Timber Hawkeye

Timber Hawkeye (born Tomer Gal, July 19, 1977), is an Israeli-born citizen and resident of the United States, best known as the author of Buddhist Boot Camp (HarperCollins Publishers, 2013), and of his memoir: Faithfully Religionless (Hawkeye Publishers, 2016). Drawing from his studies and experience through a Kagyu lineage, as well as his stay in Shunryu Suzuki's Sōtō Zen Monastery (Tassajara Zen Mountain Center) in California and Aitken Roshi's lay-practitioners' temple in Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii), his writing, interviews and public talks offer a secular and non-sectarian approach to being at peace with the world, both within and around us. Hawkeye does not consider himself a teacher or master of anything or anyone, but rather a translator of ancient wisdom into a language that people today can go beyond understanding to actually implementing into their daily lives. His intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich and inspire readers to contemplate how they contribute to their own suffering, so that they can create healthier behavior patterns of inner peace despite external conflict, and looking at life through the lens of gratitude and abundance, not lack. "By no longer identifying as victims of our past," Timber says, "we are empowered to change our future." 2Early life Hawkeye was born Tomer Gal in Bat Yam, and raised in Katzrin, a small town in the Golan Heights of Israel, until he moved with his parents and older sister to San Francisco at the age of 13. He was introduced to books by Eknath Easwaran at 16, and that's what sparked his interest in mindfulness and meditation. Hawkeye describes his teenage years and early twenties as an ongoing attempt to embody what the media portrayed as the definition of being "American" and "Successful." He started out as a paperboy at 14 delivering the San Francisco Examiner in the Sunset District, got his start in Corporate America during his senior year of high school when he worked for State Compensation Insurance Fund, and many office jobs after that (from the California State University, Stanislaus Foundation Department his first year of college, to paralegal jobs at law firms around the Bay Area and later in Seattle, Washington, focusing mainly on commercial real estate. 2Transformation In his books, interviews and public talks, Hawkeye mentions a couple of key moments that changed the trajectory of his life: When he moved from San Francisco, CA to Seattle, WA, he accepted a job at a law firm that offered him 50% of the annual salary he received in California, but he loved Seattle so much and found himself twice as happy in the Pacific Northwest as he had been in Northern California. At that moment he realized that how happy he is has nothing to do with how much money he makes (despite the media constantly telling us otherwise). After five years of working at the same law firm in Seattle, another paralegal at the firm was celebrating her 30-year anniversary, and Hawkeye says the fact that she was celebrating 30 years in a cubicle terrified him, as it had already been a total of ten years for him in California and Washingto