A Timely Gift From Lama Rod Owens
A review of The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors
Reading time: About 7 minutes
Sometimes I read a five star book and it’s so damn good I can’t wait until my end of the year review blog to share it with ya’ll. The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors by Lama Rod Owens is such a book.
Let me tell you, every chapter held something that resonated with me. The New Saints speaks exactly where I am at the moment. I haven’t been this met by a dharma text since I read The Way of Tenderness by Osho Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, nor as inclined to re-read and constantly reference a dharma text since reading No Time To Lose, Pema Chödrön’s commentary on the Bodhicaryāvatāra.
Lama Rod’s way of teaching the dharma has appealed to me since I first encountered his voice in Radical Dharma: Talking race, love and liberation, a book he co-authored with Rev. angel Kyodo williams and Dr. Jasmine Syedullah. He speaks the dharma as I understand it: queer, engaged, and earthy. Almost immediately after finishing Radical Dharma, I reached out to him to be on Everything is Workable, the podcast I was producing at the time, and he graciously agreed. I would say I have loosely been a student of his ever since that conversation, but it became a bit more formal when 2020 brought the pandemic and I connected with Bhumisparsha,1 a community he co-founded with Lama Justin von Bujdoss.
The accessible time of lock-down made it possible for me to attend many of Lama Rod’s talks and offerings via online spaces. Each time I attended a talk, it brought a new depth and richness to my practice. Because of Lama Rod I developed a formal ancestor practice, which in turn has fed into my thangka work and is core to my depiction of Avalokiteshvara.
When this new book came out, I kind of knew it was going to be a good fit, but I did not expect it to connect to my heart-mind as intensely and profoundly as it did. With The New Saints, Owens offers a text that is vulnerable, authentic, and powerful. It is a call to the Buddha-nature of all of us, a reminder of our capacity to wake up, and guidance on how to figure out what our work is in order to do so.
I have been moved (and continue to be moved) by so much in this book, but for this review I want to focus on three specific things: The Four Sweet Liberations, The prayer to the divine, and the Spiritual Practices for Divesting Oneself of Patriarchy for Men.
The Four Sweet Liberations:
For my trans and queer kin, this chapter is for you. This gorgeous offering taps into the rich, divine beauty of queerness and all we have to offer the world. Owens lists the Four Sweet Liberations as leisure (you deserve to rest and protect your peace), beauty (be moved by the sublime), opulence (enrich yourself with the connection you have to and for love, kindness, compassion, intimacy, and belonging), and pleasure (embrace your desire for liberation, and the desire for the other three sweet liberations).
These liberations touch on so many of the aspects of joy and connection I have found in queer community. They uplift the power and sacredness of queer people. Reading about them, and doing the practice he offers around them, is deeply affirming.
A prayer to the divine:
Just before sitting down to write this review I read the prayer on page 149 for what is probably the fifteenth time since I first came to it. It was the first time I’ve been able to get through the whole thing without crying.
This prayer connects me to a deep tenderness for the broken-heartedness, rage and grief I feel in the face of genocide, irreversible climate change, late-stage Capitalism, increased police militarization, and conservative attacks on trans lives and the bodily autonomy of trans people and cis women. Certain lines really stand out (emphasis in the second quote is mine):
“I evoke all those beings and sources of refuge who have ever loved me to come sit with my because it is now that I feel most alone.”
“To all those I have evoked, I offer my grief and what seems like my perpetual mourning in this body. I offer my fear, my own numbness, my inability to dream beyond my shutting down. Most of all, I offer my fatigue. I am tired.”
“I pray that I evolve past my belief that my pain is mine alone to carry.”
What I love the most about this prayer is that I don’t think it really matters what your system of belief is—whether you are Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, atheist, or have a non-religious spiritual system, you can use it. It calls on ancestors and the earth and ‘divine beings’, and who those are is really up to you. The point of it is to acknowledge the fundamental loneliness of being human at the same time reminding us that we are never truly alone.
Spiritual Practices for Divesting Oneself of Patriarchy for Men
When I interviewed Lama Rod for Everything is Workable, much of our conversation was about his spiritual practice of divesting from patriarchy as a cisgender man. The depth and breadth of his ongoing commitment to this practice shows in the chapter he has written on seeing the carceral state of patriarchy and how men can work to dismantle it.
Because I knew the chapter wasn’t for me, I approached it with an intellectual curiosity. I did not expect to be as moved as I was. This chapter broke me open, particularly the practices at the end. Reading each one in turn, my heart ached for the men in my life. I thought of cis men who have told me they just want to feel pretty or be seen as beautiful and the trans men who have shared how fast patriarchy works to recruit them as soon as they have realised they are men. My heart broke for the ways little boys are forced to reject all emotions that aren’t coded as aggressive and dominant—shamed for crying, for loving, for showing compassion. I felt abiding compassion for how effortful a man must be to resist patriarchy and restrictive notions of masculinity.
I am so grateful to Lama Rod for the work he does to dismantle patriarchy in his own heart and mind, and that he shares this in a way that other men can access and learn from. My sincerest wish is that as many men as possible are able to find this book and engage with the practices he has to offer.
When I give a book a five star rating, it generally means I think almost anyone would benefit from reading it. In the case of The New Saints, however, I specifically want to offer it as a suggestion for those fighting against injustice, who want to protect the trans community, guarantee bodily autonomy, and see an end to white supremacist, colonialist, and Capitalist violence. It will be of particular benefit to those who are feeling fatigue in the face of the ongoing genocides happening globally.
This is, of course, just a taste of what I connected with in The New Saints. There was so much more there and I am sure I will find more as I revisit the text in the coming weeks, months, and years. It is a book that offers kindling to hope and the possibility of realising imagined futures where all beings thrive.
May it be of benefit.
Kait
Tips on getting a copy of this book:
I know that Amazon is often the most affordable way to get books, which is, of course, by design. If you can afford to pay more, please consider ordering a copy from a small local-to-you bookstore. You can use Bookshop.org to find a local retailer, or to order from a local retailer directly.
Alternatively, get it out of the library! And if your library doesn’t have it, put in a request for them to carry it.
Whether supporting an independent bookstore or your library, you are doing social good! Think of both as activism, because they totally are. :D
Bhumisparsha is the Earth witness or ground-touching mudra.