Love and Rage

The Path of Liberation through Anger

Love and Rage
Lama Rod Owens
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NZ$ 35.00
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NZ$ 28.00
Paperback
h216 x 140mm - 256pg
16 Jun 2020 US
International import eta 7-19 days
9781623174095
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For many Buddhists, anger is often thought of as a root cause for suffering and lasting, negative repercussions. In this book, social activist and Kagyu lama Rod Owens offers a different understanding. For Owens, anger is the most important aspects of his personal identity as a Buddhist, social activist, African-American, and gay man. When denied or repressed, unconscious anger can have a negative impact with destructive repercussions. But when recognized and used mindfully, it can be a positive source of vitality, courage, and dedication as one travels the path of spiritual and social transformation. Anger serves as protectorate role as a bodyguard for our personal pain and suffering. When recognized and handled with attention, love, and compassion, it can be a powerful mobilizing factor in our solidarity and commitment to enacting social change. However, too many activist communities have an ill-informed, immature, and romanticized relationship to it. What is needed, says Owens, is a relationship to the heartbreak of anger that is embodied, nondestructive, and deeply healing for all. In this book he offers personal insights, stories from others, as well as well as Buddhist teachings and meditations for tapping into anger's liberating potential.
"Lama Rod Owens's voice is a distinct coming together of streams of identity that pour forth an ocean of wisdom that is relevant to anyone that has ever experienced anger. He speaks with a rawness and candor that is both disarming and invitational, creating space for the whole of who you are to enter fully into--regardless of race, religion, sexual identity, body type or ability. Drawing equally on the endless suffering of peoples and bodies marginalized and oppressed, and the timeless wisdom that lies beyond identity and circumstance, he asks that we fiercely honor and hold the complexity of it all to heal ourselves to become the ancestors in training we are meant to be. His language draws from Buddhism, experience from Blackness, and he beckons toward a wide path of Love that has room for everyone."
--Rev. angel Kyodo williams, sensei, founder of Radical Dharma Movement Project, and coauthor of Radical Dharma

"This work is personal, political, and practical. Lama Rod Owens is wildly generous in letting us see him wrestle his way through his own pain, rage, and arousal. He weaves us from his own story to ours, from his Blackness, gayness, his prophetic nature, to our collective need to feel, harness, and express anger. And then every other page offers practices, practical guidance on how to be in right relationship to anger, to understand the power and wholeness of rage. What a gift!"
--adrienne maree brown, author of Emergent Strategy

"Love and Rage is a deep dive into how we are shaped by our perceptions of anger in a culture marked by dividedness and contempt. Through the lens of mindfulness and compassion-based practices, Lama Rod Owens shows us how the power of rage can be transformed into a force of healing in our fractured world."
--Tara Brach, author of Radical Compassion

"As a book, Love and Rage is uniquely situated. Informed by the depth of practice, liberating insight, sincere love, and humor to which Lama Rod Owens is well known as a Buddhist teacher, this work is a true multifaceted gem. Offering practical techniques for working with anger and the profound work of touching the earth, this book helps meet our need for getting free in ways unlike any other. Love and Rage is as old as the human relationship to anger, while also being rooted in the hot fire of the present time in such a way that it is more than a book; it is an Ark that helps the reader journey to the promise land; liberation into authentic embodiment. Lama Rod Owens proves again that he is a vital teacher with a vast impact who is shaping the future and helping us all make the journey ahead of us."
--Justin von Bujdoss, Buddhist teacher and chaplain

"With a nakedly honest voice, Lama Rod Owens takes us beyond the spiritual harm of unconsciously repressing, exiling, and indulging anger, opening a courageous path to its vigorous transformation. Here anger is not the enemy to be assailed, but an energy that when held with loving attention becomes a powerful and indispensable discerner. In a time and a nation where unconscious trauma continues to threaten the well-being of so many precious lives, we desperately need to be guided past shallow harmonies to the honest conversations that deliver the possibility of authentic love. I am grateful that this is exactly what we have here in Love and Rage."
--Kosen Gregory Snyder, Dharma Teacher, Brooklyn Zen Center, and Senior Director and Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies, Union Theological Seminary

