Thanks for the clarity and honesty Venerable. Your positive and constructive work in the face of all this is an inspiration!
There was a problem. We stopped it as best we could, and then we moved on. The people who created the problem don’t get to complain that we stopped them the wrong way. Especially not when they are still doing it!
It’s unbelievable, really, just astonishing.
They are still acting as commercial agents promoting the work. The recommended link at “indiebound” starts out, “The First Free Women, Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns”.
Anandabodhi’s blurb on that page still says,
as Rohini says in her poem, ‘then you will know the true welcome that is the very essence of the Path.’
I pointed this out directly to Ayya months ago:
But Rohini says no such thing . These are the words of Matty Weingast’s imagination, not Rohinī Therī’s awakened wisdom.
She never replied to me, and her false statements about the words of the ancient nuns are still not only published, but recommended on their website.
The blurbs are still full of this kind of thing.
- the words of these liberated women
- these women forged ahead with the winds of the Dharma at their backs
- These are fresh, powerful, poetic translations that bring our ancient wise women to life
- This inspiringly poetic translation of timeless wisdom
- These renditions of the enlightenment songs of the early Buddhist nuns
- rarely heard female voices
- Though the voices are distinctly female
- An amazing rebirth of the Therigatha
- The voices of the first bhikkhunis
- the voices of these awakened Buddhist women can be heard
- strong, clear, feminine voices
- I could feel these women all around me and was completely immersed in the courageous mystery of the ancients
- I was walking the path of practice right beside these women. …These poems ring with authenticity and timelessness
- a treasure trove of women’s voices
- Weingast’s fresh rendering of these ancient words
- These are women who sought out enlightenment long before it was safe to utter ‘women’ and ‘liberation’ in the same sentence, yet Weingast has given voice to them
On the Barnes and Noble site also linked and promoted on the Aloka website, we find:
The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns
- Weingast (Awake at the Bedside) invites readers to find liberation in the affecting verse of the Therigatha, a collection of brief poems by Buddhist nuns
And on the official Shambhala page itself, we find the some the same, some revised blurbs:
- the teachings of these liberated women are transmitted across centuries
- Weingast was so inspired by these poems that he freely rendered them in English from the original Pali
- Weingast’s fresh rendering of these ancient words
- These are women who sought out enlightenment long before it was safe to utter ‘women’ and ‘liberation’ in the same sentence, yet Weingast has given voice to them
- Though the voices are distinctly female
- An amazing rebirth of the Therigatha
- The voices of the first bhikkhunis in this contemporary rendering based on the Therigatha are vulnerable, tenacious, and ardent
- These are fresh, powerful, poetic translations
- the voices of these awakened Buddhist women can be heard with freshness and clarity
- Hearing the awakened heart expressed in such distinctive strong, clear, feminine voices
It’s just unconscionable.