Book Reviews

Welcoming the Unwelcome: Wholehearted Living in a Brokenhearted World

PEMA CHÖDRÖN
Boulder, Colo.: Shambhala, 2019. 160 pp., paper, $22.95.

Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön is the author of a number of highly popular books, including When Things Fall Apart, Taking the Leap, and Living Beautifully. Chödrön, an American, holds a bachelor's degree in English literature and a master’s in elementary education and has been ordained as a nun in the lineage of the famed Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa. She is resident teacher at Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia, the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in North America established for Westerners. She is interested in establishing the monastic tradition in the West as well as in spreading Buddhist teachings and helping those in need through the Pema Chödrön Foundation. She has also spoken at the Theosophical Society.

In her latest book, Welcoming the Unwelcome, Chödrön shares many examples of negative states of mind and offers ways to deal with them. Her ideas are gems! The book, which is easy to read and understand, comprises twenty chapters and describes three meditation techniques, which can help the reader to apply Chödrön’s ideas to everyday events.

Readers receive practical tips for improving their lives, whether they look at things from a spiritual perspective or not. Chödrön writes: “Only by learning to fully embrace all aspects of ourselves—even the most seemingly negative elements of our minds and hearts—will we learn to fully embrace others. Only by discovering the basic goodness in both our lotus and our mud”—that is, in our positivity and negativity—“will we come to see the basic goodness of all living beings.”

Chödrön discusses bodhichitta, the awakening of the heart and mind in order to benefit others. A human being longs to help others and alleviate suffering in the world, but also tends to protect his or her heart from pain, and this can be a hard habit to break. When one realizes that it is unhelpful, one generates bodhichitta to counter the tendency. One can become brave and stand up and help relieve others from suffering. This awakening, Chödrön writes, is our true nature. It can happen with awareness and practice.

Chödrön asks, “Does it matter?” She gives questions such as these to ponder: “When I eat the last piece, or throw the can out the window, or glare at someone, does it matter? What are the consequences of my behavior?” Am I causing harm to myself or others? If I go off on someone, does it matter?”

Chödrön explains how the Buddha’s main concern was to help people become free of suffering. She also reminds us that habits are like grooves in the brain. Her book enables the reader to be more aware of old ways of doing things and shows how to change them. When guided by wisdom and kindness, the process can lead to personal awakening.

Challenges can bring changes and can uncover new direction and depth in a person’s life. They are part of the process that awakens the heart. Chödrön makes these challenges in life seem like golden opportunities to improve life for others on the planet.

The late Roshi Bernie Glassman’s mission is a good example. For many years, he worked with homeless people in Yonkers, New York. “I don’t really believe there’s going to be an end to homelessness,” he said, “but I go in every day as if it’s possible. And then I work individual by individual.”

One meditation in Welcoming the Unwelcome is the tonglen practice. It is a method for relieving suffering to help another. The meditator can breathe in with the wish to take away someone else’s pain. On the exhale, he or she visualizes what the person needs and imagines the other person having it. The practice helps the meditator to have compassion for others as well as himself or herself.

Chödrön does a thorough job of explaining bodhichitta and encourages the reader to engage in the process in order to make changes on an individual and collective level. She inspires us to alter our habits, open our hearts and minds, build up our bodhichitta muscles, and share love and compassion. As its subtitle indicates, this book has the possibility of bringing wholehearted living into a brokenhearted world.

Marie Otte

Marie Otte is a writer, meditation teacher, and astrologer. Her work has appeared in Quest, dreamnetworkjournal.com, and Satvidya.

Love on Every Breath: Tonglen Meditation for Transforming Pain into Joy

Lama Palden Drolma
Novato, Calif.: New World Library, 2019. 215 pp., paper, $16.95.

More than thirty years ago, I was listening to a speech by Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield on lovingkindness. He told a story about a Tibetan lama named Kalu Rinpoche, who was visiting an aquarium. He would go to each tank and tap gently to get the attention of the fish and say the mantra of compassion and lovingkindness: Om mani padme hum. The story moved me deeply, and since then, every time I go near a fish tank (I have one at home), I practice the chant. I have even done it for the orchids blooming on my windowsill.

