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<p>In the rush of modern life, we tend to lose touch with the peace that is available in each moment. World-renowned Zen master, spiritual leader, and author Thich Nhat Hanh shows us how to make positive use of the very situations that usually pressure and antagonize us. For him a ringing telephone can be a signal to call us back to our true selves. Dirty dishes, red lights, and traffic jams are spiritual friends on the path to "mindfulness" -- the process of keeping our consciousness alive to our present experience and reality. The most profound satisfactions, the deepest feelings of joy and completeness lie as close at hand as our next aware breath and the smile we can form right now. Lucidly and beautifully written, "Peace Is Every Step" contains commentaries and meditations, personal anecdotes and stories from Nhat Hanh's experiences as a peace activist, teacher, and community leader. It begins where the reader already is -- in the kitchen, office, driving a car, walking a part -- and shows how deep meditative presence is available now. Nhat Hanh provides exercises to increase our awareness of our own body and mind through conscious breathing, which can bring immediate joy and peace. Nhat Hanh also shows how to be aware of relationships with others and of the world around us, its beauty and also its pollution and injustices. the deceptively simple practices of "Peace Is Every Step" encourage the reader to work for peace in the world as he or she continues to work on sustaining inner peace by turning the "mindless" into the mindFUL. "This book of illuminating reminders bid us to reorient the way we look at the world...toward a humanitarian perspective." -- "Publisher Weekly"</p>

<p>Creator's Description: The Commentary on Enlightened Attitude (Bodhicittavivaraṇa), which is attributed to the tantric Nāgārjuna (fl. 200 CE), takes the ultimate enlightened attitude (bodhicitta) as a direct realization of emptiness, and follows a positive approach to the ultimate, like the sūtras of and commentaries on the third wheel of the doctrine (dharmacakra). Taking this as Nāgārjuna’s final position, the Commentary on Enlightened Attitude gains an important status for those who see in the third wheel of the doctrine teachings of definitive meaning. The present paper shows that ’Gos lo tsā ba gzhon nu dpal (1392-1481) and his disciple the Fourth Zhwa dmar pa Chos grags ye shes (1453-1524) follow this approach, but take positive descriptions of the ultimate in the third wheel of the doctrine as the result of a direct experience of emptiness beyond the duality of perceiving subject and perceived object. Standing in the Great Seal (Mahāmudrā) tradition of the Dwags po bka’ brgyud, an ultimate existence of mind, such that self-awareness or the perfect nature exists as an entity, is not accepted by them.</p>

The study evaluates the effects of 5 years of religious training on the personalities of 31 residents of a Zen Buddhist monastic seminary. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory was administered to each subject each year. Comparison of results at Years 1 and 5 revealed predicted improvements, significant at the .05 level, in scales assessing ego strength and dependency and in two measures of general adjustment. A similar pattern of results was found across a time period of only one year in those subjects who experienced a major religious understanding. Comparison with similar studies conducted in Christian seminaries and religious orders suggests that specific elements of monastic life may influence personal adjustment.


<p>Creator's Description: Tibetan Buddhist lists and collections of Indian Great Seal (Phyag rgya chen po, Mahāmudrā) texts consist almost exclusively of works found in the Translation of Treatises (Bstan ’gyur). There are, however, two Translation of the Word (Bka’ ’gyur) texts that appear in a collection of Ten Dharmas of Mahāmudrā (Phyag rgya chen po’i chos bcu) transmitted by the eleventh-century Indian teacher Vajrapāṇi: the Noble Mahāyāna Sūtra Called “The Gnosis of the Moment of Passing Away” (’Phags pa ’da’ ka ye shes shes bya ba theg pa chen po’i mdo, Ārya-​ātajñāna-​nāma-​mahāyāna-​sūtra) and the Royal Tantra on the Glorious Unpolluted (Rgyud kyi rgyal po dpal rnyog pa med pa zhes bya ba, Śrī-​anāvila-​tantra-​rāja). In exploring these two texts, rarely discussed by either Tibetan or Western scholarship, this article provides a translation and discussion of the Gnosis of the Moment of Passing Away (Ātajñāna, ’Da’ ka ye shes) and a synopsis and discussion of the Unpolluted (Anāvila, Rnyog pa med pa). It concludes that although neither text is an obvious choice for a Great Seal canon, each contains terminology and themes that are consonant with the Great Seal discourse of later Indian, as well as Tibetan, Buddhism, each appears to have been sufficiently prominent to come to the attention of Vajrapāṇi, and each can serve to provide the necessary authority of the word of the Buddha (Buddhavacana; Sangs rgyas kyi bka’) to lists of Indian Great Seal texts utilized by Tibetans.</p>

Aziz explores, mainly through fieldwork, Pha dam pa Sangs rgyas’ lasting effect on the area, including on gcod practice. (BJN)

<p>Bernbaum argues that gcod ritual is unique in the way it uses demons and evil spirits as a means in the pursuit of liberation. (BJN)</p>

Jan Willis examines the subtle--and not so subtle--racism that exists in American Buddhism.

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