The Way of Tenderness

Awakening Through Race, Sexuality, and Gender

By: Zenju Earthlyn Manuel

Narrated by: Zenju Earthlyn Manuel

What does liberation mean when I have incarnated in a particular body, with a particular shape, color, and sex?

In The Way of Tenderness, Zen priest Zenju Earthlyn Manuel brings Buddhist philosophies of emptiness and appearance to bear on race, sexuality, and gender, using wisdom forged through personal experience and practice to rethink problems of identity and privilege.

Manuel brings her own experiences as a lesbian black woman into conversation with Buddhism to square our ultimately empty nature with superficial perspectives of everyday life. Her hard-won insights reveal that dry wisdom alone is not sufficient to heal the wounds of the marginalized; an effective practice must embrace the tenderness found where conventional reality and emptiness intersect. Only warmth and compassion can cure hatred and heal the damage it wreaks within us.

This is a book that will teach us all.

©2014 Wisdom Publications (P)2016 Wisdom Publications

amazing and beautiful perspective on oppression

amazing and beautiful perspective on oppression and how to transmute it into love for oneself and others.

Understand Universal and Individual suffering

This book talks about how Universal and Individual suffering are the same and different.
Manuel details stories of here own life and the history of black people. she weaves these stories with Zen Buddhism to unveil the concept of tenderness. Tenderness is the idea of understanding your universal and individual suffering without letting the suffering rule your life.

“There is multiplicity in oneness.”

Brilliant. Healing. She speaks directly to what have been crucial missing links in awakening discussions in most meditation centers.