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Practicing Spirituality with Sharon Salzberg
Sharon Salzberg, one of S&P's Living Spiritual Teachers, played a crucial role in bringing Asian meditation practices to the West. After studying with teachers in India, Burma, and Tibet, she co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachustts. A meditation teacher for more than three decades, Salzberg is a popular speaker at a wide variety of retreats and writes regularly in publications and on the Internet.
This accomplished Buddhist teacher keeps unfolding the riches of meditation, which she characterizes as "the art of knowing how to begin again." From the foundational practices of mindfulness and lovingkindness, she shows us how to pay attention to our world, express our compassion, break bad habits, recover from disappointments, and find more balance in our lives. She often emphasizes the little virtues, which she puts under the thematic umbrella of kindness.
"Practicing Spirituality with Sharon Salzberg" is a 40-part e-course led by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat. Each day you will receive an email with a short selection from one of Salzberg's books and a suggestion for how you can practice the concept during the day.
The emails discuss how to apply her teachings on lovingkindness, compassion, generosity, equanimity, peace, and love, as well as some of the more subversive spiritual activities of the heart, such as rejoicing in another's happiness and being compassionate toward those who cause pain. Several cover Salzberg's creative interpretations of faith, a spiritual practice not often dealt with by Buddhists.
(6 CEHs for Chaplains available.)
An accomplished Buddhist teacher unfolds the riches of meditation.
Child of the Flower-Song People
This book is like a magnet, and it's hard to say what draws you first. Maybe it's the unusual title? Who are the flower-song people?
They are the Nahuas, the indigenous people of Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. In her author's note, debut picture-book writer Gloria Amescua explains that they called poetry xochicuicatl, "the flower and the song," which she shortens to "flower-song" to represent the Nahua spirit.
Even though the book contains careful historical research, it does read like poetry. It centers around the true story of a girl who in the opening pages gazes up at "the stars sprinkling the hammock of the sky."
"She was Luz Jiménez
child of the flower-song people,
the powerful Aztecs,
who called themselves Nahua —
who lost their land, but who did not disappear."
Immersed in her traditional culture, preserved in spite of Spanish colonization, Luz cultivates a profound understanding of "how the Nahua suffered — and sweet joy — how her people survived." She listens to elders repeat her grandfathers' grandfathers' stories, learns to twist yarn with her toes, studies weaving and herbal medicine, and much more. She is also eager to attend school and learn from Spanish textbooks, though, and to learn skills like dressmaking and drawing.
When she turns 13, Luz's blossoming dreams of becoming a teacher nearly die. Her father is killed in the Mexican Revolution, and the school at which she excelled is reduced to rubble. These changes cause her family to move to the city. There Luz opens to new ways of being, modeling for artists like Diega Rivera, Fernando Leal, Tina Modotti, and Jean Charlot who honor the native people colonized by the Spanish. She then becomes friends with scholars who want to learn Nahua language and culture, and her desire to teach is fulfilled as she guides anthropologists and artists to understand the life of her people.
The magnetic attraction of this book surely also comes from the striking Pre-Columbian inspiration in the art by Duncan Tonatiuh. Tonatiuh, whose numerous accolades include the Pura Belpré Award and the Robert F. Sibert Medal, aims to create images that honor the past yet are fresh and relevant, something he achieves masterfully in everything from Luz cradling a wild flower in her hands to her leading a tour of native festival dances. Several of the pictures pay homage to the art for which Luz modeled.
Most of all, the book's draw may be Luz Jiménez herself who — to give just one example of reasons we should all have heard of her — appears in at least three of Diego Rivera's murals, one of them the famous Tlatelolco market scene. Even more importantly, she carried the language and culture of her people into the 20th century and beyond, such as by hosting the First Aztec Congress (1940) which determined how the written Nahuatl language should appear.
A timeline of her life, a glossary, and a select bibliography round out this fascinating book which introduces readers ages six to ten to a woman through whom the world came to know "the spirit of Mexico."
A fascinating book about a woman who helped new generations treasure native traditions.
Robert Thurman, Inner Revolution
What the Buddha did as a revolutionary was to shift the social ethos from collectivism to individualism; to redefine the highest good as transcendent liberation, not mundane success; to replace the competitive struggle of egocentric identities with a cooperative interaction of eccentric individuals. He worked to transform violence into nonviolence, greed into generosity, self-indulgence into sensitivity, deceitfulness into honesty, and, most important, ignorance into insight.
