is a price to pay for this shift, but I think a simpler lifestyle is exactly what is needed to cultivate the heart/mind deeply. And I like it. In addition to writing, I am drawn back to my old friends, clay and stone. I do not know what will become of this shift toward quietness, but I do know I am very much enjoying my life now."

Meetings with Remarkable Women

$34.95 - Paperback

By: Lenore Friedman

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We Won’t Last Forever | An Excerpt from Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home

Death A Long Distance Call

Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home

On a Wednesday morning, sitting in my old blue Volvo in a parking lot after just getting a facial—my cheeks redolent with cream, all pores clean—I called the Cancer Center in Santa Fe, persuaded an oncologist to look up my chart. The oncologist I was assigned to was on vacation, and no one else was willing to give me the results of my blood tests. “Sure, I can do that,” he said. He came back on the line. “It’s positive for CLL.”

“What?”

“Really, it’s nothing. It’s at zero level. It’s nothing to worry about. It’s no problem. Just make an appointment next week, when your doctor is back in the office.”

I hung up and sat in the barren lot staring out at a brown hump of pale dirt. A white Acura pulled up next to me. I put the key in the ignition, moved into reverse, and slipped out of my spot.

What did I do the rest of the day? I don’t remember. The information, like a wild animal, followed me one hundred paces behind. I tried to ignore it, numb with refusal. This cannot be. This is not the way the world is.

What did I do the rest of the day? I don’t remember. The information, like a wild animal, followed me one hundred paces behind. I tried to ignore it, numb with refusal. This cannot be. This is not the way the world is.

And what way, exactly, is the world? The way I wanted it to be. Death a long-distance call. I wanted to deal with death at the proper time—in my eighties or nineties.

That night I called friends while I sat in my living room in my summer cotton pajamas. I told them of my diagnosis. As soon as we hung up, many ran immediately to Google to do research.

Eddie and Mary were different. They called from a restaurant where we often ate together. “We thought we’d bring over a chocolate pot.”

“No, I don’t want it, but come over.”

Mary repeated the offer. I normally loved that pudding.

“No, I’m really not interested.”

When they came over, the late August sun was slanting on the back porch. They sat on the couch, and I sat on a chair opposite. What was there to say? Mary, who is a nurse, reminded me that the cancer was at level zero.

“Yeah, but it won’t stay that way.”

• • •

In 1979 a fellow Zen student was killed in the streets of San Francisco at the age of twenty-two. Katagiri Roshi’s admonition: “Human beings have an idea they are fond of—that we die in old age. That’s just an idea. We don’t know when our death will come. Chris’s death has come now.”

Chris was Chris Pirsig, the son of Robert Pirsig, who wrote the well-loved Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The book was based on a trip from Minneapolis to San Francisco the author took with his young son Chris on a motorcycle. It was the middle of November when Chris was stabbed in that fatal mugging. I stood out back of the zendo during a break in the retreat after Katagiri had made his announcement. I’d never before heard a pronouncement like Roshi’s—of course it was true. People died at all ages. I never forgot it until death
came close to me.

Katagiri himself died young, at the age of sixty-two, one year younger than I was now.

• • •

Zen training harped on death. We won’t last forever. Wake up. Don’t waste your life. But Zen’s urging seemed artistic, remote.

Zen training harped on death. We won’t last forever. Wake up. Don’t waste your life. But Zen’s urging seemed artistic, remote.

I was deeply aware that human beings were dying in Vietnam, then in Iraq, all over the world. One person’s death was my death. I could meditate and feel the poignant, exquisite melting of boundaries, the compassion for all beings, the deathless place of interconnectedness. That was all fine. Then cancer—a nugget of death—entered my individual body. I was suddenly not connected to anything, about to disappear—forever unknown, disregarded, lost in eternity.

All I heard from people who had survived cancer was how they were victorious. I know they meant to encourage me, but it left me lonelier. I needed to hear about being in the deep pool of fear before you swim out.

The first help I received was from a woman named Sue from Boston. In the fall I went on a three-day solo retreat at a just-finished set of cabins in La Madera, north of Santa Fe. She was there because she’d helped build them. She’d been a business executive on the East Coast and fifteen years earlier had been diagnosed with breast cancer, both breasts. It turned her life upside down. She left her job and eventually joined with an old friend from Antioch College to create these glorious cabins. Her husband and kids still lived in Boston, and she commuted back and forth.

