Teachings on Society’s Struggles and What We Can Do
The book launch for Wasteland to Pureland, a collection of teachings and reflections from Dharma Teachers Doug Duncan and Catherine Pawasarat, is fast approaching on September 21, 2018. Here is what they had to say about their motivations for the book and the teachings of Dharma.
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The Book
We all have that experience of waking up one day and feeling like our life is really not what we have always wanted it to be. We might wonder, ‘How did I get here?’ That’s part of being human and that’s an important question. That can be a real time of despair.
Wasteland to Pureland is about how we get from that moment of despair to a more beautiful place – the Pure Land. According to Buddhist philosophy the Pure Land is a place of clarity, compassion and wisdom. Our book addresses typical events in a person’s life, like relationship, career, joy and loss. It also talks about practices that you can use, like tantras, meditations, therapies and psychological approaches that open doors from where we get stuck.
The Motivation
The nature of being human is to be in struggle. And, as the Four Ennobling Truths say, there is an end to this struggle. How do we do this in our daily life? How do we do this with others? In our careers? It’s an amazing journey. That is our motivation for sharing our experiences with other people.
Wasteland to Pureland are for those of you who have a motivation to explore the world you’re in. To unlock the patterns that get you into trouble, but also the ones that are just interesting and curious that grow in unfolding, and raise new questions.
The Goal
Question raising is the number one approach to the path of awakening. In order to get to realization, you need to raise the question about the nature of spiritual awakening. Can I do it? Is it possible? You start with a question and end up with a question. The process of becoming more awake is by asking better questions about ideas you’ve already settled on.
Personally, we like to explore the edges of our comfort zone and then push against those edges to see if they’ll go out farther.That’s an exciting frontier. It makes us stronger human beings. Life is a great big experiment.
We try a lot of different things at our meditation centre at Clear Sky and it’s exciting. In writing Wasteland to Pureland, we’re partly sharing this great big experiment as we’ve known it – what’s worked well, what hasn’t, what we’ve seen.
And, there’s no way of fully describing it all. You have to experience the path of awakening for yourself.
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Awakening today.
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