Here are the ten books of the Buddhism Today Reading Group I joined this year. I joined in February and we don't meet in December, so this stack comprises the ten books I read and discussed each month.
February
Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet by Joan Halifax.
March
How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell.
April
Choosing Compassion: How to Be of Benefit in a World that Needs Our Love by Anam Thubten.
May
Zen in the Garden by Miki Sakamoto.
June
The Heroic Heart: Awakening Unbounded Compassion by Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo.
July
The Little Book of Zen Healing: Japanese Rituals for Beauty, Harmony, and Love by Paula Arai.
August
The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology by Thich Nhat Hanh.
September
One Long Listening: A Memoir of Grief, Friendship, and Spiritual Care by Chenxing Han.
October
Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time by Rick Hanson.
November
Awakening Dignity: A Guide to Living a Life of Deep Fulfillment by Phakchok Rinpoche and Sophie Wu.
My favorite book in the stack is One Long Listening by Chenxing Han, a spiritual memoir and meditations on grief by a Buddhist chaplain. It was intimate and vulnerable, exploratory and experimental, and provided a beautiful peek into both chaplaincy and friendship.
I also read an additional seven books that helped guide me, a couple of which were also read by the Buddhism Today Reading Group in prior years (with month and year in parentheses, if appropriate).
I also read an additional seven books that helped guide me, a couple of which were also read by the Buddhism Today Reading Group in prior years (with month and year in parentheses, if appropriate).
- Essential Zen by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Tenzo David Schneider.
- The Intimate Way of Zen: Effort, Surrender, and Awakening on the Spiritual Journey by James Ishmael Ford.
- Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh.
- Luminous Darkness: An Engaged Buddhist Approach to Embracing the Unknown by Deborah Eden Tull.
- The Spring of My Life and Selected Haiku by Kobayashi Issa, translated by Sam Hamill (April 2023).
- We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption by Kaira Jewel Lingo (June 2022).
- Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki.
My favorite book of these seven, and one of the most helpful to me in defining my current spiritual path this past year, is The Intimate Way of Zen. James Ishmael Ford is both a Unitarian Universalist pastor and Zen priest. It is loosely based around the Ten Oxherding Pictures of Zen.
At the most recent Buddhist reading group meeting, our main facilitator invited me to sit with members of South Sound Zen, so I went and sat with them. It was spectacular and holy and absolutely ordinary, all at the same time. It felt like "coming home," a place that is familiar and where I am known.
After sitting (zazen) for 25 minutes, walking meditation for 10 minutes (my first experience of kinhin), and then another 25 minutes of sitting, I had the opportunity to sit and converse with the leader for the evening, Chuck. He's on the board of trustees of Sonoma Mountain Zen Center, which is who allows him to lead/teach with South Sound Zen. He had a Pentecostal upbringing and shared about trying to shift from that background to Soto Zen. We talked about Thomas Merton, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Daniel Berrigan. We talked about the decline of organized religion. All while eating lemon cookies and drinking green tea. I'll be returning to sit again.
