New & Featured
John Dunne: Dharmakīrti, Conceptuality, and Antidotes for Distorted Thinking (#98)
For this episode of the Wisdom Podcast, host Daniel Aitken speaks with Professor John Dunne, acclaimed scholar and teacher in both Indian and Tibetan Buddhist traditions. John’s research focuses on Buddhist philosophy in relationship to contemplative practice, religious studies, and cognitive science. John is presently Distinguished Professor of Contemplative Humanities at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and author of several publications, including Foundations of Dharmakīrti’s Philosophy, published by Wisdom.
In this rich conversation, you’ll hear John take a deep dive into the world of human conceptuality and, specifically, its relationship to human suffering. For John, as well as for the philosophers he studies, the root of our suffering is not human emotion itself but rather our distorted perceptions. You’ll hear John discuss the structures that underlie perception and how they play a role—for better or for worse—in determining how we conceptualize ourselves and our experiences. John also explains how different types of meditation can serve as antidotes to various categories of distorted thinking.
Lastly, you’ll hear John discuss the difference between learning conceptually versus learning experientially. John asserts that conceptual ideas don’t necessarily change our behavior—instead, we need experiential knowledge to catalyze a deeper internal shift in our understanding.
The Grand Delusion
In The Grand Delusion, bestselling author Steve Hagen drills deeply into the most basic assumptions, strengths, and limitations of religion and belief, philosophy and inquiry, science and technology. In doing so, he shines new light on the great existential questions—Why is there Something rather than Nothing? What does it mean to exist? What is consciousness? What is the nature of truth?—and does so from an entirely unexpected direction.
Ultimately, this book reveals how all of our fundamental questions stem from a single error, a single unwarranted belief—a single Grand Delusion.
Upcoming Author Events
Steve Hagen will be leading an online Grand Delusion study group beginning early 2021. Please contact the Dharma Field Zen Center office at www.dharmafield.org/contact-us.html to learn more. And don’t forget to visit the Grand Delusion website at www.mtsrmts.com.
Your Life IS Meditation
This book’s message is bold and clear: Your life is meditation—every moment and every circumstance can be a place of mindfulness practice and transformation. Your entire life is a path to awakening; nothing is too mundane, nothing is left out. Mark Van Buren excels at communicating in a simple and breezy fashion the nothing-special quality of spiritual practice and how mindfulness helps us make peace with life as it actually is. He leaves the reader feeling empowered, encouraged, and up for the task of living a life of at least just a little bit more freedom and peace.
“Through personal and funny stories Mark makes accessible the path to beginning to integrate meditation into a way of well-being in our daily life.”—Koshin Paley Ellison, author of Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up
“Friendly, simple, and wise words for those who would like to bring a little light and kindness into their daily lives.”—Ben Connelly, Soto Zen priest, secular mindfulness teacher, and author of Mindfulness and Intimacy
Jessica Pimentel: Tibetan Buddhism, Creativity, and the Work of the Imagination (#97)
For this episode of the Wisdom Podcast, host Daniel Aitken interviews American actress and musician Jessica Pimentel. Jessica is best known for her role as Maria Ruiz on the hit Netflix series Orange is the New Black. She is also a serious practitioner within the Geluk tradition of Tibetan Buddhism and studied under the former abbot of Sera Mey Monastery, H.E. Sermey Khensur Rinpoche Lobsang Tharchin.
Throughout her youth, Jessica grew up in a Christian household but also held a deep interest in learning about other traditions as a means to expand her spirituality. You’ll hear her describe the moment she learned about the twelve links of dependent origination, a concept which immediately resonated with her and motivated her to search for a Buddhist teacher. As a teenager in New York in the 1990s, she was able to explore many different traditions before feeling a profound and instantaneous connection with Khen Rinpoche and the Tibetan tradition.
You’ll also hear Jessica discuss the integration of her creative pursuits with her Buddhist practice and how she is able to use her public platform to spread the Dharma. She notes that stepping into the character roles she plays requires a similar type of concentration and imagination as some Buddhist practices, especially regarding the practice of exchanging self and other. You may be surprised to hear that Jessica is also the lead singer of a metal band called Alekine’s Gun. She describes how music is also a spiritual practice for her, and how she includes Buddhist concepts in her lyrics as well as a particular kind of wrathful energy in her performances to break down notions of what a “typical Buddhist” is and should be.
