Practicing Peace in Times of War by Pema Chodron, Shambhala Publications, Boston, 2006; ISBN 1590304012, 105 pages, hardback, $12.99.
When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dynamic nature of your own being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid. You’re able to keep your eyes open, your heart open, and your mind open. And you notice when you get caught up in prejudice, bias, and aggression. . . . And you begin to think of your life as offering endless opportunities to start to do things differently, endless opportunities to dissolve the seeds of war where they originate — in the hearts and minds of individuals like you and me.— pp. 99-100
American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron reaches out in a direct, contemporary way to all who wish to seek peace, beginning with themselves and their personal relationships. She offers helpful, concrete suggestions on how to keep from acting on aggression and other negative feelings, and how instead to use them as a means to self-knowledge and the development of compassion for all beings. — S.B.D.
(From Sunrise magazine, Winter 2007; copyright © 2006 Theosophical University Press)
Nature is a Volume written in celestial hieroglyphs, in a true Sacred-writing; of which even Prophets are happy that they can read here a line and there a line. — Thomas Carlyle