The Gate of Tears

<b>The Gate of Tears: Sadness and the Spiritual Path</b> explores the counter-intuitive insight that sadness and joy are not opposites - and that human capacities often suppressed or rejected can instead be gateways to deep joy creativity and liberation. Its eighty-two short poetic sometimes epigrammatic chapters draw on contemplative traditions art even pop songs. They are reflections on the path of surrender alchemy and the sacred.<p><p>Written over a ten year period and completed in the mourning period after the death of the author's mother <b>The Gate of Tears</b> is not a self-help book. If anything it is a self-helpless book discovering a happiness deeper than transitory joys that emerges precisely when the resistance to sadness is released. As the contemporary Buddhist teacher Lama Surya Das says in his foreword to the book the only thing that prevents happiness is searching for it.<p><p><b>The Gate of Tears</b> draws on Jay Michaelson's fifteen years as a student and now a teacher of Buddhist and Jewish contemplative paths. Michaelson is a rabbi and holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Thought and has taught Jewish mysticism in and outside the academic world. Yet he is also a longtime teacher of insight meditation in Western Buddhist and secular mindfulness contexts who has sat many months-long silent meditation retreats. With his usual blend of erudition and accessibility Michaelson weaves together Hasidic tales and Dharma teachings Leonard Cohen and Langston Hughes.The Gate of Tears is not a New Age book with easy answers; it is infused with a contemporary sensibility skepticism and humor.<p><p>All of us if we are to be fully human experience pain. The Gate of Tears is about how the embrace of that experience ennobles empowers and liberates us.<p><p><i>Advance Praise</i><p><p>Jay Michaelson's incisive and exquisitely profound insights into our human condition come in full force in <i>The Gate of Tears</i>. Here we have an antidote to mindless feel-good ideology and gentle instructions in attending to the fullness of our experience so we see the value in the downs not just the ups. Our inner world will never seem the same.<br>- Daniel Goleman author of <i>Emotional Intelligence</i><p><p><i>The Gate of Tears</i> is a beautifully written transformative book. Jay Michaelson guides us instead of denying avoiding explaining away or resisting sadness to go right into the heart of it. There we find open space true love of life and perhaps most redeeming one another.<br>- Sharon Salzberg author of <i>Lovingkindness</i><p><p>Jay Michaelson's writing is always bracing and brave but <i>The Gate of Tears</i> has particular power. He guides us to explore - and accept - the truth of what he calls ordinary sadness and stop looking for happiness so that we might actually find it. Every chapter made me feel as if he was seeing me personally. This book will change your perspective and ease your load.<br>- Abigail Pogrebin author of <i>Stars of David</i><p><p><i>About the Author</i><p><p>Dr. Jay Michaelson is the author of six books including <i>Evolving Dharma: Meditation Buddhism and the Next Generation of Enlightenment</i> (North Atlantic 2013) and the bestselling <i>God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality</i> (Beacon 2011) as well as over 300 articles in The Daily Beast Atlantic Tricycle the Forward and other publications.