The Buddhist Analysis of Matter
The Buddhist Analysis of Matter is an in-depth study of the Buddhist view of the nature and composition of matter as interpreted in Theravāda Buddhism. The study is mainly based on the seven treatises of the canonical Abhidhamma as well as the subsequent commentarial exegesis. However, in order to bring the subject into a wider perspective and to present it with a measure of precision, it takes into consideration the parallel doctrines of the Vaibhāṣika and Sautrāntika schools of Buddhism. These were two of the leading non-Mahāyāna schools with which the Theravādins had much in common. Both subscribed to a realistic view of existence: while the former had a tendency to extreme realism, the latter had a predilection, but not a commitment, to subjectivism.
Acclaimed scholar Y. Karunadasa’s Buddhist Analysis of Matter provides a much-needed micro view of the topic with a detailed examination of the Theravādins’ list of rūpa-dhammas—the ultimate irreducible factors into which material existence is analyzed. It exposes the nature of the basic material elements and explains their interconnection and interdependence on the basis of conditional relations. It concludes with an attempt to understand the nature and relevance of the Buddhist analysis of matter in the context of Buddhism as a religion.
In Praise of Great Compassion
In Praise of Great Compassion, the fifth volume of the Library of Wisdom and Compassion, continues the Dalai Lama’s teachings on the path to awakening. While previous volumes focused on our present situation and taking responsibility for creating the causes of happiness, this volume concerns opening our hearts and generating the intention to make our lives meaningful by benefiting others.
We are embedded in a universe with other living beings, all of whom have been kind to us in one way or another. More than any other time in human history, we depend on one another to stay alive and flourish. When we look closely, it becomes apparent that we have been the recipient of great kindness. Wanting to repay others’ kindness, we cultivate a positive attitude by contemplating the four immeasurables of love, compassion, empathic joy, and equanimity, and the altruistic intention of bodhicitta. We learn to challenge the self-centered attitude that leads to misery and replace it with a more realistic perspective enabling us to remain emotionally balanced in good and bad times. In this way, all circumstances become favorable to the path to awakening.
Dharma in the Modern World (Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, & Daniel Aitken in Conversation)
Roger Jackson: Mahāmudrā in the Geluk and Kagyü Traditions (#96)
For this episode of the Wisdom Podcast, host Daniel Aitken speaks with Roger Jackson, renowned scholar of both Indian and Tibetan Buddhist traditions and author of several books, including his most recent, Mind Seeing Mind: Mahāmudrā and the Geluk Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. We’re also delighted to share that Mind Seeing Mind recently won the prestigious Toshihide Numata Book Award in Buddhist Studies, given by the Numata Foundation.
In this conversation, you’ll hear Roger tackle the enormous subject of mahāmudrā and its extremely complex origins within Tibetan Buddhist history. Mahāmudrā is considered especially prominent in the Kagyü school of Tibetan Buddhism; however, Roger’s primary interest is in the history, texts, and doctrines of Geluk mahāmudrā. You’ll hear Roger compare and contrast the essence of classic mahāmudrā texts as interpreted by both Kagyüpas and Gelukpas. Within this context, Roger and Daniel dive into central questions: What exactly is emptiness of mind within these two schools of thought? What is conventional versus ultimate reality? How do these differing views translate to the practice itself?
The Extremely Secret Dakini of Naropa
The Extremely Secret Dakini of Naropa has become the basis for almost every subsequent Vajrayogini commentary in the Gelug tradition. Kyabje Pabongkha’s commentary is both very thorough in its presentation and deeply inspiring, providing rich detail on essential elements of Vajrayogini practice:
- all eleven yogas of the generation stage
- the transference of consciousness
- tsok offering
- left-sided conduct
- and many other auxiliary practices
There is also a stunning explanation of the completion stage that provides many extraordinarily profound methods unique to the practice of Vajrayogini. The second half of the book contains several sadhanas for the practice of Vajrayogini, including six-session guru yoga as well as two sadhanas on the transference of consciousness.
The Dechen Ling Practice Series from Wisdom Publications is committed to furthering the vision of David Gonsalez (Venerable Losang Tsering) and the Dechen Ling Press of bringing the sacred literature of Tibet to the West by making available many never-before-translated texts.
