San Francisco Zen Center -Zenju Earthlyn Manuel Speaks From Her Book

with Zenju Earthlyn Manuel
at San Francisco Zen Center – City Center
Saturday, April 25, 2015
10 am dharma talk, followed by discussion and book signing
Free public eventWhat does liberation mean when I have incarnated in a particular body, with a particular shape, color, and sex?

In her new book, 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.

Zenju brings her own experiences as a lesbian 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.

These topics will be the focus of Zenju’s dharma talk and subsequent Q&A. Her teaching on this subject is for everyone.

There will an opportunity to purchase a signed copy of the book in the SFZC bookstore beforehand and have it personalized by Zenju after the talk.

Rev. Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, PhD, author, visual artist, drummer and Zen Buddhist priest, is the guiding teacher of Still Breathing Meditation Center in East Oakland, CA. She was ordained with Zenkei Blanche Hartman and is under the training of Kiku Christina Lehnherr, a former abbess of the San Francisco Zen Center. Zenju was shuso/head student for the Fall 2012 Practice Period at City Center, which was led by Christina Lehnherr. She is the author of Tell Me Something About Buddhism (Hampton Roads Publishing), which includes a foreword written by Thich Nhat Hanh, with poetry and illustrations by Zenju Earthlyn. In addition, she is a contributing author to many books, including Dharma, Color and Culture: Voices From Western Buddhist Teachers of Color (Parallax) and The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women (Wisdom Publications), edited by Florence Caplow and Susan Moon, as well as the newly released The Way of Tenderness: Awakening With The Challenges of Race, Sexuality, and Gender (Wisdom Publications). For more information go to zenju.org.