The Buddha changed the social ethos
I, Daniel Blake
"Poverty is the worst form of violence."
— Mahatma Gandhi
Daniel Blake (Dave Johns) is a 59-year-old widower who lives alone in Newcastle, England. He recently lost his beloved wife after years of caring for her. Because he is recovering from a recent heart attack, Daniel's doctors have told him that he should not yet go back to work as a carpenter. In the opening scene of the film, he is listening to the inane questions (such as "are you able to lift your arms over your head") posed by "a health care professional" as she seeks to finalize his application for Employment and Support Allowance. Presumably because he doesn't give the answers they want, he is denied the allowance.
Told to try another path to support, Daniel spends a lot of his spare time on the phone waiting to make contact with a human being in Britain's Department for Work and Pension (DWB). In their offices, he listens to Katie (Hayley Squires) complain about being poorly treated. He intervenes and speaks out on her behalf. Daniel assures this very hungry young woman with two children that everything will be all right. He learns that they left a homeless shelter in London in order to take an apartment in Newcastle.
Blake, who is a natural handyman, fixes up her place and comes up with ways to heat their new home. He's good with kids and makes the most of his time with hers. When they all go to a food bank, Katie breaks down after realizing the desperate straits she is in. Several bad decisions put her and the children in great danger.
Ken Loach is the director of this sobering and harrowing depiction of the dehumanizing dimensions of the English welfare state and the surprising efforts of a besieged old man to spread kindness around wherever he can. The screenplay is by Paul Laverty who wrote Carla's Song about the Sandinista revolution and The Wind Shakes the Barley about the Irish rebellion of the 1920s. Loach's 19th feature was the winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival
Poverty destroys the bodies, minds, and spirits of people. It savages and ravages their hopes and dreams and puts them in a prison of fear, danger, and despair. Very few directors are willing to take as their subject the poverty of working-class people. I, Daniel Blake makes a good case for acts of kindness as the glue which holds society together. Without kindness, we have all booked passage on the Ship of Fools.
An award-winning film that puts you in the shoes of people coping with poverty and the bureaucracy of England's welfare system.
The Five Invitations
"In the process of dying, a gradual awakening occurs. Almost imperceptibly, we begin a long, slow process of letting go, relinquishing what we know we can no longer hold on to or control.
"Letting go is an entry into unknown territory. Grief is the toll that we pay. Tears are the fluids that ease the release.
"In dying, we cannot hold on to our treasured possessions. One hospice resident, Brian, taught me this when he wept and then gracefully gave aawy his Gibson Les Paul guitar. 'We are not what we have,' he said. 'And anyway, there are no storage units in heaven.'
"As we lose our ability to engage in our favorite activities, we must let go of traveling or cooking or making love, and then even simpler pleasures like swallowing without difficulty. We relinquish the roles we played in our families, workplaces, and communities and release the dreams we have carried with us for a lifetime but never achieved. In our dying, we must even let go of the future and everything and everyone that we loved.
"Letting go is how we prepare for dying. Suzuki Roshi said that renunciation is not giving up the things of the world, but accepting that they go away. An acceptance of impermanence helps us learn how to die. It also reveals the flip side of loss, which is that letting go is an act of generosity. We let go of old grudges, and give ourselves peace. We let go of fixed views, and give ourselves to not knowing. We let go of self-sufficiency and give ourselves to the care of others. We let go of clinging and give ourselves to gratitude. We let go of control and give ourselves to surrender.
"Surrender is not the same thing as letting go. Normally, we think of letting go as a release often accompanied by a sense of freedom from previous restraints. Surrender is more about expansion. There is a freedom in surrender, but it is not really about setting something down or distancing ourselves from an object, person, or experience, as it is with letting go. With surrender, we are free because we have expanded into a spaciousness, a boundless quality of being that can include but not be constrained by the previously limiting beliefs that once defined us, keeping us separate and apart. We release the fruitless habit of clinging to changing objects as a source of happiness. In surrender, we are reconstituted. We are no longer enslaved by our pasts. No longer imprisoned by our former identities. We become intimate with the inner truth of our essential nature. In surrender, we feel ourselves not gaining distance, but rather coming closer."
Lessons learned from the dying about letting go and surrender.
Living in Gratitude
Angeles Arrien is a teacher, author, and cultural anthropologist. Her purview bridges the disciplines of anthropology, psychology, and comparative religion while focusing on the universal beliefs shared by humanity. Her books include The Fourfold Way and The Second Half of Life. Arrien is one of the Living Spiritual Teachers profiled at Spirituality & Practice.
