Buddha and the Art of Intimacy: Weaving Sacred Connections of Love [Paperback]

Martin Lowenthal (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 28, 2009

When we are intimate in all domains of our lives, every activity becomes a way of making love. In the freshness of each moment we learn the secret of falling in love over and over again, not only with our partner but with life itself. Buddha and the Art of Intimacy is a celebration of this profound experience and of the critical role of intimate connections in both everyday and spiritual life. In this pioneering book, Martin Lowenthal presents a path of spiritual development rooted in love and conscious relationships and a path for deepening relationships grounded in wisdom and sacred connection. Our relationships are an opportunity to integrate the head and the heart in the embodiment of a sacred way of loving and living.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

MARTIN LOWENTHAL, Ph.D. is an ordained senior meditation teacher, founder and mentor with the Dedicated Life Institute. Dr. Lowenthal is the author of Alchemy of the Soul, Dawning of Clear Light, Embrace Yes, Heart to Heart, Hand in Hand, and Shoulder to Shoulder, and is coauthor of Opening the Heart of Compassion. In addition to creating and teaching trainings, workshops and retreats internationally, he serves as pastoral counselor, consultant, and writer. He has been on the faculty of Boston College and Harvard University Extension and has studied with Buddhist and Taoist masters for forty years. Dr. Lowenthal received his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, has worked as an applied anthropologist in Botswana, Africa, and directed a research institute.

Product Details

• Paperback: 326 pages
• Publisher: BookSurge Publishing (May 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1439237360
• ISBN-13: 978-1439237366
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,163,796 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Journey to the Sacred, August 17, 2009

By 

Brian L. Ackerman MD - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Buddha and the Art of Intimacy: Weaving Sacred Connections of Love (Paperback)

Buddha and the Art of Intimacy

Take a day out of your ordinary weekend, of shopping for clothes or a new stereo, to sip and savor the vast insights and wisdom in Dr; Lowenthal's new book, and you will be gracefully guided beyond the trappings of the material and superficial world to that place in your depth, in your core-in your soul, where your capacity for truly intimaterelationships can be found and needs to be developed.

Dr. Lowenthal eloquently applies the teachings of the Buddha (dharma) to the often turbulent waters of our relationships with our partners and loved ones. We learn that, as with the lotus flower, whose magnificent bloom derives from muddy waters, that our own spiritual maturity, and the fulfillment we seek in our relationships, require us first to be aware of, and then to transform, our own emotional and cognitive mudslides into the magnificent bloom of lasting love.

We learn from the Buddha that we are all booby-trapped, with misguided thought patterns, and emotional reactivity habits, to drive ourselves and our relationships into a ditch. It seems, everyone suffers, to some degree, from inherent or socialized form of relational road rage. Our partners appear to have received specialty training, in just how to push our buttons,leaving us, with the help of our misguided thoughts, to conclude that our partners are the cause of our distress. By the time our emotional reactivity and misguided thoughts are mixed with those of our partners, a potent Molotov cocktail is made that both seem compelled to drink. Whether we erupt overtly, or covertly through withdrawal and alienation, we end up in a place, so far removed from our loving centers, that we can hardly recognize ourselves or our partners.

Dr. Lowenthal helps us to realize that our mission-should we choose to accept it-is to nip this hijacking

process in the bud, invite and help our partners to do the same. By more closely observing our errant thoughts and quickly escalating emotions, we become a witness and a host to those parts of ourselves we would sooner deny, disassociate from, but readily see in others. We learn we can extract the energy of the upsets,and reapply it for a more beneficial purpose. Like using the power of a river to run a saw mill, we learn to redirect our distracted consciousness back to its center, and not just allow it to cause flooding.

Our thought patterns and reactivity habits tether us too the superficial world. The Buddha inspired us to liberate ourselves from these tendencies. Dr. Lowenthal then shows us how we need to apply this potential for liberation to our relationship world, and how to transform those battle grounds, into sacred proving grounds as we become 'mutual caretakers, not proprietors or owners' of our intimate relationships. Even if we are mistakenly convinced that our reactivity was only activated by our partner's reactivity, we become aware that our reactivity becomes part of the very air our partner is breathing. If the Buddha taught us that our reactivity is entangled by our attachments, Dr. Lowenthal, inspires us to roll up our sleeves, work directly with our attachments, to realize the fulfillment of our capacity to love unconditionally.

Brian Ackerman

Psychiatrist, Founding Member American Family Therapy Association

Founder: CALMER LIFE: Center for Awareness Love and Meditation (Lancaster, Ma.)

978-706-1290

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars True Heart, August 13, 2009

By 

Lawrence Edwards, Ph.D. (NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Buddha and the Art of Intimacy: Weaving Sacred Connections of Love (Paperback)

Dr. Lowenthal writes with such warmth and intimacy that he invites you into your heart. He is deeply practiced and the wisdom he has gathered over decades of personal and professional work is right here for the reader to pick up. To live from our real nature, our Buddha nature, is to live consciously in the many relationships we are in. There's no escaping relationship, we live in the web of live. To do so joyously, lovingly, patiently, compassionately is the way of the heart. Martin Lowenthal makes that way easier to discern, easier to follow and easier to delight in!