Category: christianity
- Good Could Have Been GreatMy Year of Dirt and Water: Journal of a Zen Monk’s Wife in Japan by Tracy Franz. Stone Bridge Press. 306 pp. $16.95. ***1/2 I don’t believe in publishing pages from a journal. I’m all for keeping a journal (Thoreau is one of my heroes); it’s an invaluable practice to sit down every day and review ...Read more
- If We Just Knew What Mind IsHow to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan. Penguin Press. 465 pp. How’s that for a sub-title? Why didn’t he just add, the Universe? Except that in some ways that does describe what Michael Pollan’s book is about. It’s also about the ...Read more
- Too Much ThinkingCall It Grace: Finding Meaning in a Fractured World by Serene Jones. Viking. 310 pp. ***1/2 Four Men Shaking: Searching for Sanity with Samuel Beckett, Norman Mailer, and My Perfect Zen Teacher by Lawrence Shainberg. Shambhala. 134 pp. $16.95. ****1/2 “To stop your mind does not mean to stop the activities of mind. It means your mind ...Read more
- Fools’Paradise a novel by Toni Morrison. Vintage. 318 pp. $16.00 I can agree that Beloved is Toni Morrison’s masterpiece, but in some ways I found Paradise a more inventive and intricate novel. It’s the story of a fictional town in Oklahoma that was settled in the mid-twentieth century by African Americans who had been turned away ...Read more
- And Actually IsThe World Could Be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path by Norman Fisher. Shambhala. 207 pp. $17.95. ****1/2 It’s an odd title for a book on Buddhism, which is supposed to devote itself to the world as it is. When Fischer lectured on the book at the Chapel Hill Zen Center, someone asked him about that, ...Read more
- Relaxing the Frontal LobeThe Light That Shines Through Infinity: Zen and the Energy of Life by Dainin Katagiri. Shambhala. 229 pp. $16.95. I’ve always thought of Dainin Katagiri as a difficult Zen teacher, partly because I read Returning to Silence when I was new to Zen and found it confounding. He was a rough contemporary of Shunryu Suzuki, and ...Read more
- Ways to TruthGurdjieff Reconsidered: The Life, the Teachings, the Legacy by Roger Lipsey. Shambhala. 342 pp. $24.95. **** I read this book as a tribute to my friend Levi, who used to talk about Gurdjieff and various of his disciples almost every time we got together. He was introduced to the man by a woman who was breaking ...Read more
- Don’t Fight the WaterZazen in the Spirit of Shinjin The Spring 2019 issue of Tricycle includes a marvelous teaching by Kenneth Tanaka entitled “The Seven Phases of a Drowning Sailor.” Apparently the story itself exists in Shin Buddhism, but Tanaka divided it up into seven parts to indicate stages of realization. He had in mind the Ten Oxherding pictures ...Read more
- Why Not?Why Religion? A Personal Story by Elaine Pagels. Ecco. 235 pp. $27.99 ****1/2 Why Religion? is a slender graceful memoir, a rare thing in these social media days when people think their every moment is worth recording. It is directed at the question which the title asks, which meant different things to author Elaine Pagels at ...Read more
- A Rage to ConnectAt Eternity’s Gate a film by Julian Schnabel. With Willem Dafoe, Rubert Friend, Oscar Isaac, Emmanuelle Seigner. ****1/2 I don’t know how many movies there have been about Vincent Van Gogh, though I myself have seen three or four. I have not seen the 1956 portrayal by Kirk Douglas, and don’t believe I will. Ever since I was a kid ...Read more
- That Sinking FeelingAnother Rohatsu Sesshin Down the Tubes The day before sesshin began—we always start on Friday evening—I told a friend from the Zen Center that I didn’t think I’d be able to have lunch with her on Friday after all. I had too much to do. “Yeah,” she said. “Me too. It’s kind of like you’re preparing ...Read more
- Infinity in a Grain of SandForever a series by Alan Yang and Matt Hubbard. With Maya Rudolph, Fred Armisen, Catherine Keener, Noah Robbins. ***** Forever is one of the most unusual things I’ve ever seen on a screen. It’s composed of eight episodes roughly thirty minutes long, so my wife and I watched it over two nights. The difficulty with writing ...Read more
- Your Body Is the UniverseThe Practice of Pure Awareness: Somatic Meditation for Awakening the Sacred by Reginald Ray. Shambhala. 286 pp. $18.95. ****1/2 It’s said that we read dharma books originally for inspiration, then years later for confirmation of what we’ve learned. Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, for instance, I’ve read at least ten times, and it’s been a different book ...Read more
- Seeing Things as OneComing Home: The Experience of Enlightenment in Sacred Traditions by Lex Hixon. Larson Publications. 215 pp. $14.00. ***1/2 Coming Home is simultaneously one of the most inspiring and frustrating books I’ve ever read. Lex Hixon led a short life which he devoted to his conviction that all of the spiritual traditions have a common core. His ...Read more
- #MeToo Meets Déjà VuMaking Enlightened Society Possible (but not Probable) “Why does a dog lick his balls? Because he can.” –old joke. “Men are addicted to ejaculation.” Statement of a man on NPR’s Fresh Air, explaining male sexual behavior. I will sound naïve to say so, but I was utterly shocked by the sex scandal that recently rocked Shambhala International, and ...Read more
- Stumble He DidThe Gods Drink Whiskey: Stumbling Toward Enlightenment in the Land of the Tattered Buddha by Stephen T. Asma. HarperOne. 256 pp. $14.99 ***1/2 Talk about your feeble excuses for reading a book: I was getting my computer worked on when I noticed this book on a nearby work desk. I picked it up and flipped through ...Read more
- The Other Side of AddictionNow What? Reading Sabbath’s Theater has gotten me started on the subject of addiction again. I’ve read books about sex maniacs before, I’ve even written one, but never have I come across a character like Mickey Sabbath, who masturbates on his mistress’ grave, showed up at her house (when he was alive) with an erection already ...Read more
- Communion of Saints[1]Won’t You Be My Neighbor? a film by Morgan Neville. With Fred Rogers, Joanne Rogers, Joe Negri, Francois Clemmons. ****1/2 Fred Rogers was one weird dude. In all of show business, people on television, people who perform, who work with children, I’ve never seen anyone like him. He had a television show in which, for all ...Read more
- ReligiousWhat Is That? “ is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said.” –Paul, to the Athenians, in the Book of Acts. “If you want to experience the unnameable, you need to be a person who is the unnameable. Since ...Read more
- Trusting the MindThe Buddha’s Ultimate Message Some years ago, a publisher asked me to write a Young Adult biography of the Buddha. It was an obvious assignment in a way; two of my novels had been published as YA’s (though I hadn’t written them that way), and I’d written a fair amount about Buddhism as well. I could ...Read more
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All Shook UpWhat's in a Song? IIWriting for his LifeWhat’s in a Song?Mixed Feelings
View Other Essays by Topic
aging (127)American literature (226)art (123)Buddhism (171)Christianity (132)creative process (262)death and dying (144)meditation (125)movies (167)music (42)race (110)religion (196)sex (187)spirituality (174)the art of narrative (266)Uncategorized (21)world literature (23)