Category: buddhism
- Give Us a GrinThe Guide by R. K. Narayan. Penguin Classics 196pp. $16.00. **** If you have some time on your hands these days—maybe you’re recently retired, or lost your job during the pandemic—have you thought of becoming a teacher of Advaita Vedanta, or Kashmir Shavism? I realize you’re supposed to be enlightened to do that, but is that ...Read more
- Portrait of a Lunatic (You Wrote About the Wrong Cousin, Iris Murdoch)The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch. Penguin Classics. 495 pp. $20.00 ***** The Sea, the Sea has everything going for it. It’s large and expansive, beautifully written; it contains a wealth of fascinating characters; it traces a wild plot, where things keep happening that you can’t believe, and it comes to an emotionally satisfying confusion. ...Read more
- Not a Matter of BeliefConfessions of a Buddhist Atheist by Stephen Bachelor. Random House. 320 pp. $14.99 Some years ago, when I was trying to get my head around Christianity, I read various works by C.S. Lewis, including Mere Christianity. Lewis is widely regarded as an effective proselytizer for the religion, offering not a passionate but a reasonable approach to ...Read more
- Things Will Never Be That Way AgainSound of Metal a film by Darius Marder. With Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cook, Paul Raci, Lauren Ridloff. ***** I almost stopped watching Sound of Metal during the first five minutes. I’m not a fan of heavy metal and didn’t want to spend two hours listening to what I heard in those early minutes. I didn’t need ...Read more
- That’s Not the ChoiceReflections on The Friend In Sigrid Nunez’ superb novel The Friend, the narrator is thinking back on a friend who has just died, and mentions that he was a committed atheist. “Between religion and knowledge, he said, a person must choose knowledge.” I almost jumped out of my chair as I read that. That’s not the ...Read more
- What Finally MattersWhat Are You Going Through: A Novel by Sigrid Nunez. Riverhead Books. 224 pp. $19.59. ***** The idea sounds grim beyond belief. Our narrator—living in New York—has a friend in a nearby town who is dying of cancer. At first the woman seems to be in remission, but then the cancer comes back with a vengeance, ...Read more
- Damned Is RightDamned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett by James Knowlson. Grove Press. 800 pp. $22.00. **** Four Men Shaking: Searching for Sanity with Samuel Beckett, Norman Mailer, and My Perfect Zen Teacher by Lawrence Shainberg. Shambhala. 134 pp. $16.95 ***** The story told in the first half of James Knowlson’s excellent biography is thrilling and fascinating. ...Read more
- What Is Liberation?Great Demon Kings: A Memoir of Poetry, Sex, Art, Death, and Enlightenment by John Giono. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. 368 pp. $25.49. **** For the two years I lived in Cambridge—1991-93, while my wife was in Divinity School—I was in bookstore heaven. It seems strange to say nowadays, when bookstores barely exist. There was the Harvard ...Read more
- What Healing IsFor My 72nd Birthday The morning my father died we had barely gotten back from the hospital when there was a knock at the door and my mother opened it to Mrs. Shriver, a neighbor from across the street. She was an older woman, with a ruddy, deeply lined face, kept herself busy with outdoor sports, ...Read more
- He Published HimselfLorenzo Milam 1933-2020 Forty years ago, The Sun magazine was not the polished publication it is today. It was printed on what I believe is called stock, rather than the slick paper the magazine currently uses. It didn’t have a vast staff—often the Editor was it—and didn’t pay its writers much, if at all. Each issue ...Read more
- Sitting with Louis IIThe Other Side One of the problems with my earlier piece about talking and sitting zazen with my autistic brother in law is that I sound so kind, compassionate, magnanimous, and patient. A true Bodhisattva. Actually, I’m no better than anyone else, but it isn’t too surprising that I sound that way. I wrote the piece, ...Read more
- The Itch to WriteNotes During a Pandemic One of the great pleasures of talking to my brother frequently—which I’ve been doing lately–is hearing of writers I wouldn’t have encountered otherwise. Bill mentioned to me, for instance, that he had just bought two volumes of the reviews of Marjorie Perloff, a name I’d never heard. She writes regularly for the ...Read more
- Sitting with LouisNotes During a Pandemic We came to stay at our Asheville cabin during the pandemic in order to take care of my wife’s brother Louis, who has a house on the same property. He’s 68 years old and autistic, diagnosed just a few years ago. His job was bringing in shopping carts at the local supermarket, ...Read more
- The True Purpose of AddictionNotes During a Pandemic Rereading Dolores LaChapelle’s Sacred Land, Sacred Sex, Rapture of the Deep, I’m struck by things I had read before, but can also see some limitations of the project. She had a deep understanding of Daoism through her long Tai Chi practice, for instance, but her writing about Daoism is hampered by the ...Read more
- Young Master Surpasses His IdolThe Durrell Miller Letters 1935-80. Edited by Ian S. MacNiven. New Directions. 528 pp. ****1/2 In 1935, 23-year-old Lawrence Durrell wrote Henry Miller a fan letter about his novel Tropic of Cancer, which he had either found discarded in a public lavatory (the story he told) or was lent by a friend. “It strikes me as ...Read more
- Makes the Other One Look GoodRefuge a film by John Halpern. With Martin Scorcese, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Ani Tenzin Palmo, Oliver Stone, David Chadwick. **1/2 Zen in the West a film by Daniel Luke Fitch. With Henry Shukman Roshi, Yamada Ryoun Roshi, David Loy Roshi, Reuben Habito Roshi, Venerable Dr. Parravati. Part of BuddhaFest Online. ****1/2. Fifty years ago a ...Read more
- Or Something Like ThatZen in the West a film by Daniel Luke Fitch. With Henry Shukman Roshi, Yamada Ryoun Roshi, David Loy Roshi, Reuben Habito Roshi, Venerable Dr. Parravati. Part of Tricycle’s BuddhaFest Online. ***1/2. I rarely sign up for anything like BuddhaFest, the yearly event that Tricycle puts on, but this year, since it’s strictly virtual, and they’re ...Read more
- Books of a LifetimeA House for Buddha by Ross Parmenter. Woodstock Press. 529 pp. Sacred Land, Sacred Sex, Rapture of the Deep: Concerning Deep Ecology and Celebrating Life by Dolores LaChapelle. Kivaki Press. 383 pp. The Lyndoniad by William Guy. Xlibris. 444pp. On my second trip to Mexico—I believe the year was 1991—my wife and I had arrived at the Basilica ...Read more
- Facing DesireOpen to Desire: Embracing a Lust for Life. Insights from Buddhism & Psychotherapy by Mark Epstein. Gotham Books. 227 pp. ***1/2 The Durrell-Miller Letters 1935-80. Edited by Ian S. MacNiven. New Directions. 528 pp. $21.89 In Open to Desire, psychiatrist and longtime Buddhist practitioner Mark Epstein takes on the central paradox of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths. ...Read more
- All Religions Converge One PointThe Universal Christ by Richard Rohr. Convergent. 260 pp. $27.00 ***** For my devotional reading these days, I’ve been reading both The Universal Christ and Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Rohr’s book seemed largely theoretical (though he mentions various practices) and Shunryu Suzuki’s perfectly practical: almost every section is about sitting. Somehow or other I finished both ...Read more
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You Need to be WritingThe Other SideThe River is Freedom, the Raft ParadiseThe Nothing of GodWe Are Stardust We Are Golden
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (114)American literature (197)art (109)Buddhism (163)Christianity (119)creative process (232)death and dying (128)meditation (118)movies (152)music (36)race (95)religion (180)sex (157)spirituality (167)the art of narrative (238)Uncategorized (19)world literature (23)