Review: “A Fierce Heart”

We review “A Fierce Heart: Finding Strength, Courage, and Wisdom in Any Moment” by Spring Washam.

Andrea Miller19 December 2017

A Fierce Heart

Finding Strength, Courage, and Wisdom in Any Moment

By Spring Washam
Parallax Press, 2017; 208 pp., $16.95 (paper)

In A Fierce Heart, dharma teacher Spring Washam offers teachings and stories in order to awaken us to the calling of our own hearts and to empower us to live fully and freely. Washam, a core teacher at East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, has been nourished by a wide range of spiritual traditions, and this is made clear in the anecdotes that she tells about her own spiritual journey. At one point in her life, for instance, she spent a year studying the shamanic tradition in Peru, where she climbed a mountain with a pair of young shamans and learned her own strength. At another time, she went on a pilgrimage to India and sweated through 1,008 prostrations under the Bodhi tree until she deeply understood that she was bowing to something that could never be destroyed—the innate goodness that she and all of us possess. The foreword of A Fierce Heart is by Washam’s teacher, Jack Kornfield.

Andrea Miller

Andrea Miller

Andrea Miller is the deputy editor of Lion’s Roar magazine. She’s the author of Awakening My Heart: Essays, Articles, and Interviews on the Buddhist Life, as well as the picture book The Day the Buddha Woke Up.