Synopses & Reviews
Jan Willis is not Baptist or Buddhist. She is simply both. Dreaming Me is the story of her life, from growing up a Baptist in the segregated South, dealing with racism in an Ivy League college, and becoming involved with the Black Panther Party to traveling to a Tibetan Buddhist monastery. It was upon meeting the great teacher Lama Yeshe that she found a way to understand both herself and the complicated world around her, a way to find peace. Willis went on to become a professor of religion at Wesleyan and is also an internationally recognized educator and innovator. Dreaming Me is the inspiring story of her spiritual journey of transformation.
Review
"Jan Willis's book is a compelling, beautiful, and informative guide for anyone interested in transformation. She skillfully weaves together her personal story and the Buddha's teaching, evoking the reality of walking a path to liberation."
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"A truly uplifting book of personal empowerment and the triumph of human heart. This remarkable book touches upon themes that every genuine pilgrim - especially those who seek to integrate their cultural and religious heritage with newfound personal spiritual path - must address at some point in their journey."
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"Willis delivers a gripping, intimate account of her spiritual journey that will move anyone who is compelled by the examined life."
Review
"Destined for the same shelf as Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies and Kathleen Norris's The Cloister Walk and Amazing Grace, this is a powerful memoir of a "Baptist Buddhist" who writes with courage, compassion, and forgiveness. This searching memoir is recommended for all collections."
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"Willis is a philosopher with a bold agenda."
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"Jan Willis's honest, lucid, mindful, and heartful account of her amazing life thus far, its struggles and woundings, its triumphs and joys, is certainly the roar of a lioness of truth-awakening, empowering, inspiring! Listen to it with pride and pleasure!"
Review
"Willis writes frankly about family, race, spirituality, and finding grace among life's most difficult challenges. Dreaming Me is more honest and fascinating than anything I've read in a long time."
Review
"Intensely felt...highly personal...A moving story that aims to reconcile the experiences of faith and racism."
Synopsis
Jan Willis is not Baptist or Buddhist. She is simply both. Dreaming Me is the story of her life, as a child growing up in the Jim Crow South, dealing with racism in an Ivy League college, and becoming involved with the Black Panther Party. But it wasn't until meeting Lama Yeshe, a Tibetan Buddhist monk living in the mountains of Nepal, that she realized who the real Jan Willis was, and how to make the most of the life she was living.
About the Author
Jan Willis is Professor Emerita of Religion at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Born in Docena, Alabama, in 1948 and profoundly affected by the Civil Rights movement, she majored in philosophy at Cornell University and met Buddhism while traveling in Asia in the 1970s. She went on to earn her PhD in Buddhist Studies at Columbia University and has studied with Tibetan Buddhists in India, Nepal, Switzerland, and the U.S. for over four decades. The author of several books and numerous articles and essays on Buddhist philosophy and history, meditation, women and Buddhism and Buddhism and race, her memoir Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist, and Buddhist was first published in 2001. In December of 2000, Time named Willis one of six "spiritual innovators for the new millennium." In 2003, she was a recipient of Wesleyan University's Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching. In September of 2005, Newsweek's "Spirituality in America" issue included a profile of her and, in its May 2007 edition, Ebony magazine named Willis one of its "Power 150" most influential African Americans.