As she helped me with my luggage, I told her how scared I was. Though her cancer had been many years ago, her old fear was accessible to her. She put down the box she was carrying and trembled, telling me about her first six months of dealing with it. “Every possible test came out positive.”

Her sharing helped. I didn’t feel so crazy that I was so shattered.

Twice a day I recited a loving-kindness chant and meditated on the pier she had built, jutting out into a pond full of ducks. The weather was sweater warm, the light low and still full. May I be attentive and gentle toward my own discomfort and suffering. . . . May I receive others with sympathy and understanding. . . .

When I left, I gave Sue a copy of the chant. I tried to find the words to describe my emotions to two or three friends. Unless I talked, no one would have any idea what I was going through. The hard part was trusting that someone would understand, when I didn’t understand.

• • •

Sean called from Taos. “I think I know what you feel. Remember ten years ago, when I had a thyroid imbalance? The doctor came at me with a needle right at my throat. It’s such a vulnerable place. I was brave, squeezing Tania’s hand, but the minute he went out of the room, I began sobbing like a five-year-old. I fell apart.” A pause. “Then the doctor came back. ‘We have to do it again. We didn’t get enough fluid.’”

I could feel Sean’s shoulders shake, even on the phone. I said, “I always wondered why what happened seemed like such a big deal for you. All I knew was you had to take a pill.”

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Natalie GoldbergNatalie Goldberg is the author of ten books. For the last thirty years she has practiced Zen and taught seminars in writing as a spiritual practice. See more about her here.

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This Deepest Self | An Excerpt from The Truth of This Life

We have excerpted the chapter “This Deepest Self” from The Truth of This Life: Zen Teachings on Loving the World as It Is here.

“The truth and joy of this life is that we cannot change things as they are.” The import of those words can be found beautifully expressed in the work of the woman who spoke them, Katherine Thanas (1927–2012)—in her art, in her writing, and especially in her Zen teaching. Fearlessly direct and endlessly curious, Katherine’s understanding of Zen was inseparable from her affinity for the arts. Ranging on subjects from the practice of zazen to the meaning of life, Katherine urges us to “develop an insatiable appetite for inner awareness, to become proficient with this mind.”

To order the full book, click here.

In Ten Windows, the poet Jane Hirshfield writes:

One of [the] more subtle homes is the Ryoan-ji rock garden in Kyoto: wherever in it a person stands, one of the fifteen rocks cannot be seen. The garden’s positioned stones remind us there is always something unknowable and invisible beyond what can be perceived or comprehended, yet as real as any other rock amid the raked gravel.

Her beautiful essay reminded me of what one reviewer said about the late poet Philip Whalen: he was not the best of the Beat poets, but his experiments and writing allowed the other poets to write the work they wrote. You might say Philip’s contribution is hidden in the work of others.

We live in the lives of others, sometimes acknowledged, sometimes not. These underrecognized connections among us are included in what we call our interdependent existence.

We have to practice with someone who is big enough to receive our deepest self, our deepest intention, and turn us to it again and again. This deepest self, our true nature, is hidden in our consciousness, hidden from ourselves.

A true teacher sees our true nature. In seeing and speaking to it, such a teacher allows us to also believe in it, in our openness, receptivity, generosity, nonresistance, loving-kindness.

What is known and not known by us about our inner motivations and intentions is the investigation of practice. We know on one level; we don’t know on another.

In her essay, Jane quotes Michael Dickinson on our contradictions: “We are most comfortable being hidden, but we yearn to be seen.” I would add, we are quite fearful to see our inner mind. We fear what demons might lurk there.

But the gift of practice allows us gradually to be drawn into the realm of the unknown and, accompanied by a trustworthy friend, to enter there. To allow our consciousness to become transparent to itself requires a calm mind, the stability of zazen mind. We sit zazen to realize there is a deeper awareness existing beneath the active mind. It is the mind of clear observation that is our deeper mind that witnesses our life from the shore of ease, from a posture of unprejudiced attention.

The work of sitting quietly doing nothing, waiting for our deepest experience to show up, is one of the most truly creative actions we can take. It is hidden treasure, covered by the ego’s delusions and simultaneously transparent.

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