![Listening to the Heart: A Contemplative Journey to Engaged Buddhism by [Kittisaro And Thanissara]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51%2B3QKSojvL._SY346_.jpg)
Our weekly circle just completed a quarter studying this book. It inspired much personal sharing, as Kittisaro and Thanissara share their own personal story and struggles as they impart the wisdom they learned from their experience as monks with Ajahn Chah in Thailand before moving on to married life and working with AIDS programs in South Africa. An American who studied in Oxford, Kittisaro struggled, among other things, with his propensity to achieve and be the best. Thanissara, a working class Britisher, struggled, among other things, with the patriarchal nature of the Buddhist traditions.
In the preface, they summarize a clear understanding of the non-dualist perspective. Here is my shortened version: We are awakening into an awareness that knows no ultimate separations. Consciousness, when it is aware of its own nature, knows itself as everything. Yet we all experience a separate sense of self. The journey of the personal self is one of great struggle. At first, contemplative practice highlights the sense of self caught in its own fears, projections, and desires. We encounter wounds that need to be healed. Finally we see our true nature as both empty and yet interconnected with everything else; but we cannot rush to this insight and prematurely bypass our personal difficulties and negative emotions. The Dharma guides us through these territories. Aligned with the Dharma, we listen. (Here they include a long list of listenings). And hearing it all, we thereby find our way home.
I also appreciate how this couple clarifies over and again the important Second Noble Truth of the Buddha - that pain is a given in life, but suffering is generated from the mind’s inability to accept reality. As they say, “To feel pain is one thing. To suffer needlessly in reaction to the reality of that pain is quite another. . . . Suffering is a choice we make.”
- File Size: 2371 KB
- Print Length: 297 pages
- Publisher: North Atlantic Books (November 4, 2014)
- Publication Date: November 4, 2014
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00K9MIZ92
- Text-to-Speech:
Enabled
- Word Wise: Enabled
- Lending: Not Enabled
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#761,764 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #110 in Theravada Buddhism (Kindle Store)
- #240 in Theravada Buddhism (Books)
- #729 in Women's Personal Spiritual Growth
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