Renowned for centuries, the classic Zen oxherding pictures vividly illustrate the stages of the spiritual journey--from seeking and finding to ultimately forgetting the illusory self and awakening to our true nature. In his commentary on these images, Gaylon Ferguson guides us on an experiential path into these seeming contradictions through welcoming--the simple, challenging, and always new possibility of opening to exactly what's occurring in our experience. Distinct from meditation and mindfulness, this contemplative exercise leads us beyond spiritual bypassing (using spiritual practices to repress or avoid parts of ourselves) and spiritual materialism (practicing with a heavy sense of ego). Rich with teachings from the great Zen teacher and author of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, as well as extensive commentary from Tibetan meditation master Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and others who have illuminated the oxherding pictures, this book invites you into a process of spiritual maturation that never occurs elsewhere than here or other than now.

Welcoming Beginner's Mind: Zen and Tibetan Buddhist Wisdom on Experiencing Our True Nature, Gaylon Ferguson, Shambhala Publications, Paperback, 248 pages, $19.95

Gaylon Ferguson is a faculty member in both Religious Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies at Naropa University, in Boulder, Colorado. He is an acharya, or senior teacher, in the Shambhala International Buddhist community. After studying meditation and Buddhist philosophy with Tibetan master Chogyam Trungpa in the 1970s and 1980s, Ferguson became a Fulbright Fellow to Nigeria and completed a doctoral degree in cultural anthropology at Stanford University. After several years of teaching cultural anthropology at the University of Washington, he became teacher-in-residence at Karme Choling Buddhist Retreat Center, through 2005, when he joined the faculty of Naropa University.