Category: meditation

Perennial Wisdom
Open 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, ...
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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 ...
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The Future of American Zen
Zen 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 ...
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Trump’s Fist
That 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 ...
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You Need to be Writing
Crowded 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, ...
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He Saw It Through
Seeing 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 ...
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Base Metal into Gold
Start 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 ...
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The Yin and Yang of Zen
The 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 ...
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Gently Down the Stream
Maya 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 ...
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Ancient and Twisted
Untangling 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 ...
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Stands with the Best
Mind Sky: Zen Teaching on Living and Dying by Jakusho Kwong. Wisdom Publications. 178 pp. $18.95. ***** I have a bias that a dharma teacher’s first book is usually the best one. With most teachers, they finally get it together to put out a book (or somebody does it for them), and it’s not anything they ...
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More Than Posture
The Posture of Meditation: A Practical Manual for Meditators of All Traditions. Second Edition By Will Johnson. Shambhala. 161 pp. $15.95. ***** It’s hard to believe that any activity as fundamentally simple as zazen—all you do is sit there and breathe—could become complicated, but the human mind (my human mind, anyway) can complicate anything. Though I’ve ...
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Where Zen Began
China Root: Taoism, Ch’an, and Original Zen by David Hinton. Shambhala. 176 pp. $17.95. ***** This is a fascinating and important book. David Hinton is a long time—thirty-five years—translator of Chinese poetry and other texts. He has translated most of the great Chinese classics, including the Tao Te Ching, I Ching, Chuang Tzu, The Analects, Mencius, ...
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It’s an Art (Says the Old Fart)
The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works by Shinzen Young. Sounds True. 265 pp. $13.89. ***** As Shinzen Young himself says in one of the later chapters, Zen teachers are known for under-explaining meditation, vipassana teachers for over-explaining. It’s as if vipassana teachers want to tell you everything that might possibly happen, so you never have ...
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The Wild Man and the Schoolmarm
Appreciate Your Life: The Essence of Zen Practice by Taizan Maezumi Roshi. Shambhala. 160pp. $19.59. ***** Ordinary Wonder: Zen Life and Practice by Charlotte Joko Beck. Shambhala. 240 pp. $17.95. ***** Dharma books wander into my life at exactly the right moment. Years ago, I picked up Taizan Maezumi’s Appreciate Your Life and, except for the title ...
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I Bow Back
When You Greet Me I Bow: Notes and Reflections from a Life in Zen by Norman Fischer. Shambhala. 336 pp. $16.97. ***** I haven’t read all his books, but for my money this is Norman Fischer’s best, reflections on a wide range of topics from a man who has spent fifty years living and teaching the ...
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Not a Matter of Belief
Confessions 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 ...
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Things Will Never Be That Way Again
Sound 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 ...
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That’s Not the Choice
Reflections 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 ...
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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 ...
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