Based on Trevor Carolan's interviews, profiles, and essays from the past twenty years, this book offers a fascinating and intimate look at many of the Buddhist (and Buddhist-inspired) spiritual and cultural leaders who have shaped our time. Drawn from the global mosaic of the arts and humanities, environmentalism, and governance, Carolan's collaborators include Buddhist teachers, poets, writers, activists, and even a politician. Readers will encounter Red Pine, Maxine Hong Kingston, Gary Snyder, Robert Aitken-Roshi, Jerry Brown, the Dalai Lama, Allen Ginsberg, along with many others. They explore engaged practice, East-West ethics, the role of dharma-influenced literature, Beat literature, social and political activism, and more. A rich resource for anyone interested in Buddhism, New World Dharma reveals a Buddhist consciousness responding to the challenge of rethinking what citizenship, community, and the sacred might mean in a global age.

Some twenty-five centuries after the Buddha started teaching, his message continues to inspire people across the globe, including those living in predominantly secular societies. What does it mean to adapt religious practices to secular contexts? Stephen Batchelor, an internationally known author and teacher, is committed to a secularized version of the Buddha’s teachings. The time has come, he feels, to articulate a coherent ethical, contemplative, and philosophical vision of Buddhism for our age. After Buddhism, the culmination of four decades of study and practice in the Tibetan, Zen, and Theravada traditions, is his attempt to set the record straight about who the Buddha was and what he was trying to teach. Combining critical readings of the earliest canonical texts with narrative accounts of five members of the Buddha’s inner circle, Batchelor depicts the Buddha as a pragmatic ethicist rather than a dogmatic metaphysician. He envisions Buddhism as a constantly evolving culture of awakening whose long survival is due to its capacity to reinvent itself and interact creatively with each society it encounters. This original and provocative book presents a new framework for understanding the remarkable spread of Buddhism in today’s globalized world. It also reminds us of what was so startling about the Buddha’s vision of human flourishing.

The sequel to the bestseller The Great Work of Your Life shows us the way through our darkest times to our truest calling. How do we make sense of our lives when our world seems to be falling apart? This beautifully written guide from scholar and teacher Stephen Cope shows that crises don’t have to derail us from our purpose—they can actually help us to find our purpose and step forward as our best selves. In this sequel to his best-loved book, The Great Work of Your Life, Cope again takes the ancient yogic text the Bhagavad Gita—the epic narrative of the warrior Arjuna’s odyssey of self-discovery—as a roadmap for our journey to our own true calling. Then he builds on that foundation using the stories and teachings of famous figures, as well as stories of ordinary people and his own rich personal experience. Along the way, we find striking examples for finding meaning and purpose in our lives: Gandhi shows how to tap our spiritual resources and listen for our inner voice Sojourner Truth and Henry David Thoreau inspire us to seek out the unmistakable signs of dharma in the midst of chaos Marian Anderson and Ruby Sales shed light on dharma’s mystic power and how we learn to trust in it And more In the spirit of Pema Chödrön’s When Things Fall Apart, this book is required reading when you find yourself forging a path through crisis—or seeking a way through your darkest times to your truest self.

A comprehensive collection of classic texts, contemporary interpretations, guidelines for activists, issue-specific information, and materials for environmentally-oriented religious practice. Sources and contributors include Basho, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Gary Snyder, Chögyam Trungpa, Gretel Ehrlich, Peter Mathiessen, Helen Tworkov (editor of Tricycle), and Philip Glass.

This is the first scholarly book devoted to the study of the term dharma with in the broad scope of Indian cultural and religious history. Most generalizations about Indian culture and religion upon close scrutiny turn out to be inaccurate. An exception undoubtedly is the term dharma. This term and the notions underlying it clearly constitute the most central feature of Indian civilization down the centuries, irrespective of linguistic, sectarian, or regional differences. The nineteen papers included in this collection deal with many significant historical manifestations of the term dharma. These studies by some of the leading scholars in the respective fields will both present a more nuanced picture of the semantic history of dharma by putting contours onto the flat landscape we have inherited and spur further studies of this concept so central for understanding the cultural history of the Indian subcontinent.

The authors explore theoretical and methodological issues and analyze the prospects and problems of using Buddhism as an environmental resource in both theory and practice.

This memoir and spiritual guide from an Austin, Texas cab driver is “the real deal: good taxi and straight dharma” (Jack Kornfield, bestselling author of The Wise Heart). Brian Haycock was a cabdriver—who happened to be a Buddhist. During the course of his career, he learned that each fare provided an opportunity to learn the life lessons of the Buddha. So, hop in and buckle up; we’re off on our journey to self-discovery, passing through the precepts, the four noble truths, taking a hard left to stop and get coffee—where we’ll learn a few breathing techniques to bolster our patience—all the while watching for ambulances and bikers, focusing our attention and awareness so that we can arrive at our destination in good time and in one piece. Here are stories from everyday life that demonstrate how we can all benefit from a little Buddhist philosophy. With each chapter focusing on a specific topic, readers will learn to coast their way to building a life routine, focusing the mind, calming themselves with breathing exercises, and much more. “Engagingly written.” —Stephen Batchelor, national bestselling author of Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist “Compassionate and entertaining.” —David Brazier (aka Dharmavidya), author of The Feeling Buddha “Amusing and wise.” —Arthur Jeon, author of City Dharma and Sex, Love, and Dharma: Finding Love Without Losing Your Way “Wise and witty and direct: very Zen. Also, fun to read.” —Sylvia Boorstein, national bestselling author of Happiness is an Inside Job and That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Buddhist

An essential collection of Stephen Batchelor’s most probing and important work on secular Buddhism As the practice of mindfulness permeates mainstream Western culture, more and more people are engaging in a traditional form of Buddhist meditation. However, many of these people have little interest in the religious aspects of Buddhism, and the practice occurs within secular contexts such as hospitals, schools, and the workplace. Is it possible to recover from the Buddhist teachings a vision of human flourishing that is secular rather than religious without compromising the integrity of the tradition? Is there an ethical framework that can underpin and contextualize these practices in a rapidly changing world? In this collected volume of Stephen Batchelor’s writings on these themes, he explores the complex implications of Buddhism’s secularization. Ranging widely—from reincarnation, religious belief, and agnosticism to the role of the arts in Buddhist practice—he offers a detailed picture of contemporary Buddhism and its attempt to find a voice in the modern world.