Category: spirituality

The Man Himself
Miracles and Wonders: The Historical Mystery of Jesus by Elaine Pagels. Doubleday. 320 pp. $30.00. ***** Mark Twain tells a story about a typesetter from the days of hot type, when things were a lot more difficult than they are now. The young man was setting a sermon in type, and after the first appearance of ...
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Two Loose Cannons
Zen Mind, Jewish Mind: Koan, Midrash, and the Living Word by Rami Shapiro. Monkfish. 160 pp. $17.09. ***** Autobiography of a Zen Monk by Taisen Deshimaru. Hohm Press. 212 pp. $21.95. **** Rabbi Rami Shapiro is a national treasure. We just don’t know it yet. In a career spanning over thirty years, he has written books on ...
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Dogen for the Masses
The 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 ...
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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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Wounded Healer
James Dykes (1950-2024) Hanging in the waiting room of Jim Dykes’ office—a large homey building that had been a famous hippie house in the Sixties, when I was in college—was a mammoth painting of Jesus. That seemed characteristic of the man. He seemed to be saying that Jesus was the ultimate healer—I think he felt that ...
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How to Live Your Life
Perfect Days a film by Wim Wenders and Takuma Takasaki. With Koji Yakusho, Tokio Emoto. Streaming on various platforms. ***** Hirayama cleans public toilets in Tokyo (and that place has some fancy toilets. Some of them are almost futuristic). He has a small apartment where he lives in the Japanese fashion, mostly on the floor, moving ...
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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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The Nothing of God
She was scorned, kicked around, physically abused, sexually abused, told that she doesn’t count, that she barely even exists. Somehow it is these very things that give her the resources to undertake this adventure.
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Embodied Mystic
This author deeply understands mystical spirituality, true religion, in a way that few people do.
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No Full Stop
Septology 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 ...
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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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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, ...
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The True Temple
Beyond the Abbey Gates (formerly The Age of Miracles) a novel by Catherine MacCoun. Trumpeter. 337 pp. $15.95. ***** I defy anyone to read this novel and decide what the author thinks is sacred and what profane; religious, irreligious; the right way to live, the wrong way. It turns every preconception you have on its head. ...
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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 Quick and the Dead
Ironweed a novel by William Kennedy. Penguin. 227 pp. $18.00 ***** Despite my huge admiration for the first two novels in the Albany cycle, I can see why Ironweed was the prize winner. Kennedy’s writing reaches an apotheosis in this book, perhaps from the subject matter, perhaps just because he was growing in confidence. In 1983, ...
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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 ...
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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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Cast a Cold Eye on Life, on Death
What 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 ...
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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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