Wednesday, 4. March 2009, 12:49:09
Caroline Brazier, guilt, book
One way to understand why we are here is to take the view that one's project in this lifetime is to find love or perhaps merely to love. Too often though the quest to acquire love is hijacked or ambushed by other subversive elements/feelings such as jealousy, frustration, betrayal that comes with the object of love. Other times, love itself is met by one's own failure to do so fully and completely leaving a sense of shame or guilt in its wake.
The suggestion that I am presenting here is that we are born simply to learn how to give and receive love. For many people, the learning that comes from any attempt to love is that it is not clean, easy, nor successfully acheived without layers of other feelings. The feelings that so often crop up in any attempt or striving to love are the opposite, confused, and heavy.
And one way to get a grip on love is through exploring guilt. In Caroline Brazier's new book on guilt we see that the subject is complex. To continue with the project of life one must be able to find courage to go deeper into one's own culpability and shameful feelings. To love is a creative and messy endeavour and to be able to find a place to honour and respect the place that guilt and shame deserve in this life is what this book helps us to do.
She'll be doing a book reading at Borders, Leiester, on Thursday 26th March in the evening.
Guilt by Caroline Brazier
Tuesday, 29. July 2008, 19:55:40
Dying, fool, music, book
...
Here's something cheerful for all of you

Tomatsu and Watts have recently published
Never Die Alone in which contains papers presented by a fantastic group of scholars and Buddhists alike at the
Thirteenth Biennial Conference of the International Association of Shin Buddhist Studies (August 2007)
Never Die Alone: Recreating Communal Structures for the Dying from Buddhist TraditionsThe timing of its delivery to TBH couldn't have been better as I was looking for a book to study with our group during our Monday evening Sutra Study classes. And the subject matter is one that I consider the most important in life and so needless to say I'm half way through it. So far, the essays that I've read are fascinating. It looks at how the collective can be transformed through witnessing and participating in a 'good and peaceful' death and equally how the dying person can be supported by the collective. It covers cultural, historical and traditional beliefs about the continuum from this life to the next and how death is percieved and experienced mainly in the Far east but not exclusively so.
I suppose the one thing I got from this book so far and would like to highlight and emphasise is the importance of practice in Buddhism. Practice as preparation for that moment when we are on death's door for it only takes a split second to cross that threshold. Life is full of many surprises but if death catches us unawares then will we see and feel welcomed and loved by Amida Buddha and his retinue or will we be too pusillanimous and cling to the miserable self?
But if you insist then fine - cling away. Amida still loves clinging fools
Here's a great album that fits this post really well
This Fool Can Die Now