The androgynous, asexual Buddha of contemporary popular imagination stands in stark contrast to the muscular, virile, and sensual figure presented in Indian Buddhist texts. In early Buddhist literature and art, the Buddha’s perfect physique and sexual prowess are important components of his legend as the world’s “ultimate man.” He is both the scholarly, religiously inclined brahman and the warrior ruler who excels in martial arts, athletic pursuits, and sexual exploits. The Buddha effortlessly performs these dual roles, combining his society’s norms for ideal manhood and creating a powerful image taken up by later followers in promoting their tradition in a hotly contested religious marketplace. In this groundbreaking study of previously unexplored aspects of the early Buddhist tradition, John Powers skillfully adapts methodological approaches from European and North American historiography to the study of early Buddhist literature, art, and iconography, highlighting aspects of the tradition that have been surprisingly invisible in earlier scholarship. The book focuses on the figure of the Buddha and his monastic followers to show how they were constructed as paragons of masculinity, whose powerful bodies and compelling sexuality attracted women, elicited admiration from men, and convinced skeptics of their spiritual attainments.

From hard-core spiritual seeker: authentic spiritual adventure with passions and vulnerabilities, and a simple and unconventional guidebook for those who are tired of seeking enlightenment. This is the most real, raw, wild, truthful, funny book on awakening and enlightenment I have ever read. It could easily be called 'welcome to being human'. Elena brings the spiritual search into the realm of being human in a way that no one else could. I deeply and highly recommend this easy to read, easy to love, easy to understand jewel to anyone seeking themselves. --Shanti Zimmermann, Emotional Clarity Mentor Buddha On A Bull is some very real shit. It's a radically clear, concise, and easily accessible book about the nature of what many have come to call "spirituality," and "enlightenment". --Chris Grosso, hard rock musician and author A delightful guide full of important pointers for those who wish to explore the journey of awakening. The book is easy to read and the stories are told with sincere honesty, eliminating the many fantasies surrounding spirituality. --John Tan "Thusness", Buddhist teacher For confused beings like ourselves who have the habit of shopping from shelf to shelf for Dharma snacks, Elena has written the perfect handbook. If you've only been gorging on empty calories, here is the balanced nutritional supplement you need. And it answers many of the modern problems never even thought of in Traditional Eastern meditation texts! It's practical, and gives advice on avoiding difficulties, which are all of our own making. And it's simple, full of easy effective ways to make sure that once we get unstuck, we can relax, free. --John Hoag, Practitioner of Dzogchen and translator for Tibetan Teachers Here is a being who is humble enough to follow a teaching, a teacher or a modality that feels right and, at the same time, has the keen eye to see through spiritual bullshit and reject confusing, useless and false concepts and practices. She also displays the rare gift of courage - the courage it often takes to leave a group or a forum with detachment and without the kind of false loyalty that so often keeps a seeker enslaved and addicted to a path and its community. --Nurit Oren with Gabor Harsanyi, Spiritual teachers In this book, Elena takes you on a journey that reveals her real life experiences of the search for enlightenment, and shares invaluable, practical guidance resulting from the magic and the misery of it all. The writing is simplicity itself, in her unique enjoyable voice she speaks to her readers as an equal, without the rarified air of a teacher, daring them to let go of everything they think they know about seeking, about enlightenment, and about who they really are. Elena takes all of the many experiences one can have on this journey, distills them down to their essence in eminently readable form, offered like a wrapped gift. Accessible and beautifully devoid of non-dual BS. --Cynthia M. Clingan, MSEd, PCC, Somatic Psychotherapist By sharing her authentic and courageous journey of self-discovery and awakening, Elena models what it's like to follow one's truth. [She] displays the courage, insight, and understanding gained from her life journey, and she generously shares her experiences and guideposts with the reader. --Susanne Marie, Spiritual Mentor and Guide

Building a successful product usually involves teams of people, and many choose the Scrum approach to aid in creating products that deliver the highest possible value. Implementing Scrum gives teams a collection of powerful ideas they can assemble to fit their needs and meet their goals. The ninety-four patterns contained within are elaborated nuggets of insight into Scrum’s building blocks, how they work, and how to use them. They offer novices a roadmap for starting from scratch, yet they help intermediate practitioners fine-tune or fortify their Scrum implementations. Experienced practitioners can use the patterns and supporting explanations to get a better understanding of how the parts of Scrum complement each other to solve common problems in product development. The patterns are written in the well-known Alexandrian form, whose roots in architecture and design have enjoyed broad application in the software world. The form organizes each pattern so you can navigate directly to organizational design tradeoffs or jump to the solution or rationale that makes the solution work. The patterns flow together naturally through the context sections at their beginning and end. Learn everything you need to know to master and implement Scrum one step at a time—the agile way.

