Transformation
Fall 2009 Vol. 26 #1
Fall 2009 Vol. 26 #1
Introduction
This issue of Inquiring Mind, dedicated to the transformation born of practice, looks at suffering and the end of suffering—with special attention to the dynamics of transformation in personal relationships.
Features
In this interview, Tibetan tulku Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche recounts stories and techniques for transforming suffering due to panic, low self-esteem and anger into compassion and happiness. Recalling a story in which a peacock ate poison to beautify his feathers, Rinpoche says, “If poison is transformed into medicine, then anything can be transformed into medicine.”
In “Walking Up Early,” Tempel Smith reports on teaching Mindful Awareness for Young Adults (MAYA) and introduces Nina Orechwa’s article “Feeling Alive,” about learning meditation as a grad student.
Ajahn Amaro describes how committing to the monastic sangha helped save him from giving up and turning to the bottle.
In this interview, activist and trainer Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey finds that the connections between our internal, individual work and our external, societal work for freedom sometimes are not what might be predicted.
Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi helped inspire the formation of Buddhist Global Relief and challenges us to enlarge our field of practice and move beyond the rhetoric of compassion.
Buddhist teacher and storyteller Jack Kornfield finds love, connection and transformation in poetry.
Patrick McMahon meditates on origins, translations and direct experience of the Buddha’s teachings—including the Dharma and poetry of tea.
Lifelong memories of Barbara Gates’s ninety-six-year-old family friend hold lessons of both delight in life and letting go.
. . . . . Transformation in the Family
John Travis, guiding teacher at Mountain Stream Meditation Center in California, recalls his struggle as a young man to face a demon he’d long been trying to escape—his alcoholic father.
Interview with Spring Washam & Lorna Joseph: We're All In This Together—A Conversation with Mother and Daughter
By Barbara Gates
Through insights gleaned from retreat, young vipassana teacher Spring Washam has healed painful family relationships. She and her mother, Lorna Joseph, trace this journey of forgiveness and connection.
Were the abbot’s motives altruistic, or had her son been exploited in his youthful zeal?, wondered Deborah Kerr Metcalf on her first trip from Ohio to the “foreign” monastery in California to visit her son, now the monk Rev. Heng Sure.
By applying the insights of Buddhism and systems theory, therapist and communication trainer Mudita Nisker helps couples and families explore ways to break unskillful habits and learn new skills, bringing harmony and stability to relationships.
Dharma Jewel
Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse
Reviewed By Alan Senauke
Hozan Alan Senauke sees Hermann Hesses’s 1951 novel as the first melding of psychology and Dharma, Buddhism with a small “b,” and an inspiration for us all to “get ready and wake up.”
Reviews
(224 pp. Wisdom Publications, 2009)
Mind in the Balance, by B. Alan Wallace
Reviewed By Marcia Howton
(244 pp., Columbia University Press, 2009)
Together under One Roof: Making a Home of the Buddha’s Household, by Lin Jensen
Reviewed By Patricia Mushim Ikeda
(208 pp., Wisdom Publications, 2008)
(143 pp., Heyday Press, 2009)
Practice
Anushka Fernandopulle leads a guided meditation on the four elements and the urban environment.
The Dharma & the Drama
Are you a “firster” or a “thirdster” when it comes to the Four Noble Truths? Wes Nisker finds himself kvetching firmly among the former.