Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation through Anger, by Lama Rod Owens

In this seminar-style conversation, we will read and discuss Lama Rod Owens’ Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger. Lama Rod is a southern, black, queer, Tibetan Buddhist teacher who also incorporates spiritual traditions from his upbringing to inform his understanding of liberation. In this highly accessible book, he discusses the challenges we face when we encounter strong emotions on our spiritual journeys, and the ways these emotions can be used to support the path to liberation. Through a Buddhist lens, his work questions the (mis)understandings of how love and rage can impact spiritual practice, and the importance of understanding the source of these feelings. He queries how we balance the spiritual and religious practices that improve our lives, with the notion that true “liberation” can only be achieved once all are free. How can strong emotions be liberatory when they are approached as a catalyst for change? Our hope is that this innovative and timely book will spark a conversation about how difficult emotions influence our spiritual lives, our religious identities, and our social action. Books will be distributed to interested parties as soon as the MLK Day offerings go live.

Presenters: Alison Melnick Dyer Associate Professor of Religious Studies; Halla Attallah, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies; Cynthia Baker, Professor of Religious Studies; Anderson Moss-Weaver, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies

Sponsor: Department of Religious Studies

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