Publishers Weekly
05/11/2020
Owens (Radical Dharma), a Lama in the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, presents an essential guide to “facing our anger and welcoming it as a teacher and friend.” Owens, “a black, queer, cisgender, and male-identified, fat, mixed-class, Buddhist teacher and minister, yoga teacher, and shit-talking Southerner, among other identities,” writes of feeling inspired by the crushing results of the 2016 election. His reaction to Trump’s victory sparked a recognition that he could use his anger to “make space” and work through his own sense of woundedness. He invites readers to tread along a similar path by not shying away from feelings of rage and shares a number of anger-inducing anecdotes from his life, among them many moments in which he encountered racism (both subtle and overt). Writing with generosity and understanding toward those that have inspired his anger, Owens demonstrates the “neutral ground” needed for exploring both society-wide and personal pain. His appealing tone and easy-to-follow instructions on meditation, breath work, processing trauma, and visualization make Buddhist principles open to any reader. By showing how to harness the regenerative, disruptive power of empathy, Owens’s welcoming work can help readers turn indignation into healing. (July)
From the Publisher
Lama Rod Owens’s voice is a distinct coming together of streams of identity that pour forth an ocean of wisdom that is relevant to anyone that has ever experienced anger. He speaks with a rawness and candor that is both disarming and invitational, creating space for the whole of who you are to enter fully into—regardless of race, religion, sexual identity, body type or ability. Drawing equally on the endless suffering of peoples and bodies marginalized and oppressed, and the timeless wisdom that lies beyond identity and circumstance, he asks that we fiercely honor and hold the complexity of it all to heal ourselves to become the ancestors in training we are meant to be. His language draws from Buddhism, experience from Blackness, and he beckons toward a wide path of Love that has room for everyone.”
—Rev. angel Kyodo williams, sensei, founder of Radical Dharma Movement Project, and coauthor of Radical Dharma
“This work is personal, political, and practical. Lama Rod Owens is wildly generous in letting us see him wrestle his way through his own pain, rage, and arousal. He weaves us from his own story to ours, from his Blackness, gayness, his prophetic nature, to our collective need to feel, harness, and express anger. And then every other page offers practices, practical guidance on how to be in right relationship to anger, to understand the power and wholeness of rage. What a gift!”
—adrienne maree brown, author of Emergent Strategy
“Love and Rage is a deep dive into how we are shaped by our perceptions of anger in a culture marked by dividedness and contempt. Through the lens of mindfulness and compassion-based practices, Lama Rod Owens shows us how the power of rage can be transformed into a force of healing in our fractured world.”
—Tara Brach, author of Radical Compassion
“As a book, Love and Rage is uniquely situated. Informed by the depth of practice, liberating insight, sincere love, and humor to which Lama Rod Owens is well known as a Buddhist teacher, this work is a true multifaceted gem. Offering practical techniques for working with anger and the profound work of touching the earth, this book helps meet our need for getting free in ways unlike any other. Love and Rage is as old as the human relationship to anger, while also being rooted in the hot fire of the present time in such a way that it is more than a book; it is an Ark that helps the reader journey to the promise land; liberation into authentic embodiment. Lama Rod Owens proves again that he is a vital teacher with a vast impact who is shaping the future and helping us all make the journey ahead of us.”
—Justin von Bujdoss, Buddhist teacher and chaplain
“With a nakedly honest voice, Lama Rod Owens takes us beyond the spiritual harm of unconsciously repressing, exiling, and indulging anger, opening a courageous path to its vigorous transformation. Here anger is not the enemy to be assailed, but an energy that when held with loving attention becomes a powerful and indispensable discerner. In a time and a nation where unconscious trauma continues to threaten the well-being of so many precious lives, we desperately need to be guided past shallow harmonies to the honest conversations that deliver the possibility of authentic love. I am grateful that this is exactly what we have here in Love and Rage.”
—Kosen Gregory Snyder, Dharma Teacher, Brooklyn Zen Center, and Senior Director and Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies, Union Theological Seminary
“Audre Lorde, Black lesbian feminist poet-philosopher, once said: ‘There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.’ In Love and Rage, radical dharma teacher Rod Owens brings fresh texture to another of Lorde’s classic insights: how to mobilize the energy of anger without being poisoned by the toxicity of rage. Relevant, wise, and generous, Love and Rage shines a much-needed queer Black freedom light onto one of the greatest challenges of our time: living honestly with fury, while deepening compassion. With the grace of a good teacher and the warmth of an old friend, keenly attuned to the stark realities of personal and historical trauma, Owens helps readers dig down gently past anger’s sharp brambles to find the loamy soil of heartbreak underneath. A must-read for those of us ready to stop either bypassing or glorifying rage, and start embracing its powerful lessons on the path to liberation.”
—Katie Loncke, Director, Buddhist Peace Fellowship
“Lama Rod stands on the shoulders of Dr. King, Malcolm X, Essex Hemphill and others to continue the important work that still needs to be done. He offers us his alchemy to work with anger that has been epigenetically passed down to us from historical trauma. His Radical Sermons teaches us how to metabolize Love and Rage. A Bible of kindness for anyone who wants to face their rage with dignity and pride. This book is timely, and inspirationally gritty.”
—Valerie (Vimalasara) Mason-John, author of Detox Your Heart
“Lama Rod Owens is an absolutely essential new voice of leadership and wisdom on so many of the most important issues today: race, politics, religion, sexuality, masculinity, and, of course, love and rage. Reader beware: in this book Owens will probably obliterate your most entrenched assumptions about spirituality, mindfulness, and Buddhism. He will then proceed to offer something so much better, truer, more life-sustaining to take their place.”
—Greg M. Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard and MIT
“Love and Rage gives us a deep dive and courageous view of what it means to be radically alive and present to everything that makes us impossibly human. From staying awake to the rawness of personal experience, to our communal disappointments and fears, and our historical and ancestral traumas, Lama Rod holds nothing back. This timely and relevant book shares brilliant quotes, teaches crucial techniques and meditation practices that allow us to celebrate joy as well as disrupt systems of anger, and helps us see that anger and rage make us human and not spiritual punching bags. This book wakes us up and reminds us what it means to live fully.”
—Joanna Hardy, Dharma teacher and author
"[Owens's] appealing tone and easy-to-follow instructions on meditation, breath work, processing trauma, and visualization make Buddhist principles open to any reader."
—Publishers Weekly
Library Journal
06/01/2020
The latest from Owens (Radical Dharma) is an insightful personal narrative steeped in Buddhist wisdom on how he disentangled from rage, specifically, rage created from being a marginalized body living in the United States today. Lama (meaning "teacher") Owens, trained in the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, writes accessibly on basic Buddhist philosophy to establish a framework for meditative practices. Interspersed throughout are stories of the author's own experiences with racial profiling, social injustice, and the construct of fear that white society has created around a Black man's rage. His reflections allow readers to understand how engaging with emotion can begin to reveal one's lack of embodiment and help locate emotions, such as anger, that often accumulate from years of oppression. Owens shares how one can create space for healing through a meditation practice that allows for acceptance of emotional wounds as well as acknowledging ancestral wounds. Owens's Buddhist perspective is cultivated through the lens of a queer, Black man who continues to create space for those who feel unaccepted in current society. VERDICT Highly recommended for Eastern philosophy/Buddhism collections; a wonderful resource for social justice advocates.—Angela Forret, State Lib. of Iowa, Des Moines