Patience
The sixth chapter of Shantideva’s classic A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life is a beacon of inspiration that shows what patience—one of the essential actions of the bodhisattvas—can really mean, leading us to profound self-realization and a heightened determination for awakened action in the world.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche—a teacher whose very name means “patience”—explores Shantideva’s teachings verse by verse, unpacking its lessons for the modern reader:
- Overcoming anger
- Accepting suffering
- Respecting others and finding happiness in their happiness
In explaining this quintessential quality of a bodhisattva, Rinpoche shows us ordinary beings the profundity of the practice of patience and the relevance it has in our everyday lives.
“Shantideva was like us, but he worked on his mind until he became completely free from delusions . . . A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life has inspired countless people since it was written over thirteen hundred years ago. It tells us that we too can develop our mind to the levels of realizations that the great masters have attained—and it shows us how to do it.”—Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Mastering Meditation
Mastering Meditation gives you the experience of studying with one of the greatest meditation masters of the modern age. His Eminence Chöden Rinpoché was not only a celebrated scholar, honored by selection as a debate partner to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, but he was also an accomplished yogi who spent nineteen years in solitary meditation retreat. In this thorough and thoroughly clear book, Rinpoché offers meticulous explanations and profound practical instructions on two essential practices in Tibetan Buddhism: calm abiding and mahāmudrā.
The first part of this book contains instructions for developing calm abiding, an unshakable single-pointedness of mind. The second part, Rinpoché’s direct commentary on the Fourth Paṇchen Lama’s foundational text, offers advanced instructions on using calm abiding as a platform to develop mahāmudrā. Rinpoché elucidates both sūtra-system mahāmudrā—meditation on the emptiness of the mind—as well as mantra-system mahāmudrā, a specialized meditation that uncovers subtle, hidden levels of mind to pierce into the ultimate nature of self and reality, leading finally to complete enlightenment.
Drawing from his vast learning and personal experience, Rinpoché provides readers with an open gateway to remarkable states of lucidity and peace.
How to Be Sick
You won’t be alone when you have this pocket-sized treasure of transformative practices, written by beloved bestselling author Toni Bernhard.
In 2001, Toni got sick and never recovered. As she faced the confusion, frustration, and despair of a life that was suddenly severely limited, Toni had to learn how to be sick.
In this easy-to-use, easy-to-carry book, Toni shares practices from her bestselling classic How to Be Sick and also offers new suggestions and strategies for coping with a life impacted by chronic pain and illness. Because the book is organized by specific challenges, you can immediately find practices that can help when they’re needed most.
With this book in hand, you will discover the experiential wisdom that has helped Toni live a life of equanimity, compassion, and joy, despite her physical and energetic restrictions—and, sometimes, because of them. In the pages of this loyal companion, you’ll find help, solace, and inspiration, no matter what life challenge you’re facing.
Peaceful Piggy Bedtime
“It’s time to go to sleep, but some friends are sleepy, and some are not. Some are already nodding off, and some want to bounce around. Now it’s time to go from busy to peaceful. These mindful bedtime exercises will help us have a good night’s sleep.”
Bedtime can be a joy; a quiet time, a nice cuddle—a sleepy angel. Bedtime can also be a challenge; riled energy, hidden anxieties—a restless little monster! This book draws on modern science and time-tested wisdom to provide children with an effective bedtime ritual to relax the body, settle the mind, and drift into a peaceful sleep. Parents may find they sleep better, too!
The Four Immeasurables, Part 1
Welcome to The Four Immeasurables, Part I! In this course, taught by B. Alan Wallace—a teacher internationally renowned for the clarity and profundity of his teachings—you’ll learn about the following areas of Buddhist study and practice:
- the theory and application of the first two of profound practices known as the Four Immeasurables, or the Divine Abidings (brahmaviharas): loving-kindness and compassion (the second two are sympathetic joy and equanimity, to be covered in Part 2 of this course, coming Fall 2020)
- the first two of the four “greats”: Great Loving-Kindness and Great Compassion. In Alan’s teaching, the “four greats” require a fundamental shift from aspiration to intention.
Both parts of the course will also touch on:
- Pith instructions on different methods of shamatha and vipashyana
- the cultivation of bodhicitta
- the practice of sadhana
- the practice of relative and ultimate bodhicitta in the context of Dzoghchen
- and much more.
