As you may know, the content in this Buddhism For All series is also published in a book of the same title. This Acknowledgement below is the acknowledgement chapter from the book.
Meng
First and foremost, Soryu and I would like to thank the Buddha, the most important person in our lives and, possibly, the most important person in history. He gave us the most valuable gift of all: the gift of Dharma. And, in his great genius, he gave us the Dharma in a form that is understandable, accessible and practicable for all of us.
All that is good in me, I owe to the Buddha. The Buddha is my most beloved father and teacher. He has always been, and he will always be. There is not a single day where I’m not immensely grateful to the Buddha. I aspire for this gratitude to grow, from something I experience every day, to something I experience every living moment. Thank you, beloved old man.
I vow to dedicate my life in service to Buddha and Dharma. I hope that co-authoring this book constitutes a partial fulfillment of my vow. I also hope that this work will benefit many millions. When I die, I hope that I may finally feel worthy of being in the shadow of the Buddha.
Soryu and I are grateful to the countless generations of masters who passed down the teaching and the discipline taught by the Buddha, most notably the Venerables Mahā Kassapa, Ānanda, and Upāli.
We are very grateful to and very touched by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama for giving his personal blessing to us and to this book. More than anybody alive today, His Holiness is an inspiration who shows me what it is like to be a good practicing Buddhist in service to the world. Even more impactful for me are his love and hugs. Mere words cannot express how much his personal blessing means to the both of us.
I want to express my personal gratitude to Shodo Harada Roshi. I haven’t met him, but he is Soryu’s main teacher, and without Harada Roshi, there would be no Soryu, and without Soryu, there would be no book. Of course, it goes without saying, I’m enormously grateful to my teacher, brother, and friend, Soryu Forall. Without him, I would never have been able to write this book.
In the actual authoring of this book, the most important person we need to thank is Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi. He is one of the greatest scholars of early Buddhism of our time, and the author of the most carefully researched and the most authoritative translation of the Nikāyas into English. We are immensely grateful that he took the time and trouble to review the manuscript. We know how busy he was, and that he was not necessarily in the best of physical health, and still, he did this for us. After two rounds of review, Bhikkhu Bodhi told us, “I thought you did a good job in representing the teachings of early Buddhism.” Woah. I was gleefully excited to hear that. I felt like I was back in college, having a professor who was world-renowned but who was so strict that merely getting a passing grade from him would be a significant achievement, and then finding that he gave me an “A”. Happiness.
We are also grateful to other Buddhist teachers who reviewed the early manuscript, and who pointed out places where changes were needed and/or gave us early encouragement when the work seemed unbearably daunting. Among them are: Venerables Sujato, Anālayo, and Buddharakkhita; Lamas Tenzin Choesang, Barry Kerzin and Thubten Damcho; Roshi Joan Halifax and Misan Sunim; and Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman.
We are grateful to the team for helping us author and publish this book. At the top of that list is our editorial consultant Koh Kai Xin. To put it simply, Soryu and I could not have done the work this well without her. We are also grateful to our wonderfully talented main illustrator Colin Goh, and guest illustrators Natalie Tsang, and Angeleen Tan, and our publishing team, especially Lisa Zuniga, Ralph Fowler, Tanya Fox, Bianca Pahl, Rebecca Lown, Hal Clifford, and Mark Chait.
Many friends reviewed the early manuscript (some multiple times) and gave us a lot of helpful advice and early encouragement. They include Tom Duterme, HueAnh Nguyen, Rich Hua, Navin Amarasuriya, Kimiko Bokura, You Jungeun, Moses Mohan, Ng Yi Xian, Dawn Engle, Kate Cumbo, Brandi Brown, Chang Jieun, Angela Ho, and Stephanie Tade.
We are grateful to all our friends who are public figures who took the time to read the manuscript and generously gave us their endorsements. Their names are listed in the Praises section. There are two whom I’d like to specifically point out, Yaacob Ibrahim and Father Laurence Freeman, because I have a story to share. Yaacob was a prominent Muslim leader in Singapore. In fact, he was the Minister-in-Charge of Muslim Affairs. Yaacob and I are dear friends. When he wanted to seriously learn meditation, he reached out to me. I was, however, based in the United States, so I suggested to him a meditation teacher whom I love and trust and who visited Singapore more often than I did, and that was Father Laurence Freeman. They both said yes to that arrangement. I later reflected on it and realized how big of a deal it actually was. A prominent Muslim leader asked a prominent Buddhist for spiritual advice, and that prominent Buddhist recommended a prominent Christian leader, and all three of them treated it as if it was the most natural thing in the world. This, my friends, is the power of the practice. It brings peace and harmony to the world. If global religious harmony ever happens in my lifetime, and I get the honor to write about it, this will be the opening story.
Finally, I’d like to give thanks to my family. My parents have done so much for me that even if I carry them on my back for one hundred years, I cannot fully repay them for their kindness. My only hope of ever repaying them is with the gift of Dharma, and I hope this book serves as an adequate downpayment. I’m also grateful to my wife Cindy and daughter Angel for continuing to keep this useless old man at home. I don’t know why they still do, it must be because of my stunning good looks.
To all of you whom I owe a debt of gratitude to, let me repay you partially with this poem, mostly because it costs me nothing, and also because I did it in all my other books and nobody complained.
Let’s go, vamanos.
Beyond the limited mind.
Everybody let’s go.
Welcome to enlightenment!
(In original Sanskrit: Gate, gate. Paragate. Parasamgate. Bodhi svaha!)
Soryu
We pay homage to the Buddha with reverence and gratitude. Reverence because he found the way to enlightenment beyond form, preference, information, intelligence, and consciousness. Gratitude because he taught that way right within form, preference, information, intelligence and consciousness.
We pay homage to the Dharma with reverence and gratitude. Reverence because it is not restricted to space and time. Gratitude because it is everywhere, always relevant to this place and this moment, so we can offer our lives to it.
We pay homage to the Sangha of the enlightened ones, with reverence and gratitude. Reverence because they have kept the light of the Buddha Dharma alive and clear day after day, despite the hindrances and obstacles of the world. Gratitude because we can strive to join them in their exalted work as the incomparable field of blessings for the world.
Thank you to my teachers, first and foremost Taigen Shodo Harada Roshi, who allowed me to believe in the truth. And Bhante Bodhidhamma, who allowed me to believe in myself. And Doryu Zenji, Thierry Bonnabesse, Jake Agna, Jim Bruchac, Tom Cross, and Sumi Loundon. And Peace Pilgrim, who had passed away before I heard of her, but who allowed me to believe that I could walk a different path. And Miss Grace, my guidance counselor, who encouraged me to be more than I could see.
Thank you to all those I have trained with over the years. It is good to walk a real path with real people in real circumstances. Relationships are where this gets real. Each relationship is sacred.
Thank you to my friend and brother Meng, whose dedication to the Dharma has been even more important for this book than his writing of most of this book. Thank you for helping me to better express my training with your brilliant words. And most important, thank you for being a true friend throughout.
As Meng said, we are grateful to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama for giving his personal blessing to us and to this book. This was the moment I knew we had done what we set out to do when we first envisioned this way of offering the Dharma to the world.
And finally, thank you to my parents, who taught me to care, to sacrifice for what’s right, to maintain integrity no matter what my mind or anyone else’s might be saying, to do what must be done even if it’s not perfect, and to give my life to the world.
Thank you for this breath.
