becoming BUDDHA
awakening the wisdom and compassion
to change your world
with Robert Sachs
Dedicated to all who wish to work for sustainable and inclusively beneficial social and political transformation...
Becoming Buddha: awakening the wisdom and compassion to change your world is the latest book by Robert Sachs. It is the sequel to Robert's groundbreaking interviews with some of the world's foremost Buddhist leaders in The Wisdom of The Buddhist Masters: Common and Uncommon Sense.
In the fall of 2006, Duncan Baird editor-in-chief, Michael Mann asked Robert if he could interview current world Buddhist masters pithy questions about today's challenges and what they saw in humanity's future on planet Earth. Such masters are usually approached to answer the more philosophical and existential questions of life. But, as a student of Tibetan Buddhism since 1974, Robert often heard them make "off the record" comments that demonstrated their social, historical, and political astuteness. The Wisdom of The Buddhist Masters documents those interviews.
These interviews had a profound effect on Robert and led him to discuss with Michael at Duncan Baird an expanded and updated version of one of his most popular books, The Buddha at War: Peaceful Heart, Courageous Action in Troubled Times. Becoming Buddha not only lays out a step-by-step path to becoming a "conscious, engaged activist" or spiritual warrior, working in all spheres of human activity to create a possible and sustainable future, as outlined in The Buddha at War. In what he sees as a more inclusive book that will touch the hearts and inspire the minds of readers regardless of their religious, political, or philosophical persuasion, Robert adds the critical social and moral Buddhist principle of the Four Guests. Briefly, the Four Guests include divine or transcendent beings, elemental forces, our human family and the world of life we all share, and those in the greatest suffering we see in our world. In keeping with teachers of past and present, Robert asserts that in properly addressing these Four Guests, we can create a society that becomes not only more fulfilling and sustainable for us here and now. It also casts an eye down the road and suggests that for us to have a conscious, engaged civilization for generations to come, we need to consider, appreciate, and pass on to future generations the wisdom and compassion to maintain healthy relationships to all of these Four Guests. And, to demonstrate his own commitment to this, there is an Appendix which illustrates the kind of provoking editorial writing Robert does to inspire social and political change.
Thus, Becoming Buddha will not only help to train each and every one of us to become "all that we can be" - awakened incarnations living conscious, engaged lives. It also offers a encompassing vision of how we can build a conscious, sustainable civilization to inform, inspire, and serve generations to come.
Chapters include:
* A Call to Action in a Dark Age
* War and Buddhism
* Intention: Planting the Seed of Action
* The Conscious, Engaged Activist
* A Conscious, Engaged Civilization
with a Preface by Kunzig Shamar Rinpoche and a Foreword by Stephen Levine.
This book will be available in APRIL, 2010.
To order a Press Kit and/or receive a review copy, contact Sterling Publishing.
In the fall of 2006, Duncan Baird editor-in-chief, Michael Mann asked Robert if he could interview current world Buddhist masters pithy questions about today's challenges and what they saw in humanity's future on planet Earth. Such masters are usually approached to answer the more philosophical and existential questions of life. But, as a student of Tibetan Buddhism since 1974, Robert often heard them make "off the record" comments that demonstrated their social, historical, and political astuteness. The Wisdom of The Buddhist Masters documents those interviews.
These interviews had a profound effect on Robert and led him to discuss with Michael at Duncan Baird an expanded and updated version of one of his most popular books, The Buddha at War: Peaceful Heart, Courageous Action in Troubled Times. Becoming Buddha not only lays out a step-by-step path to becoming a "conscious, engaged activist" or spiritual warrior, working in all spheres of human activity to create a possible and sustainable future, as outlined in The Buddha at War. In what he sees as a more inclusive book that will touch the hearts and inspire the minds of readers regardless of their religious, political, or philosophical persuasion, Robert adds the critical social and moral Buddhist principle of the Four Guests. Briefly, the Four Guests include divine or transcendent beings, elemental forces, our human family and the world of life we all share, and those in the greatest suffering we see in our world. In keeping with teachers of past and present, Robert asserts that in properly addressing these Four Guests, we can create a society that becomes not only more fulfilling and sustainable for us here and now. It also casts an eye down the road and suggests that for us to have a conscious, engaged civilization for generations to come, we need to consider, appreciate, and pass on to future generations the wisdom and compassion to maintain healthy relationships to all of these Four Guests. And, to demonstrate his own commitment to this, there is an Appendix which illustrates the kind of provoking editorial writing Robert does to inspire social and political change.