This course will become available to All-Access Wisdom Experience members in fall 2020.
Online Course with Ven. Anālayo
Join the Foundations of Mindfulness, the course that one student called a "life-changing 12 weeks." Starts October 2.
LEARN MORE
The Foundations of Mindfulness
In this course, you’ll discover some of the most meaningful and profound applications of mindfulness, under the guidance of renowned scholar-monk Venerable Bhikkhu Anālayo and a group of expert guest teachers.
Note: As an act of Dhammadāna, Ven. Anālayo has waived royalty payments for this course.
Mastering Meditation
Mastering Meditation gives you the experience of studying with one of the greatest meditation masters of the modern age. His Eminence Chöden Rinpoché was not only a celebrated scholar, honored by selection as a debate partner to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, but he was also an accomplished yogi who spent nineteen years in solitary meditation retreat. In this thorough and thoroughly clear book, Rinpoché offers meticulous explanations and profound practical instructions on two essential practices in Tibetan Buddhism: calm abiding and mahāmudrā.
The first part of this book contains instructions for developing calm abiding, an unshakable single-pointedness of mind. The second part, Rinpoché’s direct commentary on the Fourth Paṇchen Lama’s foundational text, offers advanced instructions on using calm abiding as a platform to develop mahāmudrā. Rinpoché elucidates both sūtra-system mahāmudrā—meditation on the emptiness of the mind—as well as mantra-system mahāmudrā, a specialized meditation that uncovers subtle, hidden levels of mind to pierce into the ultimate nature of self and reality, leading finally to complete enlightenment.
Drawing from his vast learning and personal experience, Rinpoché provides readers with an open gateway to remarkable states of lucidity and peace.
Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand
Pabongka Rinpoche was one the twentieth century’s most charismatic and revered Tibetan lamas, and in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand we can see why. In this famous twenty-four-day teaching on the lamrim, or stages of the path, Pabongka Rinpoche weaves together lively stories and quotations with frank observations and practical advice to move readers step by step along the journey to buddhahood. When his student Trijang Rinpoche first edited and published these teachings in Tibetan, an instant classic was born. The flavor and immediacy of the original Tibetan are preserved in Michael Richards’s fluid and lively translation, which is now substantially revised in this new edition.
- An interactive outline of Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand can be found at the Kurukulla Center website.
- Read Trijang Rinpoche’s biography at the Treasury of Lives.
The Freeing the Heart and Mind Trilogy
On the occasion of His Holiness the Sakya Trichen’s birthday (September 7), we wanted to take this opportunity to express our appreciation and respect for this beloved teacher. We’re also celebrating His Holiness’s birthday with a special offer: for the month of September 2020, you can get his full Freeing the Heart and Mind trilogy for just $29.95 (full value: $50.85) for the print editions or $19.99 for the ebook editions.
This trilogy is “required reading” for any Sakya practitioner, and will also be deeply inspiring for Buddhists of all traditions.
The series covers a wide range of teachings, including:
- In volume 1, an explanation of the teaching Matchless Compassion by the Indian saint Virupa, a selection of commentaries on the essential teaching called Parting from the Four Attachments.
- In volume 2, two texts by the legendary thirteenth-century Drogön Chögyal Phagpa. A founding father of the Sakya school, Chögyal Phagpa became the first imperial preceptor under Kublai Khan and thus converted the Mongols to Tibetan Buddhism. His two texts presented here, A Gift of Dharma to Kublai Khan and A Garland of Jewels—the second of which was written as advice for Prince Gibek Timur—are marvels of insight.
- And in volume 3, down-to-earth advice for practicing in the world today, including the principles of tantra, ecology from a Buddhist perspective, biographies of great women practitioners, and other fascinating topics.
We hope you’ll take advantage of this opportunity to be inspired by His Holiness’s teachings!
Mipham’s Sword of Wisdom
Mipham’s Sword of Wisdom explores the Nyingma-lineage understanding of valid cognition in Vajrayana Buddhism. This translation, a clear and concise primer on higher realization through valid cognition in Buddhist philosophy, presents these ideas in English for the very first time and includes the sutra presentation of the two truths and the tantra teachings of the two truths as the purity and equality of all phenomena.
