In this issue of Inquiring Mind we are delighted to be able to bring you new words of wisdom from Ram Dass, everybody’s spiritual uncle, as he talks with Roger Walsh about his post-stroke life. We then travel back to Asia to investigate the lost heritage of the Theravada Buddhist tradition, the Path of the Elders, with excerpts from Kamala Tiyavanich’s ground-breaking book, Forest Recollections. Here we find Buddhist monks cavorting in water sports with villagers, exorcising spirits and practicing shamanic rituals, all of which we associate more with Tibet than Thailand. Ajahn Amaro and Jack Kornfield—both trained in the Thai forest tradition—next join the author in a lively conversation about her work. Jack Kornfield then offers us a vision of the new Spirit Rock retreat center that draws inspiration from this early Buddhism of Southeast Asia.

In the second section of this issue we travel through the “dark night of the soul.” We feature an interview with China Galland about her brave journey of fierce compassion and an essay by Gavin Harrison about practice as training in courage to face and stand up for truth. After discovering how to get it all together, we then learn how to let it all fall apart again in a fascinating conversation with Mark Epstein, whose new book, Going To Pieces Without Falling Apart, offers a wonderful synthesis of Western psychotherapy and Buddhist meditation practice.

About the cover:

The front cover photograph was taken in the ancient capital city of Ayyuthya, Thailand.

A note about what is and is not available here today…

For budgetary reasons, we’ve focused on archiving Inquiring Mind’s original articles, interviews and poetry. For the most part, we have left out anything that was adapted or excerpted from a book or other publication.

That’s why the following articles from this issue are NOT in the archive:

“The Lost World of Our Elders” by Kamala Tiyavanich was adapted from Forest Recollections: Wandering Monks in Twentieth-Century Thailand. (University of Hawai’i Press, 1997)

Poems & Not Poems: “The Last Time,” “The Grave,” “The Gate,” and “What the Living Do,” by Marie Howe, were excerpted from What the Living Do: Poems (W. W. Norton & Co., 1998)

Practice: “Breathing with Daily Life” by Larry Rosenberg was adapted from Breath by Breath (Shambhala Publications, Inc., 1998)

The Dharma & the Drama: “Thinking About Thinking” by Wes Nisker was adapted from Buddha’s Nature: Evolution as a Practical Guide to Enlightenment (Bantam Books, 1998)