Fromthe Introduction

 After the Buddha achieved enlightenment, it is said, he sat for another seven weeks under the Bodhi tree trying to decide what to do next. How could he communicate what he had experienced? Should he even try? What words could he choose that would not just create more concepts and grasping, when what he had experienced was the profound simplicity of resting in things as they are, beyond all dualism and struggle?

Buddhism often warns against the seduction of words.

“Words don’t cook rice,” an old Zen saying admonishes us. “Don’t mistake the finger for the moon,” warns another. The words Buddhism uses to describe enlightened mind are at best rough approximations of the reality. What else could they be when the very definition of enlightenment is that it is beyond all words and concepts?

Yet, after seven weeks, the Buddha did get up and speak. Thus the religion known as Buddhism was born and over the next 2,500 years it devoted untold words—scriptures, commentaries, poems, songs, logics, treatises—to teaching, parsing, praising, describing, and explaining the inconceivable.

Words don’t cook rice, but it does help to have a recipe. The finger is not the destination, but it can point us in the right direction.

The Buddha arose after his seven weeks of doubt and began to teach others what he had discovered. The words he chose reflected his compassion (the imperative to help others was a natural part of his realization) and his skill (he had formulated a path that people could take toward the deep truth he had realized, and found a way to describe it). He saw that as long as we recognize their limits—as long as we don’t take the finger for the moon—words can point us toward the wordless.

This book is filled with such words, linear descendants of the Buddha’s. The basic truths and practices are the same, for they are beyond time and space, but now they are expressed in the many forms and voices of the modern world.Yes, there are teachings here, the traditional expressions of Buddhism that guide us on our path of personal realization. But there are also people sharing their own journeys through personal stories and memoir, helping us to empathize with others and understand our own lives better. There are people joining the spiritual with the secular by bringing the insight and practices of Buddhism into many different aspects of contemporary life. And there are people using a Buddhist lens to examine the big issues facing life on this planet, looking for the intersection of the personal and the global that could be the key to our future.

The discourse of the teacher to his or her students is the oldest, most basic, and, I would argue, most powerful expression of Buddhism. That’s because Buddhism is less an institution than a living lineage of direct transmission from teacher to student.

In this year’s edition of The Best Buddhist Writing, we have a strong and varied selection of Buddhist teachings. The form is traditional, yes, but the teachings themselves are for contemporary audiences, and they’re right up to date. The Tibetan teacher Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche applies the profound teachings of Dzogchen to that most basic question, human happiness, while Vipassana teacher Joseph Goldstein shows how mindfulness practice can change our lives. The great Thich Nhat Hanh and the American Zen teacher John Daido Loori, Roshi, take ancient Zen texts and make them fresh. His Holiness the Dalai Lama uses impeccable logic to help us cut through our false beliefs about the nature of reality, and Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche and The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche teach us specific Buddhist practices to help with all the challenges and conflicting emotions we experience in interpersonal relations.

Memoir is not a traditional form in Buddhism, yet it is developing in the modern world into a powerful tool of empathy and understanding. You will be inspired and moved, as I am, by the personal stories told in this book. Here, heart and mind are joined in Susan Moon’s story of her first grandchild, in James Kullander’s journey through a loved one’s death, and in Sallie Tisdale’s Zen meditation on the frailties of the human body. And you’ll smile at the foibles of Natalie Goldberg, Kate Wheeler, and Hannah Tennant-Moore, who are honest about what really happens when we modern people try to take on this ancient path.

It’s an interesting thing that Buddhism’s impact on modern life has been far out of proportion to the actual number of adherents. Because the basis of Buddhism is working with the mind, its practices and insights have proven to be directly and effectively applicable to many areas of modern life. Buddhism is always “news you can use.” In this volume, Buddhist practice is applied to leadership (Michael Carroll), illness (Bhikkhu Bodhi, Darlene Cohen, and Shinzen Young), and ecology (Frances Moore Lappé). Cyndi Lee and David Nichtern show us how we can combine yoga and Buddhist meditation in a complete mind-body practice, and Sylvia Boorstein applies the practice of equanimity to all the vicissitudes of modern life.

In this anxious age, with so many challenges facing us as we look ahead into this century, Buddhism addresses the real root of our problems—greed, aggression, and ignorance, what Buddhism calls the three poisons. We can create all the laws, policies, and technologies we want, but the real solutions are found at a much more basic level—at the level of hate and love, bias and impartiality, revenge and forgiveness, selfishness and selflessness.

Some writers here apply these principles to specific situations: Aidan Delgado to Iraq, Lin Jensen to peace protest, R. J. Eskow to the rough world of political partisanship. Others offer more general teachings on how each of us can bring to our own lives the qualities on which humanity’s future depends: Pema Chödrön on the moment when we choose between peace and conflict; Joanna Macy on developing gratitude as the basis of environmentalism; Noah Levine on the practice of forgiveness that cuts the cycle of revenge and war; Martine Batchelor on the grasping that is the cause of attachment and over consumption.

Never has it been clearer, never has it been more important to understand, that the personal is the political. It is my hope that this book, which brings together the writing of many wise, caring, and thoughtful people, will benefit you and through you, all others.