In this thematically rich and spiritually rewarding paperback, the author presents a tribute to the practice of gratitude and its related qualities — thankfulness, appreciation, compassion, generosity, and grace. Arrien brings to this study her abundant knowledge of multicultural wisdom — "the shared values and the inherent positive beliefs of humanity." She defines gratitude as "the recognition of the unearned increments in one's experience." It often arises spontaneously but it is also a choice we make.
There are four universal portals to this practice and virtue: 1.) Blessings, 2. Learnings, 3. Mercies, 4. Protections. Arrien is convinced that the ample benefits of gratitude can be found in health and well-being; work environments and communities; financial stability; and relationships. All of these foster character development and spiritual growth. The chief obstacles to gratitude are envy, greed, pride, and narcissism.
The book is organized around the 12 months of the year with varied tools, maps, and practices that can help us cultivate more gratitude in our lives. Here's a very concrete and doable way to make gratitude your path for a year. After a Prayer and the main text for each month are sections on Reflections, Practices, and Review and Integration. This detailed and very practical approach enables us to mine the meanings of gratitude, a practice recommended in all the world's religions and touted in perennial wisdom.
In her treatment of August, for example, Arrien emphasizes the theme of cultivating peace. She points to the lessons of St. Augustine, Quakers, and various individuals and organizations that are setting the stage for nonviolence and the avoidance of conflict and aggression. Over time, gratitude "strengthens our capacity to face conflict and reduce fear." Arrien suggests looking for conflict resolution learning programs in your community and to try, every day, to "do something that increases a sense of peace for you."
October challenges us to let go and like the trees to accept the changes which come. It is a time for harvests and celebrations as expressions of community life. We are preparing things for the next generations, and we are grateful for what our ancestors have given us.
Arrien suggests practices of releasing attachment and control. She also challenges us to express thanks to the Creator for what we have harvested this month.
Other chapters probe the impact of gratitude through examinations of renewal, love and the heart, compassionate service, mercy and atonement, the gift of grace, equanimity, embracing nature's healing purpose, opening to guidance and wisdom, the power of genuine seeing, and the mystic heart.
We affirm Arrien's treatment of gratitude as a conscious way of living and a journey of transformation. She concludes with this wish for readers: that "we share with those around us the unlimited healing power of gratitude and its ability to bring out and sustain the good, true, and beautiful within all human beings."
A thematically rich and spiritually rewarding guide to a month-by-month practice of gratitude.
Joyously Through the Days
Les Kaye is a teacher at Kannon Do Zen Center in Mountain View, California. In this down-to-earth manual, he presents some of the challenges and obstacles on the journey of Zen practice. The substantial benefits of meditation are awareness, patience, and generosity. In the first section of the paperback titled "Sources of Difficulty," Kaye
points out how regular practice enables us to better deal with stress, the rough edges of anger, the "I Have To" trap, turning away from others, stagnation, and living a fulfilling life.
The author wants us to think about all the "spills" we have created by not paying attention to what we are doing. We constantly create messes — not only by spilling a cup of coffee on our desk but also by tripping on the street or by crashing into another car — all because we are distracted and let our minds wander from the task at hand. Training our mind is the best way to prevent spills. It is also helpful in tuning our lives and dealing with disappointment and delusions.
In the last section, Kaye covers various aspects of the composure that comes with disciplined and regular spiritual practice. He sees selflessness as "the ultimate home of happiness" and caring as an expression of a big heart. Meditation spurs us to love and compassion as we live with creativity, subtlety, and reverence for the world of both human beings and nature.
A down-to-earth manual on the challenges and obstacles on the path of Zen practice.
Commit to Sit
"Meditation, simply defined, is a way of being aware. It is the happy marriage of doing and being. It lifts the fog of our ordinary lives to reveal what is hidden; it loosens the knot of self-centeredness and opens the heart; it moves us beyond mere concepts to allow for a direct experience of reality. Meditation embodies the way of awakening: both the path and its fruition," (writes Lama Surya Das in "The Heart of Meditation," one of the many fine essays in this collection from the pages of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. This impressive publication was started in 1991 to bring teachings and practices from the rich Buddhism tradition to the general reading public.
