It’s here it’s there! Love and Suffering: A Spiritual Guide for Helpers, Healers, and Humans gets released today. That means anyone who pre-ordered the paperback will see the book in their mailbox very soon, and it is now available for ebook ordering (Amazon doesn’t allow pre-orders of ebooks, so now you can finally order one for your e-reader).
I’m very happy with how the book turned out and to have the support of O-Books behind its release. This October, I’ll host a book release party at Books Passage in San Francisco, where I’ll present the book and have a signing.
At over 250 pages, the book has a lot to say. But what it doesn’t have is pictures, which I wanted to post about on the blog for this week, as the culmination of my weekly blog posts. While I describe many figures in the book as best I can, as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. As you go through the book, I encourage you to keep the following images in mind:
The Calling of Quan Yin
Compassion, or karuna in Sanskrit, is the unification of love and suffering. It is the essence of the spiritual path and at the heart of transformation. The introduction to Love and Suffering tells the story of how the Princess Maio Shan died and came back to life as Quan Yin, the Boddhisattva of Compassion.
Statues of Quan Yin are often placed near water, both as a protector for sailors and also to help us handle the waves of life, the ups and downs, the joys and sorrows, with peace and equanimity.
The Many Arms of Avaloketishvara
Another form of Quan Yin is Avakoketishvara, another beacon of compassion. One of the most popular devotional deities in Mahayana Buddhism, Avalokiteshvara is often depicted in his eleven-headed, thousand-armed form. The many heads, eyes, and hands represent the countless ways in which Avalokiteshvara can see, hear, and benefit all sentient beings.
According to legend, Avalokitesvara took on this form while making an effort to assist people. His head split into eleven pieces as he was listening to the needs of so many different people. When Amitabha Buddha saw his suffering, he gave him a thousand arms and eleven heads so that he could help as many people as possible.
I took this photo at a museum in Vietnam:
And this one in Thailand:
The Perfection of the Buddha
The first two chapters of Love and Suffering cover how the Buddhists approach the great gurus of love and suffering. While many people think that the Buddha is a God that is worshipped by followers of the religion, in truth, the Buddha was once a man named Siddhartha Gautama. Legend has it that the prince left his royal world to embark on the spiritual path, and eventually awakened to the truth of reality and attained freedom from suffering.
The Buddha is more of an example of an ideal that we can all attain, since we all have Buddha nature and the capacity to awaken and be free from suffering.
Many people also don’t realize that there are strict rules governing how the Buddha is to be depicted. All Buddhist art follows a traditional set of rules, known as mahā puruṣa lakṣaṇa: 32 Major Marks of a Great Man. Some of the key features include smooth skin, no protruding bones, and skin like gold or in a golden color.
Alexamenos Graffito
In sharp contrast to how the Shakyamuni Buddha is represented in a serene and enlightened state, Jesus of Nazareth is often presented in much more human light.
In fact, the earliest pictorial representation of the crucifixion is an ancient Roman graffiti intended to mock Christians, known as The Alexamenos graffito. Estimated to be carved around the 2nd or 3rd century, it features a rough drawing of a man in prayer before a figure on a cross with a donkey’s head, accompanied by the Greek inscription “Alexamenos worships his God”.
The cheeky graffiti pokes fun at this new, strange minority religion that worshipped a God who died at the hands of man. Indeed, if a person doesn’t understand the role that suffering plays in our spiritual transformation, then such an image might seem absurd. It would take a lot more time for Christianity to become the predominant religion it is today.
The Dead Christ
Another depiction I described in Love and Suffering is the painting known as The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb by Hans Holbein the Younger. Painted between 1520 and 1522, this oil and tempera painting depicts a much more grotesque and emaciated Christ, with open wounds and putrifying flesh.
Again, in sharp contrast to the Buddhist approach, which promises deliverance from suffering, the Christian approach is to go right into it. Like Dante getting out of hell, the only way out is through. Christianity gives us a suffering God who came to Earth as an extraordinary act of solidarity, encouraging us to face the reality of death and the folly of our ways. Legend has it that Fyodor Dostoevsky was absolutely mesmerized by this piece, and that’s why he featured it in his book, The Idiot.
The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa
Another topic I discuss in Love and Suffering is the mystical awakening of Saint Teresa of Avila. All mystical experiences point to a blissful ecstasy at the core of our experience, and Saint Teresa’s experience is no different. Her writings inspired the sculptural masterpiece “The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa,” a sculptural altarpiece group in white marble set in an elevated aedicule in the Cornaro Chapel of the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome.
The sculpture depicts an angel piercing Saint Teresa’s heart with a flaming arrow, teaching us that if we allow our hearts to be pierced by God, we too can experience the ecstasy of divine love. The way Saint Teresa is depicted also points to the fine line between ecstasy and agony, as the physical expression is the same.
Amar Bharati and The Fire of Tapas
Another main theme in Love and Suffering is that we must allow suffering, trials, and intense rites of passage to become part of our spiritual awakening. While there might be blissful aspects, spirituality is not about following one’s bliss. It is about going into the darkness.
It’s also about going right into the fire. In yogic philosophy, this fire is known as tapas, which is the burning passion we bring to our spiritual practice. Tapas can be practiced through intense austerities like fasting and meditation for long periods. Perhaps one of the most intense examples of tapas is that of Amar Bharati, an Indian Sadhu who has kept his right arm raised for years in a testament to his devotion to Shiva.
The Peruvian Despacho Ceremony
Whenever I go down to the Peruvian Andes for a yoga training with School Yoga Institute, one of my absolute favorite ceremonies to participate in is the despacho ceremony. A traditional Andean ritual from the Q’ero people of Peru, despacho means offering, and the ceremony involves creating a symbolic bundle of various ingredients and offering one’s intentions and prayers.
I write this about it in the book:
Despacho means “offering” and the ceremony involves wrapping a gift to be offered to Pachamama. After thanking the seven directions, opening up the sacred space, and praying to the ancestors, the guide of the ceremony will create a bundle of items with spiritual and special significance, like cookies for sweetness and rice for abundance. Participants are asked to create k’intus, bundles of sacred coca leaves, that represent prayers to their own families, land, and dreams to the future. All the materials are then wrapped with blessings and individual prayers of all the participants, before “offered” to the Great Mother by tossing it into a great fire.
If any of these topics interest you, I sincerely hope you purchase Love and Suffering: A Spiritual Guide for Helpers, Healers, and Humans.
It’s a body of work that grew from love and, as any writer can attest, involved a lot of suffering (editing is never fun). I hope it helps you discover the love that you are, the love that is here, and the cracks of suffering where the love comes in.