Love on Every Breath by Lama Palden Drolma comes as a gift for me personally and will be one, I suspect, for everyone that reads it. In 1986, Palden Drolma became one of the first American women to be initiated as a lama; her primary teacher was Kalu Rinpoche. Palden means glorious and Drolma means Green Tara, a female Buddha. Drolma had been practicing Zen with Kwong Roshi and also studied and meditated in the Chishti Sufi tradition of Hazrat Inayat Khan. She studied Old Testament with a rabbi. Christian mystical traditions appealed to her. When she met Kalu Rinpoche for the first time, she knew that he was her teacher, and the belief was unshakable. She was ready.

 In tonglen meditation, we inhale the suffering of others and exhale our love and compassion for them. However powerful this is, most practitioners find it difficult to do. Palden Drolma presents us with a method from the Shangpa lineage, started by a Tibetan, Kyungpo Naljor, who received his transmissions from Buddhist teachers of eleventh- and twelfth-century India. These included two women, Niguma and Sukhasiddhi, who were fully awakened. Most of the meditations practiced by Palden Drolma during her three-year retreat in the Himalayas were from these two women. In 1982, she received her own transmissions from the Shangpa lineage from Kalu Rinpoche, then the lineage holder. She was to receive these transmissions again in 2001 from Bokar Rinpoche and in 2009 from Tai Situpa. Palden Drolma’s spiritual upbringing in this tradition is profound and awe-inspiring.

The Love on Every Breath meditation has eight steps. Palden Drolma presents them in two ways: one as a full sitting practice, which takes forty-five minutes, and other as an on-the-spot version, which can be practiced anywhere instantly as one sees the need for a compassionate presence. In the first step, one lets go of everything. It is freeing oneself from past and future and thoughts, anchoring in awareness so as to reside in the present moment. The second step involves asking for refuge: we invoke all awakened beings to help us. In the third step, we cultivate the awakened mind. We resolve to awaken ourselves to help liberate all beings. In the fourth step, we invite an awakened being, Chenrezig (the Tibetan name for Avalokiteshwara, the bodhisattva of compassion), to be present above the crown of our head. (This step can easily be modified to incorporate other spiritual traditions, each of which has awakened beings.) We pray and meditate to be one with Chenrezig so that we will be blessed with an awakened mind. How do we know if this has happened? Our heart center becomes a vajra of light (vajra means indestructible; it is a mystical weapon, symbolizing a thunderbolt, used in Tibetan Buddhism), and this light transforms our suffering.

The Tibetan word tonglen has two parts: tong means giving or sending, and len means receiving or taking. In the fifth step, “Taking and Sending for Yourself,” we visualize ourselves as our ordinary self, breathe in our suffering into our heart center, and let the vajra of light transform it into awakened love and healing energy. In the sixth step, “Taking and Sending for Others,” we include not only our loved ones but others as well, transforming their suffering into joy. The seventh step is dissolving ourselves into a state of open awareness, completely letting go. The eighth step is the traditional Tibetan practice of dedicating our meditation for the welfare of all beings.

Palden Drolma explains each step in detail, first giving the philosophical background and then discussing what issues one may face at each step. There is a separate chapter on how one can adopt this meditation for activism and for coping with difficult people. There are many practical tips. I especially liked the one that asks us to meditate with two cushions, one for us and one for our inner resistance—our constant companion.

 Bokar Rinpoche once said, “There is the nothing-to-do and the must-to-do”: nothing-to-do, because we are already awakened; must-to-do because we don’t realize this fact and need to discover it. Palden Drolma’s book will take you on both paths.

Dhananjay Joshi

Dhananjay Joshi, a professor of statistics, has studied Hindu, Zen, and vipassana meditation for forty years. He is a regular reviewer for Quest and volunteers in the archives department of the TSA.

A Theology of Love: Reimagining Christianity through A Course in Miracles

RICHARD SMOLEY
Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2019. 240 pp., paper, $18.99.

