What does Shakespeare have to teach us about mindfulness? What Eastern spiritual views about death, love, and presence are reflected in the writings of The Bard? The Buddha and the Bard reveals the surprising connections between the 2,500-year-old spiritual leader and the most compelling writer of all time.

Shakespeare understood and represented the human condition better than any writer of his time. As for the Buddha, he saw how to liberate us from that condition. Author Lauren Shufran explores the fascinating interplay of Western drama and Eastern philosophy by pairing quotes from Shakespeare with the tenets of an Eastern spiritual practice, sparking a compelling dialogue between the two. There's a remarkable interchange of echoes between Shakespeare's conception of "the inward man" and Buddhist approaches to recognizing, honoring, and working with our humanness as we play out our roles on the "stage" of our lives.

The Buddha and the Bard synthesizes literature and scripture, embodied drama and transcendent practice, to shape a multifaceted lyric that we can apply as mindful practice in our own lives. Shufran's compelling juxtapositions will encourage the reader to ask the deepest questions of themselves while delighting in the play of resonances across a cultural and historical divide.

Dip into The Buddha and the Bard for insight and inspiration whenever it's needed.

SURPRISING CONNECTIONS: Reveals links from the "theatricality" of human incarnation to the "great globe" that both Shakespeare and the Buddha gently guide us to remember is already within.

THOUGHTFUL GIFT: A beautiful gift for lovers of Shakespeare and followers of Buddha alike.

EXPERT AUTHOR: Poet and former University of California instructor Lauren Shufran has studied and taught literature and Shakespeare, informed by her personal yoga, meditation, and mindfulness practices, for more than 8 years.

The Buddha and the Bard: Where Shakespeare's Stage Meets Buddhist Scriptures, Lauren Shufran, Mandala Publishing, Hardcover, 200 pages, $16.99

Lauren Shufran holds an MA (English) and an MFA (Creative Writing: Poetry) from San Francisco State University, and a PhD (Early Modern British Literature) from UC Santa Cruz.

In her eight years of PhD candidacy at UCSC she taught a wide range of courses, from creative writing to Biblical Poetics in Renaissance England to The English Sonnet Sequence; but Shakespeare was the course she taught most consistently. She discovered yoga, meditation, and mindfulness practices while writing her dissertation.

Lauren's first major publication was a book of poetry called Inter Arma (Fence Books, 2013), which won the Motherwell Prize. Her poetry has appeared in Best American Experimental Writing (Wesleyan University Press), as well as in Postmodern Culture, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Emerge: An Anthology of Writing by Lambda Fellows, and elsewhere over the years. She's also had scholarly essays published in a handful of peer-reviewed journals.

Lauren presently works as a ghostwriter and content strategist for a startup in San Francisco.

CONTENTS: The Buddha and the Bard
"ALL THE MEN AND WOMEN MERELY PLAYERS": INHABITING THE STAGE		6
INTO THE PRACTICE		16
	Taking Place, Keeping Watch: Vigilance in 1 Henry VI	17
	"Our Bodies Are Our Gardens": Iago on Cultivating Seeds	23
	Becoming Strange to the World: Troilus and Cressida and Beginner's Mind	29
THE THREE MARKS OF EXISTENCE		34
	Impermanence and Prospero's Masque	35
	The Suffering of Painful Experiences: King Lear's Birth Cries and the Bones of Richard II	43
	The Suffering of Change: Hermia's Failing Legs	53
	The Suffering of Conditioned Reality: Hamlet's Dust	59
	Non-Self and Prospero's Art	65
THE THREE UNWHOLESOME ROOTS		70
	"To Guard a Thing Not Ours": Greed in Troilus and Cressida	71
	"I Sup Upon Myself": Self-Consuming Anger in Coriolanus	77
	Wandering in Illusion in The Comedy of Errors	83
THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS		88
	Malvolio's Cell and the Darkness of Ignorance in Twelfth Night	89
	Canceling Captivity and Freeing the Prisoner in Julius Caesar	95
	Happiness by Virtue Achieved: The Taming of the Shrew	101
THE NOBLE EIGHTFOLD PATH		106
	"To Thine Own Self Be True": Polonius on Right View	107
	"Thus I Let You Go": Mark Antony on Right Intention	113
	Uttering "Sweet Breath": Bottom on Right Speech	119
	"My Body Shall Make Good": Henry Bolingbroke on Right Action	125
	"I Have in This Rough Work Shaped Out a Man": Right Livelihood in Timon of Athens	129
	"All Labour / Mars What It Does": Mark Antony on Right Effort	135
	"I Do Remember Well Where I Should Be": Juliet on Right Mindfulness	141
	"Content and Anger / In Me Have but One Face": Arcite on Right Concentration	147
THE FOUR IMMEASURABLES		152
	Arcite's Prison Cosmos: Equanimity in The Two Noble Kinsmen	153
	Leonato's Proximate Heart: Loving-Kindness in Much Ado About Nothing	159
	Proteus's Holy Beadsman: Compassion in The Two Gentlemen of Verona	165
	Rosalind's Forgotten Condition: Sympathetic Joy in As You Like It	171
INTO THE WORLD		176
	"The Best Cards for the Game": King John's Dauphin of France on the Hands We're Dealt	177
BIBLIOGRAPHY		183
INDEX		188
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS		197
ABOUT THE AUTHOR		199