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The Buddha's Wife: The Path of Awakening Together Audiobook
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As the category of women’s spirituality continues to grow, The Buddha’s Wife offers to a broad audience for the first time the intimate and profound story of Princess Yasodhara, the wife Buddha left behind, and her alternative journey to spiritual enlightenment.
What do we know of the wife and child the Buddha abandoned when he went off to seek his enlightenment? The Buddha’s Wife brings this rarely told story to the forefront, offering a nuanced portrait of this compelling and compassionate figure while also examining the practical applications her teachings have on our modern lives.
Princess Yasodhara’s journey is one full of loss, grief, and suffering. But through it, she discovered her own enlightenment within the deep bonds of community and “ordinary” relationships. While traditional Buddhism emphasizes solitary meditation, Yasodhara’s experience speaks of “The Path of Right Relation,” of achieving awareness not alone but together with others.
The Buddha’s Wife is comprised of two parts: the first part is a historical narrative of Yasodhara’s fascinating story, and the second part is a “how-to” listener’s companion filled with life lessons, practices, and reflections for the modern seeker. Her story provides a relational path, one which speaks directly to our everyday lives and offers a doorway to profound spiritual maturation, awakening, and wisdom beyond the solitary, heroic journey.
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“The Buddha’s Wife is a gripping telling of an amazing 2,500-year-old story, followed by a collection of contemporary inspirational stories, and specific reflections and practices collected from the lives and work of ‘relational activists’ all over the world. A great read and a practical guide for anyone who wants to ‘wake up’ and walk a path of healing with others.”
— Martin Sheen
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“A beautiful imagination of the feminine and relational side of the Buddha’s tale.”
— Jack Kornfield, author of The Wise Heart -
“A brave and life-changing book, The Buddha’s Wife speaks to perhaps the greatest challenge of our time, our false sense of separateness. For all people of all faiths, The Buddha’s Wife shifts perception and thus opens us to possibility. It touched me deeply.”
— Frances Moore Lappe, author of Diet for a Small Planet -
“The Buddha’s Wife is a visionary work of profound insight, imagination, compassion, and scholarship. In telling the lost story of Yasodhara, Surrey and Shem give us a lamp for our troubled times, illuminating new paths and practices for all relationships.”
— Susan M. Pollak, coauthor of Sitting Together
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About the Authors
Janet Surrey, PhD, is a Buddhist dharma leader and clinical psychologist internationally known for her work on relational theories of women’s psychological development, diversity, mothering, adoption, and substance abuse. Among other venues, Surrey has taught at Harvard Medical School and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. She is the author of several books. She currently divides her time between Boston and Tierra Tranquila, Costa Rica.
Samuel Shem is the pen name of Stephen Bergman, a doctor, novelist, playwright, and activist. A Rhodes Scholar, he was on the faculty of Harvard Medical School for three decades. His books include Mount Misery, the 2008 National Best Book Award winner The Spirit of the Place, and Fine. With his wife, Janet Surrey, he wrote the hit off-Broadway play Bill W. and Dr. Bob, which won the Performing Arts Award of the National Council on Alcoholism in 2007, and the nonfiction book We Have to Talk: Healing Dialogues Between Women and Men, winner of the 1999 Boston Interfaith Council’s Paradigm Shift Award. He lives in Boston and Costa Rica.
About Sherry Adams Foster
Sherry Adams Foster is an actress, voiceover talent, and artist. Her audiobook directing and narrating credits include a Nabokov novel and a nonfiction account of Osama bin Laden. She holds a degree in theater from the University of Michigan.