What did the Dalai Lama say to the hot dog vendor? "Make me one with everything!" It's a familiar joke, muses Lama Surya Das, and one that holds a profound truth: that in addition to inner peace, meditation is a path for all-inclusive connection. In Make Me One with Everything, he invites us to experience this through the art of inter-meditation and other original practices that allow us to see through the illusion of separation.
"If you've ever felt 'at one' with something-your beloved or your child, a forest trail or a favorite song-then you've experienced inter-meditation," explains Lama Surya Das. Based on Tibetan Buddhism's core insights into the inherent essence of who we are, these teachings of shared spirituality offer both new and experienced meditators a better way to live-not just on the meditation cushion or the yoga mat, but in every moment of their lives.
Make Me One with Everything: Buddhist Meditations to Awaken from the Illusion of Separation, Lama Surya Das, Sounds True, Paperback, 333 pages, 2015, $17.95
Lama Surya Das is one of the foremost Western Buddhist meditation teachers and scholars, one of the main interpreters of Tibetan Buddhism in the West, and a leading spokesperson for the emerging American Buddhism. The Dalai Lama affectionately calls him "the Western Lama."
Surya has spent over forty years studying Zen, vipassana, yoga, and Tibetan Buddhism with the great masters of Asia. He is an authorized lama (priest and spiritual master teacher) in the Nyingmapa School of Tibetan Buddhism as well as the founder of the Dzogchen Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and its affiliated branches. He is also the founder of the Western Buddhist Teachers Network annual conferences with the Dalai Lama.
As a best selling author, sought after speaker, teacher, and lecturer, he conducts retreats and workshops around the world. Surya is also a published poet, translator, and chant master. He has been featured in numerous publications and major media, including ABC, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, New York Post, Washington Post, Long Island Newsday, Long Island Business Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Jewish Free Press, New Age Journal, Tricycle Magazine, Yoga Journal, and The Oregonian.
One segment of the ABC-TV sitcom Dharma & Greg was based on his life ("Leonard's Return"). Surya has appeared on Politically Correct with Bill Maher and on The Colbert Report.
