Acknowledgments

 

 

I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my teachers over the years, both spiritual and intellectual. I thank the many teachers at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Northern California, who instructed me in the Dharma, and especially Phillip Moffitt, whose wisdom over the past twenty years has informed my daily life as well as my writing. I am also grateful for the scholars and teachers whose work has inspired and informed me about the life and times of Yasodhara. (These include Karen Armstrong, Bhikkhu Ñanamoli, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Richard Gombrich, and many others.)

For helping me learn the craft of fiction, I thank my mentor James Frey, a great taskmaster as well as a good friend. I owe an equal debt to my critique group—Dorothy Edwards, Heather King, Max Tomlinson, and Eric Seder—for their incisive comments and the overall encouragement they gave me while writing this novel. I also am grateful to Jim Frey’s many students who helped me hone my skills during workshops over the years. Jan Gurley, thank you so much for reading my first draft. I also want to thank my agent, Arnie Kotler, for guiding me through the publication process, as well as for his excellent editing of my final draft.

Thanks also to Paul Cohen, founder of Monkfish Book Publishing Company, for organizing his talented staff to produce Bride of the Buddha: Susan Piperato for her meticulous final edits, Lisa Carta for her beautiful cover design, and Colin Rolfe for his overall creation of an elegant final product. And finally, I thank LuAnn Ostergaard for her original painting, which Lisa used to such great effect.

Most of all, I am grateful to my wonderful husband, Bill Coffin, without whose support—emotional, financial, and technical—this book never would have been possible.