Category: buddhism
- Dogen for the MassesThe Zen Master’s Dance: A Guide to Understanding Dogen and Who You Are in the Universe by Jundo Cohen. Wisdom Publications. 200 pp. I’ve heard the name Jundo Cohen in Zen circles for years, and associated him with his teacher, Gudo Nishijima. Some time ago, I read a book that the two of them co-authored, A ...Read more
- Unfinished LivesLincoln in the Bardo a novel by George Saunders. Random House. 343 pp. ***** I haven’t been a fan of George Saunders’ short stories. I read Tenth of December with admiration but without much pleasure. The stories seemed clever and aesthetically interesting, but I couldn’t get into them as narratives. I’m more a John O’Hara guy. ...Read more
- American OriginalRecollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years by Diane di Prima. Penguin Books. 424 pp. $18.00. **** In this astonishing and inspiring memoir—424 tightly packed pages full of remarkably detailed writing, which covers maybe 30 years of a hugely eventful life—there are several moments that stand out for me. One is when, ...Read more
- Perennial WisdomOpen Secrets: The Letters of Reb Yerachmiel ben Yisrael by Rami M. Shapiro. Monkfish. 128 pp. $13.36 ***** Rabbi Rami Shapiro is one of the great reconcilers of spiritual traditions in the world today. In books like Judaism Without Tribalism, Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent, and Minyan: Ten Principles for Living a Life of Integrity, ...Read more
- Drag Queen to Bodhisattva Street Zen: The Life & Works of Issan Dorsey by David Schneider. Shambhala. 246 pp. ***** I resisted reading this book for a long time. Back in the early nineties, when my wife was in divinity school and we began meditating, she worked one summer at an AIDS hospice in Boston and continued to work with ...Read more
- The Future of American ZenZen in America: Five Teachers and the Search for an American Buddhism by Helen Tworkov. Kodansha International. 271 pp. **** Lotus Girl: My Life at the Crossroads of Buddhism and America by Helen Tworkov. St. Martin’s Essentials. 336 pp. $19.71 **** Helen Tworkov is such a good writer that one can wish she hadn’t spent all those ...Read more
- Trump’s FistThat Ubiquitous Gesture You would think that a bullet whistling by your head so closely that it nicked your ear might be a wake-up call, the kind of thing that could turn you around permanently, as if to say, Whoa, I dodged a bullet that time (so to speak). Maybe I might want to reassess. Ramp ...Read more
- You Need to be WritingCrowded by Beauty: The Life and Zen of Poet Philip Whalen by David Schneider. University of California Press. 352 pp. $23.92. ***** Goods Short Stories by David Schneider. Cuke Press 168 pp. $13.00 **** Philip Whalen was what used to be called a Man of Letters, back in the days when there were such people. In fact, ...Read more
- No Full StopSeptology a novel by Jon Fosse. Transit Books. 667 pp. $22.95 ***** Often when I finish a long novel I have a feeling of accomplishment, or relief; “Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over,” as the woman says in The Wasteland (about another subject). But in the case of Septology, I feel bereft. It’s ...Read more
- He Saw It ThroughSeeing One Thing Through: The Zen Life and Teachings of Sojun Mel Weitsman by Sojun Mel Weitsman. Counterpoint. 320 pp. $17.95 ***** I consider Mel Weitsman to be the sanest person I ever met. I’ve had many wonderful teachers in my life as a meditator, including Larry Rosenberg at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center, Josho Pat ...Read more
- Quotations from my Reading (cont.)From Septology by Nobel Prize winner Jon Fosse, a Catholic convert. “it’s in the darkness that God lives, yes, God is darkness, and that darkness, God’s darkness, that nothingness, yes, it shines, yes, it’s from God’s darkness that the light comes, the invisible light . . . “I don’t understand why it’s at night, in the darkness, ...Read more
- Base Metal into GoldStart Here Now: An Open-Hearted Guide to the Path and Practice of Meditation by Susan Piver. Shambhala Publications. 193 pp. $14.95 The Buddhist Enneagram: Nine Paths to Warriorship by Susan Piver. Lionheart Press. 270 pp. $18.95. On Becoming an Alchemist: A Guide for the Modern Magician by Catherine MacCoun. Trumpeter. 272 pp. $24.95 “The wind of the buddha’s ...Read more
- Cherchez la FemmeUnder the Glacier a novel by Haldor Laxness. With an introduction by Susan Sontag (thank God). Vintage. 240 pp. $17.00 ***1/2 I have to admit that Susan Sontag made more sense of this novel than I did. I actually finished the book with no idea what the hell was going on. Fortunately I had the Sontag introduction, ...Read more
- What Strikes Fear into Every Man’s Heart?Women Talking a film by Sarah Polley. With Rooney Mara, Judith Ivey, Emily Mitchell, Kate Hallett. Streaming on Apple TV. ***** Reflections on a Movie In Women Talking, a group of women finally gets together to talk about the things nobody has been saying. It is based on a novel about Miriam Toews, and borrows its premise ...Read more
- The Yin and Yang of ZenThe Shamanic Bones of Zen: Revealing the Ancestral Spirit and Mystical Heart of a Sacred Tradition by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel. Shambhala Publications. 188 pp. $18.95. **** Nothing Is Hidden: The Psychology of Zen Koans by Barry Magid. Wisdom Publications. 232 pp. $17.95. **** I can’t imagine two Buddhist books more different than these. The Shamanic Bones of ...Read more
- Gently Down the StreamMaya a novel by C.W. Huntington, Jr. Wisdom Publications. 315 pp. $16.95. ***** As far as I know, C.W. Huntington—who died in 2020 at the age of 71—published only three books, The Emptiness of Emptiness (1995), a translation of and commentary on Candrakīrti’s Madhyamakāvatāra; this novel, Maya, in 2015; and What I Don’t Know About Death, which ...Read more
- Human ConsciousnessMrs. Dalloway a novel by Virginia Woolf and The Hours a novel by Michael Cunningham. A Combined Edition. Picador. 417 pp. (more or less). $20.00. ***** I haven’t read much Virginia Woolf and don’t have any particular excuse. She was all the rage in the seventies and eighties, when her diaries and letters were coming out. ...Read more
- Cast a Cold Eye on Life, on DeathWhat I Don’t Know About Death by C.W. Huntington, Jr. Wisdom Publications. 167 pp. $16.95. ***** This is how suddenly it can happen: in January of 2020, C.W. Huntington seemed to be in perfect health. He and his wife had friends over to celebrate the new year, and after the celebration he doubled over with intestinal ...Read more
- He Found It. Repeatedly.The Search for the Genuine: Nonfiction, 1970-2015 by Jim Harrison. Grove Press. 339 pp. $28.00. ***** I was mildly amused by this title for Jim Harrison’s nonfiction. Harrison has to be the most genuine writer who ever lived. (What other writer, in the middle of an article about a fishing expedition, would talk about going to ...Read more
- Ancient and TwistedUntangling Karma: Intimate Zen Stories on Healing Trauma by Judith Ragir. Monkfish. 251 pp. $18.99 Untangling Karma is not quite a dharma book and not quite a memoir, but has elements of both. Judith Ragir is a longtime Zen practitioner—some forty years—who has looked back at her life of practice and seen what it has done ...Read more
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Dogen for the MassesWeird From the Get GoTwo MasterpiecesMary, Erica, MirandaUntil the End
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (121)American literature (218)art (114)Buddhism (170)Christianity (125)creative process (249)death and dying (139)meditation (124)movies (161)music (36)race (106)religion (188)sex (172)spirituality (171)the art of narrative (255)Uncategorized (20)world literature (23)