Hi all,

Yes, believe it or not you are hearing from me 2 weeks in a row! This is because I have just posted a new book review, and wanted to share that with you, along with letting you know about an opportunity to win this book in a giveaway:

Paradise in Plain Sight
Paradise in Plain Sight: Lessons from a Zen Garden by Zen Priest Karen Maezen Miller, is both memoir and Zen guide. Maezen Miller shares experiences repairing and tending a historical Japanese garden in her own backyard, guiding the reader towards direct insight, in her beautiful and honest style.

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art183632.asp

I don't often push the other sites I write for in this newsletter, but this one article I wanted to let you know about: I interviewed Maezen Miller for Meditate Like a Girl, and you can comment on that article anytime in July for a chance to win a copy of Paradise in Plain Sight:

http://www.meditatelikeagirl.com/magazine/paradise-in-plain-sight-book-giveaway-and-interview-with-karen-maezen-miller

I will be heading out of town soon for lovely retreat time at Tara Mandala, the retreat center of Lama Tsultrim Allione. I wish you peace and silence during this time - your own 'inner retreat', if you are not able to take an outer one.

In closing, here is a passage from Paradise in Plain Sight, that might be called 'the other me':

"It seems I've lived as though there were two of me. Right where I stand is me as I am. Opposite me is another me, one I've never met. She is quite wonderful, charming, and accomplished. She sits [meditation] longer, for instance, every day, and eats much less. She says and does nothing she regrets. She went to the exercise class I skipped; she didn't even glance at the dessert menu. She has all the potential I have misspent: youth, for instance, time, patience, and kindness. All the while that we have traveled side by side, she has taken a different road, one I've never seen. I am taunted by her perfection. The problem for me, you see, is not that I compare myself to you, but that I compare myself to someone who doesn't even exist: the other me. I will never know contentment until I confront her, disarm her, and lop off her leafy head. She creates way too much work for the groundskeeper beneath."
- Karen Maezen Miller, Paradise in Plain Sight

May you let go of your 'other me', and know yourself as whole and at peace this month:-)

Lisa Erickson, Buddhism Editor
http://buddhism.bellaonline.com

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