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tephanie Kaza combines decades of Buddhist practice with
scientific training in natural history and ecology in Green Bud-
dhism (Shambhala 2019). Through stories of personal struggle
and anxiety with the devastating facts of climate change, the
book attempts to address the grave situation of our environment
with an optimistic, Buddhist-inspired activism. Kaza sees that Bud-
dhist ideas such as compassion, interdependence, and no-self can be
uniquely applicable not only to our practices but also, by extension,
to our environmental concerns. As just one example, she offers the
“Indra’s Net” practice as a way of building up our spiritual capacities
to meet the challenges of climate change yet to come; in this Green
Buddhist meditational practice, one focuses on the dynamics of cli-
mate change and, “rather than resisting the frustrations and setbacks
of climate policy, one keeps going, leaning into the commitment of
the practice.”
Faced with frequent images of sorrow and distress in the media,
more and more of us often feel lost and stuck. Lama Palden rec-
ognizes that in the face of so much bad news, many in the West
“absorb the suffering of others, and then it stagnates inside of us.”
Love on Every Breath: Tonglen Meditation for Transforming Pain
into Joy (New World Library 2019) proposes a way for suffering
to be liberated, both in the body and the psyche, and to emerge
as compassion. A practical guide to the ancient Tibetan Buddhist
meditation tonglen, in which one breathes in suffering and breathes
out compassion, this book includes a guide to the practice in its
traditional eight steps as well as abbreviated “on-the-spot” versions
suitable for busier lifestyles. Lama Palden also provides a “non-
Buddhist” variation for practitioners of other traditions—instead of
seeking refuge in the three jewels in the second stage, for example,
practitioners can opt to take refuge in God, Allah, or the formless
presence of wisdom and love.BOOK BRIEFS
DAIGENGNA DUOER