The Buddha’s journey from upper-class royalty to no-class enlightenment had enough twists and turns to fill a saga. Each stage of his life contains lessons on freeing ourselves from suffering applicable to our own lives here and now. Zen Buddhist priest Gesshin Greenwood shows us how the characters in the Buddha’s story illuminate aspects of our psychological lives: from the Buddha’s father’s attempts to shield his son from life’s suffering, to Mara’s efforts to sabotage the Buddha with delusion, to Ananda’s dedication to convince the Buddha to accept women into his community.
Gesshin Greenwood is an ordained Soto Zen priest completing her masters in Counseling Psychology and author of Bow First, Ask Questions Later: Ordination, Love, and Monastic Zen in Japan and the upcoming Just Enough: Vegan Recipes and Stories from Japan’s Buddhist Temples (June 2019.)