Transforming Suffering: Reflections on Finding Peace in Troubled Times by His Holiness the Dalai Lamma, His Holiness Pope John Paul II, Thomas Keating, Joseph Goldstein, Thubten Chodro

From the hearts and minds of some of today’s great spiritual masters comes advice on maintaining spiritual awareness and finding peace in troubled times.
In April 2002, several of the world’s most influential Buddhist and Christian monks, nuns, and lay practitioners gathered at Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky to ponder contemporary life’s most difficult questions. The results of this great encounter are brought together in Transforming Suffering. These personal reflections from those who have spent their lives seeking to understand suffering and to provide spiritual guidance, inspiration, and support to those in trouble explore a wide range of difficult subjects, from the social, economic, military, and political turmoil we face today to enduring human concerns—the harmful affects of anger, hatred, and other negative emotions, the need to embrace compassion in our daily lives, the problems of aging and sickness, the loss of loved ones, facing our own mortality, and other similar personal and relational issues. His Holiness Pope John Paul II contributes his thoughts on the meaning of suffering, while His Holiness the Dalai Lama discusses the transformation of suffering. Conference participants include Thomas Keating, Joseph Goldstein, Thubten Chodron, Robert Aitken, Zoketsu Norman Fischer, Mary Margaret Funk, John Daido Loori, Father Columba Stewart, and Geshe Lhundub Sopa.
As they share their experiences and the principles of their traditions, the participants demonstrate the different ways we can transform suffering for the healing of our world and ourselves.

DONALD W. MITCHELL is Professor of Comparative Philosophy at Purdue University, where he is also Chair of the Religious Studies Program. JAMES WISEMAN, O.S.B., is a member of the Benedictine community of Saint Anselm’s Abbey in Washington, D.C., and is an associate professor of theology and Chairman of the Department of Theology at the Catholic University of America.