Zen teacher and scholar Taigen Dan Leighton takes us through the ages to meet the people who have shaped history and society with their compassion and wisdom. Faces of Compassion emphasizes the universality of spiritual ideals, and the power each of us has to change our world.

Praise & Reviews "In his wonderful book FACES OF COMPASSION, Taigen Dan Leighton presents seven principal bodhisattva archetypes and describes their place in the history of Buddhism and their relevance to contemporary life. He presents these as models of awakened Buddha-nature from which we can learn as we find our own way to awakening. Leighton makes them more real and relevant for our modern world by discussing contemporary Westerners who he considers exemplary of the archetypes, including not only the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh, but Bob Dylan, Muhammad Ali, Gloria Steinem, [and others]. His diverse examples illustrate that bodhisattva practice is a fundamental human path not limited to Buddhists. The book animates the history of Buddhism and offers insight into human nature and contemporary culture."—Turning Wheel "What Leighton offers is the living tradition of Mahayana Buddhism: diverse, mysterious, vibrant, real. This is of course exactly what more academic works so often fail to offer and what makes this book so valuable. I recommend FACES OF COMPASSION to anyone interested in Mahayana practice, and I mean that to include both practitioners and scholars. I learned much from the book and use it repeatedly for reference. Exceptionally reliable, FACES OF COMPASSION is an informative and, finally, transformative work."—Franz Metcalf, in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics "Edifying and imaginative. Perhaps the most innovative and dramatic aspect of the book is the way Leighton discusses modern exemplars if the seven bodhisattva archetypes, including Bob Dylan, Margaret Mead, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., Albert Schweitzer, Tony Morrison, Gary Snyder, and Thich Nhat Hanh. ...A modern spiritual classic."—Spirituality and Health "When we consider the history of the bodhisattva archetypes, we touch the whole and long history of Buddhism. We also touch the present moment, and the suffering of all beings in the world today. And we are invited to consider the future and how we must live, that we and all beings may awaken from this rough dream of our present world to a world that is sane and kinder. Faces of Compassion is a wonderful resource and source of guidance and teaching. I am very grateful to Taigen Leighton for his careful research and inimitable spirit. Both make this important work an invaluable companion to our lives."—Joan Halifax Roshi, Head Teacher, Upaya Institute "Buddhist ideals embodied in flesh-and-blood people we can love, admire, and emulate-a sparkler among contemporary Buddhist writings."—Brother David Steindl-Rast, O.S.B., author of Gratefulness the Heart of Prayer "The times today call for a deeper understanding of human nature and the causes of evil and its antithesis: compassion and understanding. This book provides one way to achieve such understanding: an analogical means to consider classic bodhisattva archetypes in relation to contemporary life. Leighton draws deeply, explaining the various archetypes while he uses famous historical and contemporary personages, such as Francis of Assisi, Mohammed Ali, Mother Teresa, Daniel Elsberg, James Joyce, and Albert Einstein to exemplify how the bodhisattva ideals translate into Western models. The lay reader will take from the book an appreciation for the complexity of Buddhist doctrine as well as a sense that bodhisattvas may well be living amongst us."—Foreword magazine "Vigorous and inspiring, Faces of Compassion guides the reader into the awakening life within our contemporary world. An informative, useful, exhilarating work."—Jane Hirshfield, author of Women in Praise of the Sacred "A clear-as-a-bell introduction to Buddhist thought."—Zoketsu Norman Fischer, Senior Dharma Teacher of San Francisco Zen Center and author of Benedict's Dharma "Taigen Dan Leighton's tour-de-force gently introduces us to the values and personalities of such ancient Buddhist bodhisattva archetypes as Manjusri, Avaloketesvara, Samantabhadra, Jizo, Maitreya, and Vimalakirti. More than a scholarly catalogue of archetypal heroic ideals, Faces of Compassionÿ also finds their expression in our contemporary life, in lives which reflect aspects of these inspiring ideals. To meet the bodhisattvas is to embrace more fully our own humanity, and our ultimate capacity for courage, devotion, compassion. and transcendent wisdom. Taigen Dan Leighton has lovingly illumined still another dimension of the human condition."—John Daishin Buksbazen, author of Zen Meditation in Plain English "Teachers who have found the first edition of this book useful in the classroom will be grateful to Wisdom Publications for making this new version available. Leighton originally wrote Bodhisattva Archetypes: Classic Buddhist Guides to Awakening and Their Modern Expression to suggest how the ideals represented by the various bodhisattva figures in (especially) East Asian Buddhist traditions were yet meaningful for late modern and postmodern Westerners at the end of the twentieth century. The entire text of Bodhisattva Archetypes is preserved in Faces of Compassion, but has been slightly revised and expanded in a few places. [ . . . ] The book is remarkable in the way that it opens up the beliefs and practices of Mahayana Buddhism to comparativists whose strengths are in another religious tradition."—Journal of Buddhist Ethics

Taigen Dan Leighton, Author Taigen Dan Leighton is a SotoZen priest and Dharma successor in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and the San Francisco Zen Center. Leighton began formal Soto practice in 1975 at the New York Zen Center with Kando Nakajima Roshi and graduated in East Asian Studies from Columbia College. He is author of Faces of Compassion and Visions of Awakening Space and Time: Dogen and the Lotus Sutra and is co-translator and editor of several Zen texts, including Cultivating the Empty Field, as well as The Wholehearted Way and Dogen's Pure Standards for the Zen Community, both translated together with Shohaku Okumura. He currently teaches at the Institute of Buddhist Studies of the Berkeley Graduate Theological Union and leads the Ancient Dragon Zen Gate meditation group in Chicago. Joan Halifax, Foreword Joan Halifax, Ph.D. is a Buddhist teacher and an anthropologist. Her books include Simplicity in the Complex: A Buddhist Life in America and Being with Dying. She is the founder of the Upaya Institute in Santa Fe, NM, where she now practices, teaches, and works. She is a Founding Teacher in the Zen Peacemaker Order of Roshi Bernie Glassman and the late Sensei Jishu Holmes, and is a Soto Priest and teacher.