INTO THE MIRROR

Foreword by Matthieu Ricard INTO THE MIRROR is a call to cultivate wisdom and compassionright within this world of illusionand an insightful challenge to the rampant materialism of modernity. Andy Karr presents accessible and powerful methods to accomplish this through investigating the way our minds construct our worlds.

Combining contemporary Western inquiries with classical Buddhist investigations into the nature of mind, Karr invites the reader to make a personal, experiential journey through study, contemplation, and meditation. He presents a series of contemplative practices from Mahayana Buddhism, starting with the Middle Way teachings on emptiness and interdependence, through Yogachara's subtle understanding of nonduality, to the view that buddha nature is already within us to be revealed rather than something external to be acquired. ANDY KARR is a teacher, author, and photographer whose works explore profound and penetrating insights into dharma and mind. At an early age, he dreamed of becoming a Zen masteras he describes, probably the result of reading Zen in the Art of Archery as a teenager and watching too many samurai movies. His interests led him to read Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind and to train under Shunryu Suzuki Roshi at the San Francisco Zen Center and under Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in Boulder, Colorado. Andy attended Trungpa Rinpoche's three-month seminary in 1976, where intense periods of meditation practice alternated with intense periods of study. The message for him was clear: practice and study go together like the two wings of a bird. This became the guiding principle for his own journey. After moving to Paris in 1979, Andy cofounded the first Shambhala Centre in France. MATTHIEU RICARD is a Buddhist monk who had a promising career in cellular genetics before leaving France to study Buddhism in the Himalayas thirty-seven years ago. He is a best-selling author, translator, and photographer, and an active participant in current scientific research on the effects of meditation on the brain. His many books include Why Meditate?, Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill, and The Quantum and the Lotus. He lives in Nepal and dedicates much of his time to humanitarian projects in the Himalayas through his nonprofit organization Karuna-Shechen (www.karuna-shechen.com). For more information, visit www.matthieuricard.org.