Thursday, April 26, 2012
"Growing in Love": Congrats to Susan!
I'm delighted to report that our own Susan Stabile's new book, "Growing in Love and Wisdom: Tibetan Buddhist Sources for Christian Meditation," is available for pre-ordering now. Check it out!
Raised as a Catholic, Stabile devoted 20 years of her life to practicing Buddhism and was ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun before returning to Catholicism in 2001. She begins the book by examining the values and principles shared by the two faith traditions, focusing on the importance of prayer--particularly contemplative prayer--to both Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism. Both traditions seek to effect a fundamental transformation in the lives of believers, and both stress the need for experiences that have deep emotional resonance, that go beyond the level of concepts to touch the heart. Stabile illuminates the similarities between Tibetan Buddhist meditations and Christian forms of prayer such as Ignatian Contemplation and Lectio Divina; she explores as well such guided Buddhist practices as Metta and Tonglen, which cultivate compassion and find echoes in Jesus' teachings about loving one's enemies and transcending self-cherishing. The heart of the book offers 15 Tibetan Buddhist practices adapted to a contemplative Christian perspective. Stabile provides clear instructions on how to do these meditations as well as helpful commentary on each, explaining its purpose and the relation between the original and her adaptation. Throughout, she highlights the many remarkably close parallels in the teachings of Jesus and Buddha.
Arguing that engagement between religions offers mutual enrichment and greater understanding of both traditions, Growing in Love and Wisdom shows how Buddhist meditation can be fruitfully adapted for Christian prayer.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2012/04/growing-in-love-congrats-to-susan.html
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the
comment feed
for this post.
Yes, warm congratulations to Susan.
The relations between religions on the individual level can be rather intriguing: Gandhi learned of the Bhagavad Gita from Theosophists, and Merton was prompted to examine the mystical literature in Catholicism by a Hindu, only later to cultivate an abiding interest in Zen Buddhism. Much has been written about Merton's meeting with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala in November of 1968, the Dalai Lama noting that “Thomas Merton opened my eyes to the richness and depth of the Christian faith.” Contemplative practice and meditation should not be confined to the monastery or the sangha or the ashram, and so it's refreshing to see Susan's book makes accessible meditation exercises for the laity, and in so doing take impressive strides toward true interreligious dialogue (one that prompts what the late Raimundo Panikkar termed an 'intrareligious dialogue'), understanding, and commitment.