Awakening the Buddhist Heart: Integrating Love, Meaning
and Connection into Every Part
of Your Life
by Lama Surya Das
 
I am always eager to find authors that can couch spiritual truths in everyday reality. Too many times, books whose ideas are profound and valid speak in such lofty terms that those who are new to the Search or who want practical core truths miss the boat. Though Lama Surya Das is one of the foremost Western Buddhist meditation teachers and scholars, he has never forgotten his Brooklyn roots, and can reach out to everyone because he still cherishes them as part of who he is.

Surya has spent thirty five years studying Zen, vipassana, yoga, and Tibetan Buddhism with the great masters of Asia. He is an authorized lama (priest and spiritual master teacher) in the Nyingmapa School of Tibetan Buddhism. He is the founder of the Dzogchen Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and its affiliated branches, as well as the Western Buddhist Teachers Network with the Dalai Lama. And with all of that, he has found time to write a dozen volumes that speak to the “Buddhist heart” – the good heart – in all of us.

Many fear that today’s crazy and confusing world prevents us from truly understanding ourselves and how we relate to each other. Surya Das explores specific ways in which we can take these myriad daily encounters and bring them to the heart of who we are and what we want to create, both for ourselves and the world at large, to bring it closer to peace and that point of brilliance in which all becomes one.

We create our Buddhist heart through being authentically who we are in every present moment, using our life experience and lessons as gorgeous gifts that help us to build deeper relationships and a truer understanding of who we are. I especially love the fact that he encourages us to learn how to love what we don’t like, for even in these “tough” times and incident there are nuggets of pure joy and wisdom -- if we’re willing to peel away the surface and look at the heart of the experience. Integrating the inner experience with the outer is explained in a lighthearted dialogue, full of anecdotes and “practical practices” that is no less insightful for its ease of understanding.

" Life is about relationship,” Surya says, “the relationship we have with ourselves, with each other, with the world, as well as the connection to that which is beyond any of us yet imminent in each of us. When our relationships are good, we feel good; when they are bad, we feel awful. Let's accept it: We need each other. We need to feel connected; we need to feel each other's presence and love."

If you are looking for a special book to give to your love – or yourself – in this month of celebrating hearts and flowers, this one should be first on your list.