Awaken Your Heart & Mind
The Best Buddhist Wisdom from Lion's Roar magazine
An unmatched collection of Buddhist teachings, inspiring personal stories, and journalism from the preeminent and longest-running Buddhist publication in North America.
Presented in a deluxe, oversize format spotlighting Lion’s Roar’s award-winning art direction.
FEATURING
PEMA CHÖDRÖN | THE DALAI LAMA | | RUTH OZEKI REBECCA SOLNIT | THICH NHAT HANH | SHARON SALZBERG | REV. ANGEL KYODO WILLIAMS | JACK KORNFIELD | JOAN SUTHERLAND | MINGYUR RINPOCHE | HERBIE HANCOCK & WAYNE SHORTER | SYLVIA BOORSTEIN | AND MORE.
Each morning, before I went to school, I prayed to him. Some days, my mother allowed me to stand on a dining-room chair to offer him a shot glass of coffee—cream, no sugar. Other days, she let me light the candles and incense before we prayed. I was supposed to close my eyes and think only good thoughts, but my eyes remained open, fixed on the Buddha. I imagined that, at any moment, he would rise and float down like an autumn leaf. I imagined he would impart vital secrets, and I could ask him the questions that plagued me. There, in the living room, he would walk onto the palms of my hands and we would spend the evening—boy and Buddha—speaking like friends.
“Buddha is with you,” my mother used to say. “Believe in him.”
And so I believed that the Buddha was more than a bronze statue, that he was solid like a body is solid—the way it gives a bit when you lean against it, the way it molds to accept the presence of another. He possessed the gift of language and was bilingual like me, skipping freely between English and Thai. We spoke often, our conversations in hushed whispers, and he sounded soothing, not harsh like my elementary school principal or gargled like the monks at temple. Buddha was the holder of my secrets. He understood that loneliness and emptiness were one and the same.
Once, when I was in the living room, my mother asked from the kitchen who I was talking to.
“Buddha,” I told her.
“Excellent,” she said. “Speak to him every day, okay?”
Awaken Your Heart & Mind
Lion’s Roar Foundation is an independent, 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in the United States, and a not-for-profit, charitable organization in Canada. We are mission-driven and community-supported.
Awaken Your Heart & Mind
144 pages
Perfect bound on premium stock
$14.99 USD
Playing With Buddha | By Ira Sukrungruang
Read excerpts from this new Lion’s Roar Special Edition.
• Tracking the life’s work of major figures like the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Pema Chödrön
• Presenting the finest, clearest Buddhist teaching
• Publishing intimate profiles of and work by the likes of Rebecca Solnit and Mingyur Rinpoche
• Exploring how the Buddhist teachings (a.k.a. the dharma) transcend religion and culture.
It started forty years ago as a Buddhist community newspaper. Such a thing was, perhaps, unlikely to last, much less thrive. But thrive it did, growing into the magazine known today as Lion’s Roar. Today, Lion’s Roar is the world’s largest and most impactful Buddhist publication, speaking to Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike about what it means to live an awakened life, and how to do it.
The public’s awareness and adoption of Buddhism in the West have, of course, skyrocketed over the past four decades, and Lion’s Roar has been there all along the way:
Lion’s Roar is the Buddhist magazine that’s for everyone; not just Buddhists. Think of it as an enlightened New Yorker, a true reader’s magazine—only bursting with traditional Buddhist and modern art and illustration, too.
A lush presentation of the very best from the magazine, Awaken Your Heart & Mind is the ideal keepsake for the many who have been inspired by Lion’s Roar’s forty years of coverage of Buddhism, culture, meditation, and life itself—and for the many more who are discovering the dharma each new day.
What is the best use of each day of our lives? In one very short day, each of us could become more sane, more compassionate, more tender, more in touch with the dream-like quality of reality. Or we could bury all these qualities more deeply and get more in touch with solid mind, retreating more into our own cocoon.
Every time a habitual pattern gets strong, every time we feel caught up or on automatic pilot, we could see it as an opportunity to burn up negative karma. Rather than a problem, we could see it as our karma ripening. That gives us an opportunity to burn up karma, or at least weaken our karmic propensities. But it’s hard to do. When we realize that we are hooked, that we’re on automatic pilot, what do we do next? That is a central question for every practitioner.One of the most effective means for working with that moment when we see the gathering storm of our habitual tendencies is the practice of pausing, or creating a gap. We stop and take three conscious breaths, and the world has a chance to open up to us in that gap. We allow space into our state of mind.
Pema Chödrön | The Most Important Thing
Solnit’s journey into Buddhism was not straightforward. “I had a fairly nightmarish father, but he was interested in Zen Buddhism,” she recounts. “I actually went to Green Gulch Zen Center with him a few times as a kid, and I have fond memories of the zendo, that beautiful wooden barn space. Then my older brothers had this friend who became kind of a creepy stalker who was also very into Buddhism. These not-so-great men really put me off Buddhism until I realized they didn’t represent what Buddhism is.”
Solnit says that living in the Bay Area, Buddhism surrounds her. “It’s not like some places in the U.S. where it’s still this exotic Eastern thing. I live in a city where there’s almost as many Asian people as white people, where every kind of Buddhism has a strong presence and it’s pretty normal.” When she heard a talk by Paul Haller at the San Francisco Zen Center in 2001, she says it was “like a fish hook and I was a fish that was hooked. I thought, ‘This has what I need.’ I’ve been hanging around there ever since.”
Why is Rebecca Solnit Hopeful? | By Lindsay Kyte
• Tracking the life’s work of major figures like the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Pema Chödrön
• Presenting the finest, clearest Buddhist teaching
• Publishing intimate profiles of and work by the likes of Rebecca Solnit and Mingyur Rinpoche
• Exploring how the Buddhist teachings (a.k.a. the dharma) transcend religion and culture.
• Tracking the life’s work of major figures like the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Pema Chödrön
• Presenting the finest, clearest Buddhist teaching
• Publishing intimate profiles of and work by the likes of Rebecca Solnit and Mingyur Rinpoche
• Exploring how the Buddhist teachings (a.k.a. the dharma) transcend religion and culture.