Archives de catégorie : Religion & Spirituality

AWAKE WHERE YOU ARE de Martin Aylward

The body is of course integral to meditation, but there are only a few books that focus this specifically on the body and the meditative experience. AWAKE WHERE YOU ARE addresses that need, and additionally integrates psychological concepts, which provides a more familiar entry point for people less familiar with Buddhism.

AWAKE WHERE YOU ARE
by Martin Aylward
Wisdom Publications, November 2021

Pulled around by desires and distractions, we’re so easily disconnected from ourselves. Life is happening right in front of us, and within us—but still, we manage to miss so much of it. AWAKE WHERE YOU ARE provides the antidote, inviting us to go deep into our own bodies, to inhabit our sensory experience carefully; to learn the art of living from the inside out, and in the process to find ease, clarity, and an authentic, unshakeable freedom.
The practices in the book literally bring us back into our skin, where we can reconnect with a more rich, meaningful, and peaceful life. Aylward writes with sophisticated subtlety, as well as the heart-opening simplicity and clarity born of deep experience. This book is more than a meditation guide—it’s a guide to living an embodied life.

“In the introduction to Awake Where You Are, Martin Aylward tells the reader that this is not another book about ‘how to meditate,’ and that is very true. He writes with honesty, insight, and experience to offer us a guidebook to awareness of the body, connection to the body, and deep acceptance no matter the state of that body.” – Sharon Salzberg, author of Real Change

“This beautiful and subtle book illuminates and grounds us in the truth that meditation and the practice of loving awareness are an ‘in-the-body’ experience.” – Frank Ostaseski, author of The Five Invitations

After experiencing strong intimations of the spiritual as a teenager, Martin Aylward traveled to India at the age of nineteen to explore meditation. He spent most of the next five years in monasteries, ashrams, and meditation centers in India and Thailand, including two years in a hermitage in the Himalayas with one of his teachers. As well as having the good fortune to learn from and practice with many different teachers, both Asian and Western, Martin has spent much time in solitude with his real guru, Nature—and his teaching often emphasizes contact with Nature as a resource for Awakening. In 1995 he co-founded the Tapovan Dharma Community in the French Pyrenees with his wife Gail. Gradually, the number of visitors increased beyond the capacity of the place, and in 2005—just ten years after opening—they relocated to Le Moulin (Moulin de Chaves), a former Zen monastery in the Dordogne, Southwest France, where Martin and Gail continue to live with their two children. In addition to guiding Dharma practice at Le Moulin as resident teacher, Martin has been invited to teach Dharma around the world since 1999.

COURAGEOUS COMPASSION de Sa Sainteté le Dalaï-Lama, avec Thubte Chodron

COURAGEOUS COMPASSION offers an in-depth look at bodhicitta, arhatship, and buddhahood that you can continuously refer to as you progress on the path to full awakening.

COURAGEOUS COMPASSION
by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, with Thubte Chodron
Wisdom Publications, May 2021

COURAGEOUS COMPASSION, the sixth volume of the Library of Wisdom and Compassion series, continues the Dalai Lama’s teachings on the path to awakening. The previous volume, In Praise of Great Compassion, focused on opening our hearts with love and compassion for all living beings, and the present volume explains how to embody compassion and wisdom in our daily lives. Here we enter a fascinating exploration of bodhisattvas’ activities across multiple Buddhist traditions—Tibetan, Theravada, and Chinese Buddhism.
After explaining the ten perfections according to the Pali and Sanskrit traditions, the Dalai Lama presents the sophisticated schema of the four paths and fruits for sravakas and solitary realizers and the five paths for bodhisattvas. Learning about the practices mastered by these exalted practitioners inspires us with knowledge of our minds’ potential. His Holiness also describes buddha bodies, what buddhas perceive, and buddhas’ awakening activities.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama (b. 1935) is the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism. For sixty years, he was the also the political leader of the Tibetan people, first from the Potala Palace in Lhasa and then helping his compatriots adapt to the modern world from his residence in northern India. An advocate for science, ethics, and harmony among people of different faiths, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 and travels widely in support of Buddhism, the cause of Tibet, and human happiness.

