Awakening My Heart by Andrea Miller is, as its subtitle states, a collection of Essays, Articles and Interviews on the Buddhist Life. Andrea is an editor of the Buddhist magazine, Lion’s Roar, and her honest and personal style of writing has won her a huge number of friends and fans over the years. Now some of her ‘greatest hits’ have been collated and published in book form so that you can enjoy them again and again whenever you wish to benefit from her unique brand of insight, commentary and humour. Those of you who are familiar with Andrea’s work will already know what to expect, and those of you who haven’t are in for a real treat.
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What makes Andrea Miller so accessible as a writer is her humility and the way she allows her personality to shine through. Andrea makes no claim to be enlightened or ‘better than thou’, but instead shares her experience and ideas with an unvarnished honesty that is warm and welcoming. Reading her words is like listening to a friend who, like the rest of us, is looking to use the tools of Buddhism to improve her experience of life in the most practical of terms.
There are more than two dozen of Andrea’s essays, articles and interviews in this volume, and these put the spotlight on a wide variety of topics and personalities. Highlights for us include an interview with Jeff Bridges and Bernie Glassman, profiles of Mingyur Rinpoche and Matthieu Ricard, question and answer sessions with Raffi, Tina Turner and Ram Dass (to name just three) and Andrea’s writings about her various experiences on retreat with teachers such as Pema Chödrön and Thich Nhat Hanh.
Whilst Awakening My Heart will of course appeal primarily to those who already follow the teachings of the Buddha, it is a book that can also help those who are not yet practitioners to get an inside perspective on what it’s all about. Whether you want to learn how to be truly happy, what it’s like to go on pilgrimage in India, or how to turn the proverbial poison into medicine by following the example of a peacock, this book delivers plenty.