When you’ve finished Mipham’s Sword of Wisdom, you’ll have
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rich insights into Nyingma teachings on valid cognition,
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a profound new understanding of the two truths and their inseparability,
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a solid foundation in valid cognition through direct perception and reasoning according to the traditional Indian treatises of Dharmakirti and Dignaga,
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and much more.
In Praise of Great Compassion
In Praise of Great Compassion, the fifth volume of the Library of Wisdom and Compassion, continues the Dalai Lama’s teachings on the path to awakening. While previous volumes focused on our present situation and taking responsibility for creating the causes of happiness, this volume concerns opening our hearts and generating the intention to make our lives meaningful by benefiting others.
We are embedded in a universe with other living beings, all of whom have been kind to us in one way or another. More than any other time in human history, we depend on one another to stay alive and flourish. When we look closely, it becomes apparent that we have been the recipient of great kindness. Wanting to repay others’ kindness, we cultivate a positive attitude by contemplating the four immeasurables of love, compassion, empathic joy, and equanimity, and the altruistic intention of bodhicitta. We learn to challenge the self-centered attitude that leads to misery and replace it with a more realistic perspective enabling us to remain emotionally balanced in good and bad times. In this way, all circumstances become favorable to the path to awakening.
Patience
The sixth chapter of Shantideva’s classic A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life is a beacon of inspiration that shows what patience—one of the essential actions of the bodhisattvas—can really mean, leading us to profound self-realization and a heightened determination for awakened action in the world.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche—a teacher whose very name means “patience”—explores Shantideva’s teachings verse by verse, unpacking its lessons for the modern reader:
- Overcoming anger
- Accepting suffering
- Respecting others and finding happiness in their happiness
In explaining this quintessential quality of a bodhisattva, Rinpoche shows us ordinary beings the profundity of the practice of patience and the relevance it has in our everyday lives.
“Shantideva was like us, but he worked on his mind until he became completely free from delusions . . . A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life has inspired countless people since it was written over thirteen hundred years ago. It tells us that we too can develop our mind to the levels of realizations that the great masters have attained—and it shows us how to do it.”—Lama Zopa Rinpoche
In the Buddha’s Words
This landmark collection is the definitive introduction to the Buddha’s teachings—in his own words. The American scholar-monk Bhikkhu Bodhi, whose voluminous translations have won widespread acclaim, here presents selected discourses of the Buddha from the Pali Canon, the earliest record of what the Buddha taught. Divided into ten thematic chapters, In the Buddha’s Words reveals the full scope of the Buddha’s discourses, from family life and marriage to renunciation and the path of insight. A concise, informative introduction precedes each chapter, guiding the reader toward a deeper understanding of the texts that follow.
In the Buddha’s Words allows even readers unacquainted with Buddhism to grasp the significance of the Buddha’s contributions to our world heritage. Taken as a whole, these texts bear eloquent testimony to the breadth and intelligence of the Buddha’s teachings, and point the way to an ancient yet ever-vital path. Students and seekers alike will find this systematic presentation indispensable.
Approaching the Buddhist Path
Now in Paperback!
His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been publicly teaching Buddhism for decades. The Library of Wisdom and Compassion collects his presentations of every step of the path to enlightenment, compiled and coauthored by one of his chief Western disciples, the American nun Thubten Chodron.
The Buddha wanted his students to investigate, to see for themselves whether what he said were true. As a student of the Buddha, the Dalai Lama promotes the same spirit of investigation, and as the rich tradition of the Buddha makes its way into new lands and cultures, His Holiness has recognized that new approaches are needed to allow seekers in the West to experience the relevance of the liberating message in their own lives. Such an approach cannot assume listeners are free from doubt and already have faith in Buddhism’s basic tenets. The Library of Wisdom and Compassion series, therefore, starts from the universal human wish for happiness and presents the dynamic nature of the mind. This first volume also provides a wealth of reflections on Buddhist history and fundamentals, contemporary issues, and the Dalai Lama’s own personal experiences. It stands alone as an introduction to Buddhism, but it also provides a foundation for the systematic illumination of the path in the volumes to come.
The Library of Wisdom and Compassion
The Library of Wisdom and Compassion collects the Dalai Lama’s decades of presentations of every step of the path to enlightenment. It has been compiled and coauthored by one of his chief Western disciples, the American nun Thubten Chodron.