Gold Nautilus Book Award Winner Leading African American Buddhist teachers offer lessons on racism, resilience, spiritual freedom, and the possibility of a truly representative American Buddhism. With contributions by Acharya Gaylon Ferguson, Cheryl A. Giles, Gyōzan Royce Andrew Johnson, Ruth King, Kamilah Majied, Lama Rod Owens, Lama Dawa Tarchin Phillips, Sebene Selassie, and Pamela Ayo Yetunde. What does it mean to be Black and Buddhist? In this powerful collection of writings, African American teachers from all the major Buddhist traditions tell their stories of how race and Buddhist practice have intersected in their lives. The resulting explorations display not only the promise of Buddhist teachings to empower those facing racial discrimination but also the way that Black Buddhist voices are enriching the Dharma for all practitioners. As the first anthology comprised solely of writings by African-descended Buddhist practitioners, this book is an important contribution to the development of the Dharma in the West.

Liberation Unleashed introduces you to the process of unraveling the false sense of a separate self at the center of your existence. With insightful metaphors, personal stories, and guided dialogues, this book points directly to our lack of separation and helps you move toward a new, more open reality of selfless bliss. Using the seven clear and focused steps presented, you’ll find liberation in realizing there is no individuated “I” and marvel at the true nature of things. Author Ilona Ciunaite’s search for the truth began when she first “experienced silence of the thinking mind, a sweet sense of being, contentment, peace,” and “feeling at home.” Driven by a desire to reach that state of oneness once more, her path led her through spiritual writings to the process of deconstruction and non-dual self-inquiry and finally to a peaceful emptiness of not knowing, but of simply being. It’s from that place that Ciunaite cocreated the popular Liberation Unleashed forum—a global Internet-based community helping people see through the illusion of a separate self—and it’s just that sense of unknowing peace she wishes to impart with this book. Liberation Unleashed is a lively, fresh, and moving account of the author’s own searching, liberation, and transformation, woven together with the stories of fellow seekers and a clear exposition of the simple, focused tools you can use to go through the “gateless gate.” With its conversational tone, provocative questions, and the presentation of the seven steps—“Clearing the path—meeting the fear,” “Strip away ALL expectations,” “Get in touch with the real,” “‘I’ is a thought,” “There is no separate self,” “How does it feel to see this?” and “Falling”—this book serves as an introductory how-to guide, demonstrating how to use the process of self-inquiry to get free from the falseness of the separate self and realize a blissful oneness. So many of us go through life feeling isolated, searching for ourselves, or seeking a more authentic reality through religion, spirituality, or other, more unconventional means of expanding consciousness. Now, with this book and its guiding principles, you’ll learn how to look deeply into the nature of self and existence; combat the anxieties, fears, mental blocks, and reservations that can arise in self-inquiry; and see the simple beauty of the everyday moment.

The Buddha Party tells the story of how the People's Republic of China employs propaganda to define Tibetan Buddhist belief and sway opinion within the country and abroad. The narrative they create is at odds with historical facts and deliberately misleading but, John Powers argues, it is widely believed by Han Chinese. Most of China's leaders appear to deeply believe the official line regarding Tibet, which resonates with Han notions of themselves as China's most advanced nationality and as a benevolent race that liberates and culturally uplifts minority peoples. This in turn profoundly affects how the leadership interacts with their counterparts in other countries. Powers's study focuses in particular on the government's "patriotic education" campaign-an initiative that forces monks and nuns to participate in propaganda sessions and repeat official dogma. Powers contextualizes this within a larger campaign to transform China's religions into "patriotic" systems that endorse Communist Party policies. This book offers a powerful, comprehensive examination of this ongoing phenomenon, how it works and how Tibetans resist it.