My fascination with A Course in Miracles began decades ago, when the chunky blue volumes of the original edition were making their way through New York City’s alternative spiritual scene. One of my undergraduate philosophy professors, W. Norris Clarke SJ, engaged in a public discussion with prominent Course teacher Kenneth Wapnick (later published as “A Course in Miracles” and Christianity: A Dialogue).

I bought a copy of the Course, and tried to read it several times. But its language is sometimes difficult, and the challenge is compounded for someone accustomed to traditional Christianity, as the Course uses many of the same terms but in different ways. 

My copy of the Course gathered a lot of dust on my shelf before I began to find a way into it through interpreters like John Jacob Raub. I could have saved myself a lot of time and trouble if Richard Smoley’s fine new book had been available. Both those seeking simply to understand the Course and those who wonder about the Course’s contribution to a revitalized theology and/or the future of religion will find capable help here.

From his days at Gnosis magazine forward, Smoley has been known for his ability to translate the often specialized language of esoteric traditions into plain English. In A Theology of Love, he provides clear definitions of terms as used by the Course, and a guide to how to approach the several parts of the text in one’s own study and spiritual practice. In a particularly helpful chapter, accurately titled “Summa Theologiae,” Smoley considers the teaching of the Course organized by the classic categories of Christian theology, such as theodicy, Christology, and eschatology. 

Smoley admits that “the theology I have outlined here could, like its predecessors, turn into another set of manacles for the mind,” and that there are already interpretive disagreements about the Course and its various versions. He also notes that the Course’s scribe, Helen Schucman, had her doubts at times about the source of the Course and did not always agree with the material given to her. She stated, “I do not understand the events which led up to the writing. I do not understand the process, and I certainly do not understand the authorship.” However we approach this material, we should do so in similar freedom, as Smoley puts it, “with an attitude that is both flexible and rigorously logical” in order to keep from binding ourselves to a literal, dogmatic reading.

New revelations tend to be dogmatized by their enthusiastic devotees. Smoley protects against this possibility not only by warning against it, but by placing the Course within larger overlapping conversations, ranging from traditional Christian mysticism (John Climacus, Gregory of Nyssa) to other streams of esoteric Christianity (Boris Mouravieff, Emanuel Swedenborg), to non-Christian traditions (Jewish Kabbalah, Buddhist meditative practices). Such a web of connection is helpfully balancing, with other voices working to fill in gaps, and to raise good questions—and to be questioned in turn.

Smoley notes that the Course has received little sustained attention in the theological sphere (the Clarke-Wapnick dialogue being one of the few exceptions). One can only hope that A Theology of Love will expand and invigorate such conversations.

In the final analysis, I am not persuaded by the Course’s metaphysics—its account of the physical world, the body, and human suffering in particular. However, even where I disagree, there are aspects of the Course’s teaching (e.g., the primacy of consciousness) that may provide necessary correction to more traditional views. Regardless of one’s conclusions, Smoley has demonstrated that the Course’s theological position is logical and consistent, and worthy of engagement.

Beyond its metaphysics, the Course’s recommendations for life and spiritual practice are its greatest contribution. Who would disagree with the importance of knowing ourselves as always loved by God, and practicing forgiveness in every circumstance? Of course, such a practice is not as easy as it might sound (hence the need for a Course!). If there is anything that can help humanity toward an Age of the Holy Spirit (the subject of a wonderful discussion in chapter 17), it is surely radical forgiveness. For the vision of such love, and help along the way of living it, we can be grateful to both A Course in Miracles and Richard Smoley.

John Plummer

John Plummer is an independent theologian who lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Edited by Jedidiah French and Angel Millar
Shepperton, Surrey, U.K.: Lewis Masonic, 2019. 285 pp., paper, $18.

What is initiation? Its fundamental meaning of “to begin” sounds straightforward, but its effects in magical or religious practices are often hotly contested. There is an ongoing argument, for instance, as to whether initiation simply confirms what candidates have already attained through their own efforts, or whether it ushers them into an entirely new state. Perhaps it can be both, with varying emphasis. If there is no element of shock or surprise, such as in the modern-day ordainment of a priest, where everyone knows every step of the ritual in advance, it is more of a confirmation, although the ordinand may well still experience a change of state during the service.