The Tantra Without Syllables (vol 3) and The Blazing Lamp Tantra (vol 4)
“If one knows the Self-Arisen Vidya Tantra, the Self-Liberated Vidya Tantra, and the Tantra Without Syllables, one will have command over the general meaning of the tantras, like a king who has command over his subjects.”—Treasury of the Supreme Vehicle
The eleventh-century Seventeen Tantras are among the most important texts in the tradition of the Great Perfection—and in all of Tibetan Buddhism. This set provides two luminous root texts in crystal-clear translation, along with their commentaries, which break down the tantra passage by passage under headings that contextualize many instructions for the practice of the Great Perfection. The two texts are published together because they contain some of the most detailed expositions on which are based the two essential practices of the Great Perfection: trekchö, the view, and thögal, the meditation.
The Tantra Without Syllables focuses on the theoretical basis for trekchö. The actual tantra discussed in this text is not the words of the tantra, but rather the subject matter that the tantra points to: the continuum of one’s own vidyā confirmed in a direct perception, which cannot be explained in words. The Blazing Lamp Tantra focuses on the theoretical basis of thögal, detailing the four lamps, which are crucial for understanding the contemplative visions unique to the Great Perfection.
Malcolm Smith’s simple and lucid introductions bring clarity to an intricate subject, making these volumes vital reading for any student of Dzogchen.
Bearing the Unbearable
A timeless book, destined to become a classic.
Foreword INDIES Award-Winner — Gold Medal for Self-Help
When a loved one dies, the pain of loss can feel unbearable—especially in the case of a traumatizing death that leaves us shouting, “NO!” with every fiber of our body. The process of grieving can feel wild and nonlinear—and often lasts for much longer than other people, the nonbereaved, tell us it should.
Organized into fifty-two short chapters, Bearing the Unbearable is a companion for life’s most difficult times, revealing how grief can open our hearts to connection, compassion, and the very essence of our shared humanity. Dr. Joanne Cacciatore—bereavement educator, researcher, Zen priest, and leading counselor in the field—accompanies us along the heartbreaking path of love, loss, and grief. Through moving stories of her encounters with grief over decades of supporting individuals, families, and communities—as well as her own experience with loss—Cacciatore opens a space to process, integrate, and deeply honor our grief.
Not just for the bereaved, Bearing the Unbearable will be required reading for grief counselors, therapists and social workers, clergy of all varieties, educators, academics, and medical professionals. Organized into accessible and stand-alone chapters, this book is also perfect for being read aloud in support groups.
Now available as an online course from the Wisdom Academy.
A MESSAGE FROM THE AUTHOR
For more than two decades, I’ve helped those who have experienced life’s greatest tragedies learn to be with and integrate their losses and stay connected to their beloved ones who have died.
For more than two decades, I’ve wept with countless families from every cultural, ethnic, and religious group around the world.
For more than two decades, I’ve studied the effects of these losses and trained others on how to be compassionate toward that which cannot be cured.
For more than two decades, I’ve learned from the greatest teachers of all: our beloved ones who have died.
This book is an amalgamation of two decades of grief and love.
