{"product_id":"storied-companions-cancer-trauma-and-discovering-guides-for-living-in-buddhist-narratives-paperback","title":"Storied Companions: Cancer, Trauma, and Discovering Guides for Living in Buddhist Narratives - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eKaren Derris\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA professor, mother, and Buddhist practitioner helps readers discover new ways of facing and experiencing life, death, and impermanence.\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"With my diagnosis of grade IV brain cancer, I no longer observe the truth of impermanence from a critical, analytical distance. I am crashing into it, or it into me.\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Facing a terminal cancer diagnosis, Karen Derris--professor, mother, and Buddhist practitioner--turned to books. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e By reading ancient Buddhist stories with new questions and a new purpose--finding a way to live with her dying body--she discovers new ways to make them immediate and real. For instance, reading with her terminal prognosis, she becomes one of the four omens (the four signs of impermanence and suffering) the young Siddhartha sees in his excursions from the palace. What would it mean for her to be in the crowd, straining to see the prince with her own sick and impermanent body--to be pushed aside and out of sight by the palace minders, just as our society so often tries to brush aside anything uncomfortable, but to nonetheless be seen by the young bodhisattva? Or reading as a mother, maybe she shares something akin to what Queen Maya may have felt, knowing she was dying, giving her newborn son over to her sister's care? What will it mean for her own children to be motherless? She follows the knotted threads connecting Milarepa's angry, vengeful mother to Karen's own mother, who physically abused her throughout a traumatic childhood. By placing herself into these stories, she turns them from distant and static narratives into companions, and from companions into guides. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003ci\u003eStoried Companions\u003c\/i\u003e interweaves Karen's memoir of her life of trauma and illness with stories from Buddhist literary traditions, sharing with the reader how she found ways to live with the reality that she won't live as long as she wants and needs to. Honest, powerful, and insightful, \u003ci\u003eStoried Companions\u003c\/i\u003e itself becomes an invaluable companion, guiding the reader to discover new ways of facing and experiencing life, death, and impermanence.\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eDr. Karen Derris is a scholar of South and Southeast Asian Buddhist traditions and professor of religious studies at the University of Redlands. Her research focuses on the intersection of literature and feminist ethics in pre-modern Buddhist traditions, particularly focusing upon the central importance of community in Buddhist ethical and spiritual development. Dr. Derris received her PhD from the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University in 2000.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 216\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.7 x 8.9 x 6 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e July 13, 2021\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books by splitShops","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51768333664544,"sku":"9781614295754","price":18.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0974\/9764\/5344\/files\/dfa12d565ce7419994dfdbb753936a2d.webp?v=1780327219","url":"https:\/\/ebocreations.com\/products\/storied-companions-cancer-trauma-and-discovering-guides-for-living-in-buddhist-narratives-paperback","provider":"The E-Book Oasis LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}