What does it actually feel like to move towards Enlightenment? That’s the question asked by the authors of two recent books from Windhorse Publications (WP): Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation, by Anālayo, and The Journey and the Guide, by Maitreyabandhu.
As WP’s Hannah Atkinson writes, “Both books are practical guides to the Buddha’s teaching – Compassion and Emptiness focuses on the meditative practices of compassion and emptiness, and The Journey and the Guide on Sangharakshita’s System of practice.
Described by Jack Kornfield as ‘a gift of visionary scholarship and practice’, Compassion and Emptiness brings a new dimension to our understanding of the Pali Buddhist discourses by comparing them with surviving versions in Chinese, Sanskrit and Tibetan.
Anālayo was interviewed by Insight Journal about his own experience of brahmavihāra practice and the way that it complements and augments his work on the satipatthānas.
When we interviewed Anālayo, he spoke about his hope that Compassion and Emptiness would act as a bridge between Buddhist traditions, and his belief that emptiness should be viewed as something that, like compassion, is practised not only in meditation but also in everyday life.
Very accessibly, Maitreyabandhu’s book also invites you to deepen your practice of the Buddha’s teachings. With humour and profundity, mixing poetry and myth with down-to-earth instruction, The Journey and the Guide describes what it means to set out on the Buddha's journey and how we can follow it day by day and week by week.
The publication of The Journey and the Guide coincided with the release of Maitreyabandhu’s new poetry collection, Yarn, and The Journey and the Guide also includes a number of poems. Maitreyabandhu explains, ‘I’ve used poetry as a way of exploring spiritual receptivity. My hope is that… you experience receptivity, you don't just read about it.’ Maitreyabandhu develops his reflections on the role of poetry in spiritual life in our The Journey and the Guide interview, and in this excerpt from the book, published on the Tricycle website, he brings out some themes from Robert Frost’s poem ‘For once, then, something’.
Thank you to the large number of donors funded the publication of these two books via our 2014-2015 Sponsor a book campaign!
Order Compassion and Emptiness in Early Buddhist Meditation and The Journey and the Guide from the Windhorse Publications website. (Ordering via Amazon drastically reduces the publisher's income.)
Listen to the interview with Anālayo.
Read the Insight Journal interview with Anālayo.
Watch the interview with Maitreyabandhu.
Read Maitreyabandhu on the 'Tricycle' website.