Thus, Becoming Buddha will not only help to train each and every one of us to become "all that we can be" - awakened incarnations living conscious, engaged lives. It also offers a encompassing vision of how we can build a conscious, sustainable civilization to inform, inspire, and serve generations to come.
Chapters include:
* A Call to Action in a Dark Age
* War and Buddhism
* Intention: Planting the Seed of Action
* The Conscious, Engaged Activist
* A Conscious, Engaged Civilization
with a Preface by Kunzig Shamar Rinpoche and a Foreword by Stephen Levine.
This book will be available in APRIL, 2010.
To order a Press Kit and/or receive a review copy, contact Sterling Publishing.
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about Robert... |
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Robert Sachs was born in America's heartland, just outside Cleveland, Ohio in 1952. The son of a Jewish veterinarian in the rural regions of that state, Robert's family experienced the full brunt of the challenges of civil rights era when his father's veterinary hospital was firebombed twice and both he and his sisters were subject to anti-semitic slurs and attacks.
This prompted Robert's father to move the family to a Jewish enclave closer to Cleveland. There, Robert saw how people of his own birth faith also had their own form of bigotry that they demonstrated against both blacks and gentiles. By the age of 11, Robert understood that the problem was not inherent in any race, creed, or culture, but was a problem of how we as humans develop prejudices against those who we define as others who are either below or above us. It was his first direct awareness of what in Buddhism is known as the Three Poisons: Ignorance, Attachment, and Aggression.  Having had several strong experiences of what he could only define as divine presence in both synagogues and churches alike, Robert decided early on that much of his life would be involved with some form of spiritual calling. At first he thought that this would lead him to become a rabbi. But, on the high holy days of the Jewish calendar, whilst sitting in a temple service, he realized that the path of Judaism was not his to take. Not soon after that, whilst studying abroad, Robert went to Kagyu Samye Ling Tibetan Centre in Eskdalemuir, Scotland. Sitting in on his first Tibetan Buddhist chanted meditation, he describes how he felt as if he was immersed in a cool shower of blessing and light. And, it is along that path that Robert has continued since 1972. This does not mean that Robert ever forsaken his birthright. From a long lineage of rabbis, a good friend of Robert once described him as fulfilling his rabbinic calling - just to the tune of a different drummer. And so, Robert has not only embraced his cultural Jewish background, has also pursued an education that is both conventional and esoteric. A licensed clinical social worker and massage therapist, he is also a certified yoga teacher, one of the foremost teachers of Nine Star Ki astrology, and, under the instruction of many of today's foremost Tibetan Buddhist masters, including his own personal teacher, Kunzig Shamar Rinpoche, teaches meditation courses for both Buddhist groups and other organizations wishing to understand and experience the benefits of Buddhist mind training. With his wife, Melanie, Robert is co-director of Diamond Way Ayurveda, an educational company and healing center that offers and teaches the body-mind therapies of the Indian and Tibetan Ayurvedic traditions for spas and individual therapists worldwide. Along with the titles already listed above, Robert is the author of, Nine Star Ki: Feng Shui Astrology for Deepening Self-Knowledge and Enhancing Relationships, Health, and Prosperity, Tibetan Ayurveda: Health Secrets from the Roof of The World, Rebirth Into Pure land: a True Story of Birth, Death, and Transformation, The Passionate Buddha: Wisdom on Intimacy and Enduring Love, Perfect Endings: A Conscious Approach to Dying and Death, and the co-author of Ayurvedic Spa with his wife Melanie. Many of these titles are already and available in foreign languages. |
