Reviews and Comments

An excellent and very readable #anthology full of #stories, #quotes, and #poetry geared toward inspiring #forgiveness. I found it helpful for its variety and diversity of description and presentation regarding how forgiveness can look, how to think about it, and the many kinds of forgiveness (or non-forgiveness). Beyond that, I think the particular strength of Inspiring Forgiveness is that it is probably still accessible to people not (yet) interested in #forgiving, much more so than one of the many works offering advice on how to #forgive.

The one thing that bothered me was that the formatting seemed poorly adapted to ebook readers. I've heard that the printed version is quite nicely done, though, so if you're thinking about reading it and have the choice, you're probably better off with a hardcopy.

#BarbaraBonner #InspiringForgiveness

It's hard to know what to write about this one.

On the one hand, I experience much of Lama Rod's teaching in this book as brilliantly creative. The meditation instructions are well-systematized and I found the guidance helpful, especially for the #7homecomings, #tonglen, and #EarthTouching / #bhūmisparśa practices. I also deeply appreciated his acknowledgement of the issues present in the #Tibetan #Buddhist tradition and his way of relating to flawed teachers in a system vulnerable to abuse of power was valuable for me. The way he addresses #racism, #whitesupremacy, #queerphobia, #patriarchy and other forms of #discrimination or #opression reminded me favorably of Sebene Selassie's You Belong.

On the other, having now listened to it in its entirety, it seems like the book might have put together in a piecemeal sort of way. I get the impression that this might have been intentional or seen as unproblematic as a way to enhance the sense of authenticity. I listened to the audio version, and while the inclusion of the original audio for the interviews was a nice touch, it felt a lot like recycling content to me—I think I would have preferred a more edited final version with links to the originals for anyone who wanted to dig deeper.

On the whole, it was well worth the time I spent with it. I feel like I've learned quite a bit. If anyone is reading this and trying to decide between the print & audio versions, I would guess that the print version might be a bit easier to use, especially if one intends to refer frequently to the instructions for #meditation and #reflection.

Beautiful and insightful. Listened to the abridged version because it was what I had easy access to. I'll reserve writing a review for if and when I read the full version, but even this short version has value for anyone wishing to look more deeply into Thích Nhất Hạnh's advice for everyone to be deeply rooted in their own tradition(s).

#ThichNhatHanh #Thay #Buddhism #Christianity #Interfaith

It's a really good manual of brahmavihārā practice as it is taught in the tradition of the Insight Meditation Society. It covers everything one would want to start a practice and it's plenty deep enough for experience practitioners looking for a refresher. The four sublime abidings are complemented well by two chapters on #generosity (#dāna) and #morality (#sīla), so in a sense it's a bit like going backwards through the ten #pāramī

#brahmavihārā #IMS #meditation #lovingkindness #mettā #compassion #karuṇā #sympatheticjoy #muditā #equanimity #upekkhā

I was quite surprised while reading this to realize that Sebene Selassie uses belonging as a translation of suññatā or interbeing. Or perhaps belonging is less of a translation and more of a lens. Either way, I found the reflections to be extremely useful. And I was impressed by the erudition of the work—it's quite rare for teachers to draw on such a breadth of sources from different disciplines. She also manages very well to convey what practices can be helpful for awareness of and engagement with belonging while also not giving the sense of yet another list of to-dos to add to the pile.

This is an inspiring introduction which gives a clear idea of the magnitude of the project which Miki and others in the NGL community have been working on and leaves me with the desire to know more & dig deeper. I really appreciate that this context is being offered by default when any of the packets are accessed.

I'm going to leave this one unrated for now since it's so clear that it's still a work in progress. Looking forward to reading the next packet!

Don't need it anymore at the moment. Will probably come back to it later next year.

More than lives up to the hype. If anything, I'm disappointed I didn't read it when I was younger; I might have learned some valuable lessons.