If it is an initiation pertaining to a magical or mystery tradition, then a shock is almost always included, which can propel the candidate into a new form of consciousness. This can take the form of extreme conditions, which will still work their effect even if known about beforehand. The budding shaman may be sealed into a “vision pit” for several days, for instance, and aspiring knights of chivalry often passed a night-long vigil in total darkness before admission into the order. Other shocks may come unexpectedly: cold-water baths, nakedness, insults, solitude, and abandonment are all the stuff of traditional initiation rituals, as well as of modern esoteric and ceremonial initiations. The ritual usually ends in a redemptive way, such as emerging into bright light and being given a warm welcome from one’s fellow initiates.

As well as shock tactics, simple tasks which must be performed perfectly under scrutiny can also trigger a new state of consciousness. Perhaps the initiation requires you to light a candle in front of your fellows—a seemingly simple act, but one that demands every atom of composure that you can muster as you walk the length of a long hall, between rows of observers, towards the altar at the far end. Then you must pick up the match, strike it without fumbling, light the wick, and hope—maybe even pray!—that it will stay alight. Perhaps the rules of your initiation even depend on the success of this act. If you can do this, you will almost certainly have achieved a state of heightened awareness, notwithstanding any pain or pleasure along the way.

Initiation is a perennially fascinating subject, with no two views on it being the same, as this book proves. The collection of essays is a kaleidoscope of different takes on initiation, mostly within Masonic and magical traditions. It opens with the excellent definition: “Initiation appears to be a set of practices, and/or processes of realization, through which certain human beings across time have endeavoured to achieve deeper knowledge and higher wisdom.”

The book is deliberately compiled as a selection of both scholarly and speculative studies, allowing the authors full rein in topic and viewpoint. This takes us from a survey of cultural initiation practices (Richard Smoley) to Aleister Crowley’s magic (Richard Kaczynski), with different forays into Swedish Freemasonry (Susannah Akerman) and the mysteries of Samothrace (Greg Kaminsky) along the way. There is value here in bringing together different areas of research, and different kinds of insight. However, it is a bumpy ride if one attempts to travel the whole terrain at once. I found the inconsistency of viewpoint awkward—some articles are addressed primarily to Masons, some to lovers of magic, some to scholars. It is a difficult book to read consecutively, and certainly I found it easier to pick out a few essays at a time.

But it gives food for thought. Smoley’s essay boldly puts forward the notion that we are missing out on initiation rites in present-day society: “Many adult men today are not men; they are boys. Many adult women are not women; they are girls. In our society it is possible to go through all the stages of life, even successfully, without maturing emotionally, much less spiritually.”

Without disputing Smoley’s main point, I would add that for many women, the process of giving birth can be a profound initiatory experience. For me, many years ago, the initiation of childbirth propelled me to accept another spiritual initiation which I was offered a few months later. I had “come of age” and was ready to step up. And the possibility of childbirth as an initiatory act might explain why societies have traditionally held more male initiation rites than female ones.

Another favorite essay for me is Herbie Brenman’s personal and engaging account of being initiated into the Society of the Inner Light, founded by the British occultist Dion Fortune. Brenman writes with both humor and solemnity. Sometimes we learn more from story-telling than from weighty sermons.

And there is C.R. Dunning’s “Contemplation and Ritual Initiation,” affirming the principle of awareness as the active transformatory ingredient in both ritual and initiation.  “Our present concern is not about bringing something new into Masonic experience but rather about intentionally and comprehensively practising contemplation to make the most of Masonic initiation.”

Quite. Dunning’s analysis points out the value of silence, of study, of reflection; in other words, not the dramatic blindfoldings and dunkings of initiation, but the consciousness that we have at our disposal to transform our inner state of being. By being present in the action, and being aware of whatever is around us, we act out our own initiation.

Cherry Gilchrist

Cherry Gilchrist’s latest book is The Circle of Nine: An Archetypal Journey to Awaken the Divine Feminine Within.