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Approximately four million Americans claim to be Buddhist. Moreover, hundreds of thousands of Americans of various faiths read about Buddhism, are interested in its philosophical tenets, or fashionably view themselves as Buddhists. They’re part of what’s been described as the fastest growing religious movement in America: a large group of people dissatisfied with traditional religious offerings and thirsty for an approach to spirituality grounded in logic and consistent with scientific knowledge.

As an 11-year-old child, Zen Buddhist teacher Larry Ward was shot at by the police for playing baseball in the wrong spot. As an adult, he experienced the trauma of having his home firebombed by racists. At Plum Village Monastery in France—the home in exile of his teacher, Vietnamese peace activist and Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh—Dr. Ward found a way to heal. In these short reflective essays, he offers his insights on the effects of racial constructs and answers the question: How do we free ourselves from our repeated cycles of anger, denial, bitterness, pain, fear, violence?

We are face to face with this great world, and our relations to it are manifold. One of these is the necessity we have to live, to till the soil, to gather food, to clothe ourselves, to get materials from nature. We are always making things that will satisfy our needs, always in touch with this great world through hunger and thirst. Then, we have our mind; and our mind seeks its own food. It must find out reason in things, faced with a multiplicity of facts, and bewildered when it cannot find one unifying principle which simplifies the heterogeneity of things.