Month: December 2022
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Chapter 2: Reflection 14 – The Kind Gift of Sickness
“For the secunde, come to my mind with contrition, frely without any seking: a wilful desire to have of Gods gifte a bodily sicknes.” 1 Thus does Julian name the second of three gifts she desires of God. In a culture that invests so much in preventing illness and its symptoms, it can seem so…
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Chapter 2: Reflection 13 – Tibetan Christmas Cards
In his book, A Saint in Seattle: The Life of the Tibetan Mystic, Dezhung Rinpoche, author David Jackson describes something of the relationship between the Tibetan Buddhist lama and one of his students, Jesuit Richard Sherburne. Father Sherburne studied regularly with Rinpoche while he was a student at the University of Washington (Seattle). Much of…
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Chapter 2: Reflection 12 – Love at a Refined Pitch
In 1984, scholar José Ignacio Cabezón published a review article which focused on Father Richard Sherburne’s English translation of Atisa’s A Lamp for the Enlightenment Path. 1 In this piece, Professor Cabezón affirms the “success” and the “immediate popularity” of Atisa’s 11th century text and its ability both to avoid the “extensive dialectics that were…
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Chapter 2: Reflection 11 – Watched Over Me with the Eyes of Love
Through the teaching of reincarnation, Tibetan Buddhists believe that all sentient beings have been one’s mother, and father, and sister, and brother an incalculable number of times. Using “mother” as the name of a primary relationship embodying the quality of loving kindness, Tibetan Buddhists affirm this vast communion of relationships when they speak of other…
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Chapter 2: Reflection 10 – Opening Wide the Inner Eye of the Soul
Julian’s desire for a deeper “mind of the passion of Christ” clearly involves the ability to “see” his sufferings, and that visual access is intended to be a type of window through which she can experience a more intimate solidarity and communion with Christ, and with the others who loved him. 1 These others, who…
Julian of Norwich and Other Tibetan Lamas 