PRAISE FOR THIS BOOK
“Simultaneously heartwrenching and uplifting. Cacciatore offers practical guidance on coping with profound and life-changing grief. This book is destined to be a classic, simply the best book I have ever read on the process of grief.”—Ira Israel, The Huffington Post
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“In this poignant, heartrending and heart-lifting book, Joanne Cacciatore teaches how loss is transformed to peace, devastating grief to active and practical love. Beautifully, beautifully written, Bearing the Unbearable is for all those who have grieved, will grieve, or support others through bereavement.”—Gabor Maté, MD, author of When The Body Says No: Exploring The Stress-Disease Connection and In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
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“Bearing the Unbearable is a compelling critique of our ‘compassion-deficient’ and happiness-addicted culture that creates a pathological relationship to our feelings in general and grief in particular. Dr. Cacciatore elucidates the cost of pathologizing grief and neglecting and invalidating the emotional experience of people who have suffered horrendous loss—the way such approaches make the grief-stricken doubt themselves and feel alienated and isolated, all of which precludes healing. This book is a plea for therapeutic approaches to trauma and grief that unflinchingly respect the full spectrum of feelings that human beings experience thus providing an emotional home for our agony.”—Jeffrey B. Rubin, PhD, author of Meditative Psychotherapy and Psychotherapy & Buddhism
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“There are sentences in this luminous book that took my breath away. With penetrating insight and tender warmth, Dr. Jo meets the broken-hearted where we live: in an utterly transformed and transformational space. This is the secret potion I have been yearning for, offered from a brimming cup.”—Mirabai Starr, translator of Dark Night of the Soul: John of the Cross and author of Caravan of No Despair: A Memoir of Loss and Transformation
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“Bearing the Unbearable is a truly remarkable book. Its author, Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, who herself suffered the heartbreak of losing a child more than 20 years ago, has devoted her entire professional life to work with traumatic bereavement, and her book brims over with the rich emotional wisdom she has acquired in the course of this work. Her aim in her work and in her book is not to exile, diminish, or ‘cure’ us of grief. For ‘when we love deeply,’ she contends wisely, ‘we also mourn deeply, for extraordinary grief is an expression of extraordinary love.’ Her aim, on the contrary, is to give us a home for grief, to help us to be with and surrender to it, to dwell in unbearable sorrow, whether it be our own or another person’s. Loving and grieving are inseparable and constitutive aspects of our humanity, and one cannot emerge from a close reading of Bearing the Unbearable without feeling more deeply human. I strongly recommend it both to those who work with the traumatically bereaved and those who suffer from such bereavement themselves.”—Robert D. Stolorow, PhD., Founding Faculty Member at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, author of Trauma and Human Existence
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“Joanne Cacciatore’s amazing and emotionally demanding new book, Bearing the Unbearable, is an experience more than a book. In recounting many many cases from her extraordinary therapy practice devoted to helping people who are undergoing severe grief mostly after the death of a child, the book offers the reader an experience that, like grief itself, is painful but for which one will be deeply grateful afterward…With the courage and wisdom of the author to support the reader through its many many vivid and memorable examples, Bearing the Unbearable takes us on a journey through some of the purest and most piercing distillations of grief, yielding details and distinctions that increase understanding of processes that are usually invisible…Cacciatore reminds us that some terribly painful things are also terribly normal and human. Her mapping of the terrain of grief reveals the absurdity (and offensiveness, even with the best of intentions) of formulating ‘diagnostic criteria’ for pathological grief that claim to be universally applicable yet fail to take into account even the most basic context and nature of the loss…Cicero, a Roman Stoic…tells the story of Anaxagoras, who, upon being told of the death of his son, said simply and tearlessly, “I knew that I had borne a mortal.” …the book does persuasively and importantly challenge the idea that the goal of helping people grieving extreme loss is to throw grief off and divest oneself of it or protect oneself as did Anaxagoras, not only because in many cases that is impossible, but because it is the wrong path to healing.”—Jerome Wakefield, PhD, Professor NYU School of Medicine, author of The Loss of Sadness
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“Bearing the Unbearable: How difficult this is in a culture that denies and distances itself from the well of sorrow. This book is a wise guide, intimate and tender, fierce and wise, reminding us what it means to fully love. Cacciatore invites the dead to come close by and help us to live again, even in the face of the unbearable. She knows the territory of loss and has returned with essential guidance for a people who no longer remember how to navigate the sacred terrain of grief. This is a holy book, riddled with insight and compassion. It will bless all of us in our times of sorrow.”—Francis Weller, author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
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“This book represents an approach to grief that moves beyond platitudes and cliche. It offers a way to truly grow through grief that is not a moving beyond but is more of an organic decaying and recycling of the soul. It offers hope for those who feel like their loss has disconnected themselves forever from humanity and the circle of life. There is something for everyone in this garden that will restore and rejuvenate. I would highly recommend this book!”—Doug Bremner, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, Emory University and author of The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg and You Can’t Just Snap Out of It
Introduction to the Manual of Insight
In this course led by respected insight meditation teachers Steve Armstrong and Kamala Masters, you’ll be introduced to the Manual of Insight by the renowned teacher and meditation master Mahāsi Sayadaw, a foundational text at the root of the widespread practice of mindfulness in the West today. Through a series of video lectures and live video conferences on this foundational text about the practice of mindfulness, Steve offers clear guidance in navigating essential topics including mental purification, deepening insights at increasing stages of momentary concentration, and the nature of nibbāna. Kamala and Steve offer weekly guided meditations to bring the text alive in your own practice. Through select readings, short quizzes and community interactions, you’ll be supported in navigating the Buddha’s liberating Noble Eightfold path as articulated in this seminal text. This is a course produced in partnership with the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. BCBS is offering a limited number of scholarships; email them to learn more.
