What We’re Reading

Urban Dharma: 20 Years of Buddhist Stories from an L.A. City Monk
by Kusala Bhikshu and Rebecca Wilson
Black Boat Media, April 2024, 229 pp., $17.00, paper

Kusala Bhikshu’s colorful account covers twenty years of “doing Buddhism rather than being Buddhism.” Kusala travels around Los Angeles by motorcycle and serves as a chaplain at a prison, a juvenile detention camp, and a hospital. He is also a chaplain for an Orange County police department. His portraits of suffering people at the lowest points of their lives makes for elevated reading, buoyed by Kusala’s unfailing compassion and intrepid sense of humor. It is often his doubts and humility in the face of hostility that win people over: He is not afraid to say, “I don’t know.”

Storehouse of Treasures: Recovering the Riches of Chan & Zen
by Nelson Foster
Shambhala Publications, September 2024, 304 pp., $24.95, paper

Gary Snyder said that to understand Zen one must get to know the poets of the Tang and Song dynasties, as well as the basics of Confucianism and Daoism. Nelson Foster, a student and collaborator of the late Robert Aitken, takes this to heart, exuberantly scrutinizing the language of classic Chan stories. (What did Bodhidharma really mean in his elliptical responses to Emperor Wu?) Foster’s project is not frivolous. He warns Western students that Zen’s viability “depends on those of us who love it enough not just to train diligently but also to study it well and to innovate with great care.”

The Life of Tu Fu
by Eliot Weinberger
New Directions Publishing, April 2024, 64 pp., $13.95, paper

The Tang dynasty poet and politician Tu Fu (712–770) is said to have changed the face of Chinese and Japanese literature, leaving an indelible mark on forms that would later become kanshi, haiku, and tanka. Author Eliot Weinberger describes the collection as a montage—a fictional autobiography derived from the poet’s works. Tu Fu’s words—which were set down following the An Lushan rebellion of 755 that ravaged China and are littered with images of bloodshed and contagion—feel all too familiar. Meditating on death and the natural world with Daoist, Confucian, and Buddhist references, these verses feel like Tang-era analogues for our present-day reality.

Scholar’s Corner

Mountain at a Center of the World: Pilgrimage and Pluralism in Sri Lanka
by Alexander McKinley
Columbia University Press, February 2024, 344 pp., $35.00, paper

Called many names over the centuries, Sri Pada, or the mountain of the Buddha’s footprint, has long been a popular pilgrimage destination for a host of faiths. Stitching together a complex history of beliefs and cultures, McKinley reveals a ritual space with overlapping social, economic, political, and religious interests that must negotiate paths through an ever-changing sacred landscape. By way of stories, poetry, songs, myths, and archival research, we learn about a global history of the human search for meaning and belonging and about a planetary history, where humans are secondary to the mountain’s existence and, inevitably, transitory.

WHAT WE’RE REREADING

Teachings of the Buddha
by Jack Kornfield

The phrase “timeless classic” is thrown around much too often to describe any work of substance, but in the case of Jack Kornfield’s collection, Teachings of the Buddha, the accolade is warranted. Compiling writings from a variety of teachers and lineages, Teachings of the Buddha acts as an essential guide. From well-known stories, like that of the Buddha’s awakening, to more in-depth termas (hidden treasures), like Tilopa’s “Song of Mahamudra,” the collection, originally published in 1993, is chock-full of gems that will open up your practice to all of the different lineages and traditions that Buddhism has to offer. This glossy reprint from Shambhala Publications is a testament to the accessibility and insight found in Kornfield’s carefully selected teachings.