Conversations with Buddha: A Fictional Dialogue Based on Biographical Facts

Written by Joan Duncan Oliver

Narrated by Pamela Almand, Manish Dongardive and Toni Frutin

Imagined by one of the world's leading experts on Buddhism, this fictionalised conversation presents the essential biography of its famously wise founder.

A relaxed chat with the Buddha tells us what he thought about impermanence, karma, mindfulness, compassion, love, and everything else that leads us toward a true understanding of ourselves and the cosmos.

We know him as the Buddha, the "Awakened One". Born Siddhartha Gautama 2,500 years ago in northern India, he became one of the world's greatest spiritual leaders. He suffered as we do, then by his own efforts found the key to liberation from the bonds of desire, hatred and ignorance. As Westerners living in relative prosperity, we can identify with this man who had it all - love, success, money, talent, privilege - but set these things aside to search for something deeper and more enduring. This book presents an account of the Buddha's life followed by a series of plausible and illuminating but imagined conversations, which probe all aspects of his philosophy for living. The insights he conveys here offer us practical wisdom for a better life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vibrance Press
• Release date: Nov 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9781624613845

Joan Duncan Oliver

JOAN DUNCAN OLIVER is a contributing editor at Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in such publications as The New York Times, O: the Oprah Magazine, Health, Shambhala Sun, and The Best Buddhist Writing 2005. Her books include Happiness, Good Karma, Coffee with the Buddha, The Meaning of Nice, and Commit to Sit, an anthology of articles from Tricycle. A Buddhist practitioner for 40 years, she has studied with teachers from the Zen, Vipassana, and Tibetan Buddhist traditions, and from Bön, the indigenous religion of Tibet.