How to Face Death without Fear
“Helping our loved ones at the time of death is the best service we can offer them, our greatest gift. Why? Because death is the most important time of life: it’s at death that the next rebirth is determined.”—Lama Zopa Rinpoche
For years Lama Zopa Rinpoche envisioned a practical book to inform students of how to help loved ones have a beneficial death. How to Face Death without Fear has been compiled from years of Rinpoche’s teachings and has been lovingly edited by Venerable Robina Courtin.
Rinpoche provides detailed advice on how to help your loved ones prepare for the end of their life with courage, acceptance, and a mind free of fear. With great care, he explains what to do in the months, weeks, and days before death, how to handle the moment itself, what to do after the breath has stopped, and finally, what to do after the mind has left the body. Rinpoche provides the mantras, prayers, and meditations appropriate for each stage. This new edition of Rinpoche’s modern classic How to Enjoy Death makes it easy for the reader to find the right practice at the right time.
This handbook is an essential reference for Tibetan Buddhist caregivers, hospice workers, and chaplains. But, as Rinpoche points out, it is not only for people who work with the dying; it is education we all need.
You’ll find solace in this wealth of advice, and you’ll also gain the confidence to ensure that your loved one’s death—and your own—will be joyful and meaningful.
Buddhist Suttas for Recitation
Bring the Buddha’s teachings more deeply into your life.
Buddhist Suttas for Recitation provides everything you need to begin and maintain a practice of contemplative recitation and reflection. These practices will deepen your connection to the Buddha, strengthen your faith in the Path, and nurture your intellectual understanding of the Dhamma.
This unique volume includes carefully chosen discourses of the Buddha from the Pali Canon—presented in inspiring and accessible English with accompanying Pali—that convey the essence of the Dhamma. The introductory material explains the relationship between meditation and devotional practice, offers instructions on setting up a home altar, and gives advice on how to use these texts to enhance your spiritual development.
The Four Immeasurables, Part 1
In this course, under the expert guidance of B. Alan Wallace, you’ll explore the practice of cultivating the Four Immeasurables, the Four Greats, and bodhicitta, including from the perspective of vajrayana, and specifically from pure view and divine pride, as Avalokitesvara. Part I covers loving-kindness and compassion.
Buddhist Philosophy in Depth, Part 3
The rich philosophical fabric of Buddhist thought has evolved over two millennia, within a variety of cultures, epochs, and geographies. Professor Jay Garfield takes us on an exciting in-depth journey throughout these Buddhist worlds, their texts, and the essential thinkers that have shaped Buddhist philosophy from the time of the historical Buddha. Purchasing the entire three course series, gives you access to explore the evolution of Buddhist thought and transmission, from the time of the Buddha to the spread of the Buddhadharma to the west.
The Six Perfections
The six perfections are the actions of the bodhisattvas—holy beings who have transcended selfless concerns. But they’re also skills we can and should develop right now, in our messy, ordinary lives.
In this clear, comprehensive guide to the backbone of Mahayana Buddhist practice, Lama Zopa Rinpoche walks us through each of the six perfections:
- charity
- morality
- patience
- perseverance
- concentration
- wisdom
As he carefully describes each perfection, he not only reveals the depth of its meaning and how it intertwines with each other perfection, but he also explains how to practice it fully in our everyday lives—offering concrete ways for us to be more generous, more patient, more wise. With the guidance he gives us, we can progress in our practice of the perfections until we, like the bodhisattvas, learn to cherish others above ourselves.
“The perfections are the practices of bodhisattvas, holy beings who have completely renounced the self; they have transcended selfish concerns and cherish only others. Each perfection is perfect, flawless. Each arises from bodhichitta and is supported by the other perfections, including the wisdom of emptiness. Because of that, a bodhisattva generates infinite merit every moment, whether outwardly engaged in working for others or not. A bodhisattva’s bodhichitta never stops.”
—Lama Zopa Rinpoche
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