This paperback is edited by reviews editor Joan Duncan Oliver. She draws from articles on the broad range of meditative techniques that have been covered over the years. She reminds us in the introduction that although there is much talk in our culture about meditation as a tool for health and well-being, it is "first and foremost the vehicle of our liberation — a tool for finding true happiness."
Among the authors included are Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, Sylvia Boorstein, Clark Strand, Wes Nisker, Will Johnson, Marcia Rose, Sandra Weinberg, Matthieu Ricard, and others.
A fine collection of essays from Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.
Norman Fischer, Taking Our Places
A bodhisattva is a Buddha in process, someone who is eagerly working on enlightenment, practicing acts of goodness and devotion, studying the teachings, and always aspiring to fully develop all good qualities. The bodhisattva path includes the diligent practice of six virtues: generosity, ethical conduct, enthusiastic energy, patient endurance, meditation, and transcendent wisdom.
A Buddha in process
Jewish Dharma
Brenda Shoshanna is a practicing psychologist with more than 25 years of experience. She is the author of several books including Zen and the Art of Falling in Love. Raised in an orthodox Jewish family, she is now a long-term student and practitioner of both Judaism and Zen Buddhism. As an interfaith counselor, she has written an extraordinary book that vividly demonstrates the rich cross-fertilization that can take place when your spiritual practice stems from two traditions. Of an estimated three million practicing Buddhists in the United States today, nearly one third also identify themselves as Jewish. Shoshanna addresses them and all others who are open to the adventure of interspirituality.
The material covered in this book conveys the wisdom and ethical sweep of both Judaism and Zen. The chapter titles preview her broad perspective:
• Jewish Prayer and the Practice of Zazen
• Seeking Understanding: Torah Study and Koan Practice
• Disciplining Yourself: Mitzvot and Mindfulness
• Calming the Restless Mind: Sabbath and Nondoing
• Giving Up Defensiveness: Charity and Open Hands
• Guarding Your Words: Lashon Hara and the Zen Practice of Silence
• Finding True Support: Dissolving False Attachments and Letting Go
• Discovering Yourself: Jewish Identity and Selflessness
and more.
• Building Relationships: Marriage and Courtship; Monks and Nuns
• Making Peace in the Family and the World: Forgiveness and Renunciation
• Healing Sorrow: Tikkun Olam and Total Acceptance
• Understanding Life Purpose: Caring for One Another and Bodhisattva Activity
Shoshanna uses many colorful anecdotes from Judaism and Zen but the major emphasis is on the practices which animate these two sturdy traditions. She points out that in the Zen tradition if you want to see the beauty of a room, you take everything out so that you can get a glimpse of its original nature: "In Zen practice you do the same. You take everything out of your life that causes clutter, static, confusion, and greed. . . . As you do this, you naturally find your own inner balance and strength."
Both Zen and Judaism require persistence — the ability to absorb disappointment and disillusionment. Each calls us to live in the present moment, to eschew distractions, to abandon pride, and to practice love and kindness. Both traditions present a new way of life: Zen as the middle way and Torah as a life of balance.
The discipline and structure of spiritual practice in both Judaism and Zen offer an alternative to the compulsive behavior and addiction that is so rampant in our culture. Observing the Sabbath in Judaism and the practice of nondoing in Zen are antidotes to restlessness, greed, and consumerism.
In closing, we present just two examples of the kind of practices that make this such a rich and practical book, one that you will turn to again and again. From Judaism, here is a practice of charity. And from Zen, a practice of hospitality.
"Open your hand and give many times. It is a mitzvah to give charity (tzedukah) to the poor. You are more obligated to do this mitzvah than any other. It says that whoever sees a poor person and turns his eyes away, transgresses. You should not think that by giving charity you are losing money; just the opposite, you will be blessed. There are many forms of charity — money, time, attention, work, giving someone else the benefit of the doubt. Give with an open hand and heart, and your life will be fruitful. The highest way of giving is simply to give, wanting nothing in return."
"From the Zen point of view, the deepest kindness and generosity is to welcome others exactly as they are. This deep form of welcoming strangers welcomes them in truth and simplicity; it welcomes the authentic person, not the persona or mask that we wear. In many Zen centers, individuals wear plain robes. The purpose of this is so that no one can feel more important if he has fancy clothes or fine jewelry. With robes on it is more difficult to compare oneself to others, or to focus on external presentation. And one, in turn, cannot rely on costumes or props. Who one truly is, speaks for oneself."
An extraordinary book on the relevance of the teachings and spiritual practices of Judaism and Zen to every dimension of our lives.