I'm going through a period where it feels very difficult to read. Nothing seems to click on the page for me right now. I even got out the big guns and nothing seems to work. If I'm not engaged in an Alice Munro short story, something is seriously wrong.
So I turned to this book, Awakening Loving-Kindness. Even before you open it up, it just seems so inviting. It's a book that you can literally hold in your hand and curl your fingers around it. It's bright red with a picture of the author smiling at you on the cover. It feels like a genuine portrait, a moment caught where a real person smiles at you, and you have that feeling of warmth, that feeling that you're witnessing an individual who wants to share some knowledge with you.
And then you open it up: Here is the opening salvo to Chaper 1, a section entitled "Loving-Kindness": "There's a common misunderstanding among all the human beings who have ever been born on the earth that the best way to live is to try to avoid pain and just try to get comfortable."
It makes me stop and think, take a breath. It's such calm, even prose that at the same time lights a fire under you, if you so choose. That's this book, a quiet, unassuming, revolutionary primer that calms and excites, one that urges you to step inside and to take action.
