Category: religion

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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Give Us a Grin
The 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 ...
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Meantown
Mare of Easttown a TV Mini Series by Craig Zobel. Written by Brad Ingelsby. With Kate Winslett, Julianne Nicholson, Jean Smart, Guy Pearce. HBO. ****1/2 As a person who grew up in Pennsylvania, I know there is an element of crabby, pessimistic, life-denying people who live there, especially in the smaller industrial communities. There’s also another ...
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Name Droppers Extraordinaire
Inside Story: A Novel by Martin Amis. Knopf. 545 pp. $28.82 Country Girl: A Memoir by Edna O’Brien. Little, Brown. 368 pp. $27.94. Inside Story is a novel because Martin Amis chooses to call it one. It has novelistic sections, but the bulk of the book is a memoir of some writers who have been his good ...
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There’s Not Enough!
It’s a State of Mind How’s your supply of toilet paper these days? I always found it weird that, when faced with a mysterious pandemic of epic proportions, the first thing most Americans thought of was wiping their butts. Maybe they were just buying paper towels to wipe down surfaces (which we recently discovered, after doing ...
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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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Portrait of the Artists Through a Boozy Haze
Early Novels and Stories by James Baldwin: Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni’s Room, Another Country. Library of America. 970 pp. In the midst of the endless current theorizing about race and sexuality and gender identity, and talk of all the books we must read (I hate to be told I must read a book), ...
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I Like Ike
The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer Volume II: A Friend of Kafka to Passions. Library of America. 856 pp. ***** Back in the days when Isaac Bashevis Singer’s stories appeared in the New Yorker, I never missed one. It was a thrill to read the work of a man who wrote so vividly, who seemed ...
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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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How He Thought of Me
My First Shrink Every time I ever went to a therapist, I went because I was in physical pain. The first time, because the whole idea was so foreign to me, it took me months to finally pull the trigger. I also felt reluctant because I was afraid of what he’d say. I was afraid he’d ...
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Jane Austen He’s Not
Pierre, or The Ambiguities by Herman Melville. Library of America pp.1-421. **1/2 It’s a bad sign when you finish the book and breathe a huge sigh of relief. I have enormous admiration for Herman Melville. Of all the 19th century American novelists, his career has the largest span. He began with popular books like Typee and Omoo, ...
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What Healing Is
For 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, ...
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They Can’t Get Started
Shtisel a Netflix series (2 seasons of 12 episodes) by Along Zingman. With Doval’e Glickman, Michael Alom, Neta Riskin, Shira Haas, Zohar Shtrauss. ***** Like everyone else during the pandemic, my wife and I have been searching for streaming series that hold our attention. We’ve been through any number of suggestions—some of which seemed rather desperate—with ...
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Sitting with Louis II
The 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, ...
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Sitting with Louis
Notes 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, ...
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Young Master Surpasses His Idol
The 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 ...
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Makes the Other One Look Good
Refuge 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 ...
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