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The Heart Of The Bitter Almond Hedge Sutra Paperback – January 28, 2014

by Thanissara (Author)

4 customer reviews

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This poem weaves together contrasting themes; that of our deepest heart, which feels the intimacy of all things, and the walls the mind constructs, which separates all things. This paradox is contextualized by the Heart Sutra with its revelation of a seamless world, and the Bitter Almond Hedge, planted around Cape Town by early European Settlers in their attempt to keep Africa out. As the hedge became internalized, eventually birthing Apartheid, it inflicted a devastating wound against human sensitivity, empathy and justice. This denial of our profound interconnectedness is now moving to its horrific conclusion in the Global Apartheid of a macro Petro-Empire which rages against the Earth and her magnificent and bounteous species. Throughout the poem we hear the haunting voice of the 1st Nation San as their decimated spirits roam landscapes, left lonely, without the great herds of wildlife. As we glimpse the majestic beauty of these ancient lands, we are encouraged to reclaim our wounded souls and hearts. We are also implored to resist the march of ecocide, before it is too late. While this poem reaches back into the mists of time, it also offers vision and hope for our perilous age. Ultimately, it is a rallying call for a revolution that places Heart and Earth foremost, and central, so a more conscious world can be fully birthed.

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Thanissara is Anglo/Irish and originally from London. She was a Buddhist nun for 12 years in the Forest School of Ajahn Chah and has taught meditation internationally the last 25 years. She is co-founder of Dharmagiri, a small meditation center in the Southern Drakensberg in South Africa which also initiates and supports local community engagement projects. Thanissara currently resides between South Africa and the USA. www.dharmagiri.org

Paperback: 74 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (January 28, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1490567305
ISBN-13: 978-1490567303
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.2 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,216,134 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1036 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Themes & Styles > Epic

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Leslee Goodman

A Buddhist poet calls us to love and to action

February 27, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

This beautiful book broke open my heart. Thanissara’s poetry rips the civilized veneer off the lives we are living and reveals them for what they are: a brutal lie we have--to our shame--grown accustomed to. A lie that started, at least in this epic poem, with the planting of a bitter almond hedge to keep “us” white settlers apart from “those” Africans.

From this bitter hedge, South Africa’s cancerous apartheid system grew. But, as Thanissara gently points out, we can't simply point fingers at South Africa, because “the ultimate apartheid is the mind’s own division against the heart.” And that apartheid lives everywhere—everywhere we can destroy the earth without feeling; destroy each other without feeling; betray ourselves without feeling so that we can “get along.”

Through the voices of bushmen, through images of wild Africa, through the heartless terrors of warfare, genocide, and ecocide upon which our modern lives are based, Thanissara makes us feel how much we have lost, and makes us grieve our own cold callousness. And then she calls us to wake up.

“There is no suffering, no origin of suffering, no end of suffering, and no path,” the Buddha teaches. So “Allow the cries that tumble across/the peaceful vast veldt/of mountainous struggles/to flow through you. Let the hot sun melt your shield/as you walk the dusty street/of warm, black, skin softly smiles/where the boy with satchel and dreams/wanders the thin, wishful highway/of no jobs.” Is this so hard?

It is the haunting images of this beautiful book that will stay with me. I love how Thanissara juxtaposes them—often heartbreakingly—with the words of the indigenous people who speak before each chapter. And I love how she ultimately calls us to courage: “Move beyond your walled pastimes/to join the Awakening./Time yourself out/from the needle of craving/and boogie down with intense/flamenco, disciplined passion/so we can crash the machine.

“Soar over the edge/on the breath of our heart’s sorrow/and make a beloved circle/outside the wall/where the storehouse of untamed dreams/will decolonize our mind.” May we do so before it’s too late.

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beautiful poetry.

January 2, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

beautifully written

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Cathy Wickham

for the love of poetry

May 8, 2014

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I find I keep reading the poem many times, in parts, as well an a long read of the whole of it. I encourage anyone interested in Buddhism, Africa, or how to mindfully practice with the ills of the worlds to see yet deeply into life's beauty, or for the love of poetry, to read this book.

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James Kenney

This heart, which is deeper and more aware

February 13, 2017

Format: Paperback

Thanissara has written a beautiful book, mixing Buddhism, poetry and South African history with striking images, poignant almost heart-breaking as Apartheid becomes a symbol for the divide in our deepest selves, in which we are severed from our essence. Her introduction was stunning, and gripped me with amazement as Thanissara so clearly laid out the truths I have come to see in my own practice. Here is an example:

"But the ultimate apartheid is the mind's own division from the heart. This heart, which is deeper and more aware, and which intuitively knows the 'intimacy of all things' is constantly pulled into the tyranny of the proliferating mind that tends to generate a fractured and incoherent world."

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