"Audre Lorde, Black lesbian feminist poet-philosopher, once said: 'There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.' In Love and Rage, radical dharma teacher Rod Owens brings fresh texture to another of Lorde's classic insights: how to mobilize the energy of anger without being poisoned by the toxicity of rage. Relevant, wise, and generous, Love and Rage shines a much-needed queer Black freedom light onto one of the greatest challenges of our time: living honestly with fury, while deepening compassion. With the grace of a good teacher and the warmth of an old friend, keenly attuned to the stark realities of personal and historical trauma, Owens helps readers dig down gently past anger's sharp brambles to find the loamy soil of heartbreak underneath. A must-read for those of us ready to stop either bypassing or glorifying rage, and start embracing its powerful lessons on the path to liberation."
--Katie Loncke, Director, Buddhist Peace Fellowship

"Lama Rod stands on the shoulders of Dr. King, Malcolm X, Essex Hemphill and others to continue the important work that still needs to be done. He offers us his alchemy to work with anger that has been epigenetically passed down to us from historical trauma. His Radical Sermons teaches us how to metabolize Love and Rage. A Bible of kindness for anyone who wants to face their rage with dignity and pride. This book is timely, and inspirationally gritty."
--Valerie (Vimalasara) Mason-John, author of Detox Your Heart

"Lama Rod Owens is an absolutely essential new voice of leadership and wisdom on so many of the most important issues today: race, politics, religion, sexuality, masculinity, and, of course, love and rage. Reader beware: in this book Owens will probably obliterate your most entrenched assumptions about spirituality, mindfulness, and Buddhism. He will then proceed to offer something so much better, truer, more life-sustaining to take their place."
--Greg M. Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard and MIT

"Love and Rage gives us a deep dive and courageous view of what it means to be radically alive and present to everything that makes us impossibly human. From staying awake to the rawness of personal experience, to our communal disappointments and fears, and our historical and ancestral traumas, Lama Rod holds nothing back. This timely and relevant book shares brilliant quotes, teaches crucial techniques and meditation practices that allow us to celebrate joy as well as disrupt systems of anger, and helps us see that anger and rage make us human and not spiritual punching bags. This book wakes us up and reminds us what it means to live fully."
--Joanna Hardy, Dharma teacher and author

LAMA ROD OWENS is an author, activist, and authorized Lama (Buddhist Teacher) in the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism. Lama Rod is the co-founder of Bhumisparsha, a Buddhist tantric practice and study community. He is a guiding teacher for the Thomasville Buddhist Center, visiting teacher with Inward Bound Mindfulness Education (iBme), and a visiting teacher with Natural Dharma Fellowship and the Brooklyn Zen Center. Lama Rod has been a faculty member for the Harvard Graduate School of Education's professional education program in mindfulness for educators and holds a Master of Divinity degree in Buddhist Studies from Harvard Divinity School. Owens is a co-author of Radical Dharma, has been published in Buddhadharma, Lion's Roar, Tricycle, The Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Spirit Magazine, and recently contributed a chapter on working with anger for Real World Mindfulness for Beginners. He has offered talks, retreats, and workshops in over 5 countries for many organizations and universities including Gaia House Retreat Center, Goldsmiths University, London Insight, Tibet House Barcelona, Yale University, Harvard University, Columbia Law School, University of Vermont, and Boston College.
Status: Indent title, imported to order
ISBN-13: 9781623174095
Published: 16 Jun 2020
Published In: United States
Imprint: North Atlantic Books (US)
Publisher: North Atlantic Books (US)
Format: Paperback
Height: 216mm
Width: 140mm
Pages: 256

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