This fascinating collection by Buddhist writer Francesca Hampton explores modern situations in both India and America through the prism of Tibetan Buddhist teachings. From a lonely paddle boarder contemplating suicide on the dark Pacific, to a wayward Tibetan lama on a Greyhound bus, to a journalist who reconnects with a journey begun in a previous life in an interview with the Dalai Lama, it is a welcome addition to the emerging genre of Buddhist fiction.
Buddha on a Midnight Sea: Short Stories, Francesca Hampton, Booklocker.com Inc., Paperback, 154 pages, $19.95
Francesca Hampton: What aspects of any life most define it? For me I think it was a series of long journeys in my twenties and thirties. While I had traveled locally, as a youth and teen, sailing to the Channel Islands off Los Angeles and taking long road trips as far as Canada and central Mexico, when I was grown, I took off on my own, crossing and recrossing Asia and Europe. With a degree in world history from UCLA, and a bohemian father who had raised me to love classical music, good conversation, natural science and outdoor adventure, I explored the world - at least a large slice of it - to find out what it really was outside of a book or movie. I found myself labelled a "traveler" one of the wave of young westerners with backpacks who were exploring Asia in the 1970's. In the course of those journeys, some of us had the good fortune to intersect another wave of migration - Tibetan lamas fleeing the destruction in their once "forbidden" homeland, urgent to pass on as much as they could of their wealth of Buddhist teachings to anyone ready to receive them. In this way, the exploration of Mahayana Buddhism became the second defining theme of my life. At home in Santa Cruz, California I have continued those early explorations in quieter form, as well as a newer interest in environmental science. I helped establish the Buddhist center Vajrapani Institute, and became a photographer as well as a writer. My day job? I have made my living primarily as an English teacher to new immigrants at the local college and adult school and more recently as a teacher of digital photography.
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CONTENTS: Buddha on a Midnight Sea
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| Author's Preface |
ix |
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| Buddha on a Midnight Sea |
1
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| Teachers |
17 |
| The Inner and Outer Secret Journeys of Mary Sullivan |
33 |
| Greyhound Bodhisattva |
65 |
| In the City of the Queen of Angels |
87 |
| Landing Light |
123 |
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| About the Author |
135 |
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