Thubten Chodron has been a Buddhist nun since 1977. A graduate of UCLA, she is the founder and abbess of Sravasti Abbey in Washington State. She is a popular speaker and author of numerous books, including Buddhism for Beginners.

THE EIGHTFOLD PATH de Charles Johnson & Steven Barnes, illustré par Bryan Christopher Moss

From award-winning authors Charles Johnson and Steven Barnes comes a graphic novel anthology of interconnected Afrofuturistic parables inspired by the teachings of Buddha.

THE EIGHTFOLD PATH
by Charles Johnson & Steven Barnes
illustrated by Bryan Christopher Moss
Abrams ComicArts, January 2022

Eight strangers looking for enlightenment from an ancient spiritual teacher are trapped in a cave high in the mountains on their way to his temple. One of his acolytes directs them to each tell a story that the group can learn from as they wait out the horrible snowstorm that rages outside the cave’s entrance. One by one the travelers each share a story that, unbeknownst to them, is actually a morality tale representing one of the aspects of final enlightenment as taught in Buddhism. As the wind howls through the night, they tell symbolic stories of horror, dystopia, high adventure, cyberpunk, and urban fantasy. Each story is a spoke on the symbolic Dharma wheel, and each interlocking tale gets the travelers closer to their true destiny—unveiling the future of the entire human race.
This remarkable collection borrows heavily from the traditions of pop-culture morality anthology series such as The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Night Gallery, Lovecraft Country, and the publications of E.C. Comics. Heavily influenced by the science fiction pulps of the 1950s and 1960s, this brilliant collection remixes classic social narratives such as Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, and The Arabian Nights, through an edgy, contemporary, yet spiritually centered lens. In THE EIGHTFOLD PATH, our destinies lie in heeding the lessons given in every one of these entrancing tales.

Steven Barnes is the New York Times bestselling, NAACP Image Award–winning author of more than 30 novels. Nominated for Nebula and Hugo awards, writer of the Emmy-winning “A Stitch in Time” episode of The Outer Limits, and winner of the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Award, Barnes is a pioneering Afrofuturist writer, and one of the most honored voices in the field. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, British Fantasy Award–winning novelist Tananarive Due. Barnes has taught and lectured at UCLA, USC, University of Washington, Mensa, Pasadena JPL, the Smithsonian Museum, the University of North Carolina, and many others. His most recent publication is Twelve Days (Tor, 2017).
Dr. Charles Johnson is a professor emeritus at the University of Washington and author of 23 books. He is a novelist, philosopher, essayist, literary scholar, short-story writer, cartoonist, illustrator, and an author of children’s literature, screenplays, and teleplays. A MacArthur Fellow, Johnson has received a 2002 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, a 1990 National Book Award for his novel Middle Passage, a 1985 Writers Guild Award for his PBS teleplay Booker, the 2016 W.E.B. Du Bois Award at the National Black Writers Conference, and many others. The Charles Johnson Society at the American Literature Association was founded in 2003. In November 2016, Pegasus Theater in Chicago debuted its play adaptation of Middle Passage, titled Rutherford’s Travels. Johnson’s most recent publications are The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling (Scribner, 2016) and his fourth short story collection, Night Hawks (Scribner, 2018). He lives in Seattle, Washington.
Bryan Christopher Moss was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio. At the age of 18, he began working professionally on storyboards and comics while founding and creating a T-shirt company, Strange Things. His commercial clients include Cirque du Soleil, Marvel Comics, Sprite, and a partnership with the Greater Columbus Arts Council. In addition to his freelancing and contractual projects, Moss is an educator. He has collaborated with the likes of Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, the Columbus Museum of Art, and the Columbus College of Art and Design. He curated, installed, and even showed his own work in his latest exhibition at King Arts Complex, “The Black Panther: Celebrating 50+ Years of Black Superheroes.” In 2020, Columbus Alive named Moss as the city’s Best Comic Book Artist. He was also recently named an artist-in-residency at the prestigious Aminah Robinson House in Columbus, Ohio.