Zenju Earthlyn Manuel

Sanctuary: A Meditation on Home, Homelessness, and Belonging examines the interface between inner and outer sanctuary, and the ways they affect one another.

“Sanctuary” is the home we can return to when our lives are under threat, where we can face what's difficult to love, and have a place where we can truly say, “I am home”—and spiritual teachers often emphasize sanctuary’s inner dimensions, that “our true home” is within. “Homelessness,” in turn, can be viewed as a forced experience or one in which there is a spiritual void in being or feeling home.

Drawing from her life as a Zen Buddhist priest whose ancestors labored as slaves in Louisiana, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel explores the tension between oppression—based on race, religion, ability, class, orientation, gender, and other “ghosts of slavery”—and finding home within our own hearts. Through intimate personal stories and deep reflection, Manuel helps us see the moment when the unacknowledged surfaces as “the time we have been practicing for,” the epiphany when we can investigate the true source what has been troubling us. This insightful book about home and homelessness, sanctuary and refuge offers inspiration, encouragement, and a clear-eyed view of cultivating a spiritual path in challenging times.… (más)

“What does liberation mean when I have incarnated in a particular body, with a particular shape, color, and sex?”

In The Way of Tenderness, Zen priest Zenju Earthlyn Manuel brings Buddhist philosophies of emptiness and appearance to bear on race, sexuality, and gender, using wisdom forged through personal experience and practice to rethink problems of identity and privilege.
Manuel brings her own experiences as a bisexual black woman into conversation with Buddhism to square our ultimately empty nature with superficial perspectives of everyday life. Her hard-won insights reveal that dry wisdom alone is not sufficient to heal the wounds of the marginalized; an effective practice must embrace the tenderness found where conventional reality and emptiness intersect. Only warmth and compassion can cure hatred and heal the damage it wreaks within us.
This is a book that will teach us all.… (más)

Before Ferguson, their has been discussion on how to address Buddhist sangha members who are cis gender, and are non white. There are PoC (People of Color) sanghas within larger sanghas and their are separate PoC sanghas to list some of the results. Zenju has been and continues to walk in these areas. It is her exposure and her own personal experience that makes this book special. This is not a straight read through book. I read some pages and put it down to let what she said wash over me. Then picked up again. Zenju admits that she does not have all the answers but what she suggest is worth trying out. I would love for all sanghas to make this book part of their library or a big read. I will be reread this book for many years to come as I continue to encounter issue that this book addresses within my own sangha. Thank you Zenju.… (más)