Heavenly Messengers, Part 2: The Global View
Spring 2009 Vol. 25 #2
Spring 2009 Vol. 25 #2
Introduction
Just as each of our lives is subject to certain basic laws, so are the lives of our civilizations, ideologies, fashions and lifestyles—as well as the living system of the Earth itself.
Features
Interview with Richard Davidson, Daniel Goleman & Jon Kabat-Zinn: Friends in Mind, Friends at Heart
By Barbara Gates, Margaret Cullen, Wes Nisker
Longtime friends Richard Davidson, Daniel Goleman and Jon Kabat-Zinn—each a pioneer in the meeting of Western science and the Dharma—reminisce about the remarkable intertwining of their lives, their work and their practice.
Is the dying economy a good thing? Buddhist scholar-practitioner David Loy deconstructs our institutionalized craving and collective delusion.
Seeing the promise of a dream within the despair of a nightmare, Susan Griffin calls on each of us to serve as spiritual midwives and healers for the ills of our body politic. She writes, “A new vision is arising and the canvas is ourselves.”
Bestselling author Howard Cutler tells stories of the Dalai Lama’s transformative presence with people in conflict around the globe and of his own personal experience of His Holiness.
“Daughters of the Buddha”—the many Asian Buddhist nuns struggling in a patriarchal hierarchy—serve as messengers returning Sandy Boucher and all of us, to the spirit of the path.
“To forget the self is to be enlightened by the myriad things,” recalls Susan Moon, as she finds both humor and illumination in the often painful memory loss that comes with aging.
Despite its “rough, cruel road,” illness delivers the message of a different kind of freedom to Zen priest Florence Caplow.
An invasion by skittering rats stirs would-be pacifist Barbara Gates into siege mode: Exterminate them all!
Between Four Eyes / Mindfulness Without Borders founder Theo Koffler brings mindful awareness—based education to conflict-torn regions around the world, including a Rwandan people still healing from genocide.
A report from Soren Gordhamer on his work leading Between Four Eyes programs in Africa.
Rwandan Patrick Iregura, himself a survivor of war and childhood exile, reflects mindfulness in war-time scenarios in this sidebar to Theo Koffler’s “Mindullness Ambassadors.”
Poems & Not Poems
Kevin Griffen and Wes Nisker coined lyrics to be sung to the bass line of “The Beat Goes On” by Sonny and Cher.
Books & Bodhi
A Proustian essay by Patrick McMahon, exploring the intersection of literature and Zen practice.
Reviews
(256 pp., Shambhala Publications, 2008)
The Art of Buddhism: An Introduction to Its History and Meaning, by Denise Patry Leidy
Reviewed By Jane Casey
(352 pp., Shambhala Publications, 2008)
Emotional Awareness: Overcoming the Obstacles to Psychological Balance and Compassion, a Conversation between the Dalai Lama and Paul Ekman, Ph.D.
Reviewed By Erika L. Rosenberg
(288 pp., Times Books, 2008)
(186 pp., www.dhammatalks.org, 2008)
Dharma Jewel
(223 pp., Rider/Buddhist Publication Society, 1962/1996)
Practice
Ethan Nichtern offers Dharma advice for our modern bad habits—email addiction, TV watching, and the fundamental escape of never wanting to be alone with ourselves.
The Dharma & the Drama
Wes Nisker lifts the veil that shrouds the workings of our global economic upheaval, the Earth’s current “extinction spasm,” and the machinery of modern times.