Storytelling
Spring 1994 Vol. 10 #2
Spring 1994 Vol. 10 #2
(1 page, 7 ½ feet long, 255 words, Volcano Press)
Looking for a fold-out, wrap-around sutra? You can read it in one minute (if you don’t pause to relish the exuberant artwork, which is unlikely). You can chant it aloud in three minutes (it’s great, I discover, for intoning in groups). You can stand it upright around your zafu to make an instant six-inch-high temple courtyard; and you will return to it ever again for sanity and delight.
This is the real article, brought to us by streetwise bodhisattva, Anne Herbert, who authored the phrase you see on walls and bumperstickers, and Margaret Pavel, word wizard, systems thinker and global therapist, along with dharma artist Mayumi Oda, whose wondrous frogs remind us that this time we awaken with all beings.
Good things come in small packages. About as long as the Heart Sutra (I counted the words), it distills—in ordinary, inspired language—all we need to know right now in order to let our lives count in building a sustainable world. It tells us about the kind of power we each have right now to take choice—and the delight that can be ours, if we are not afraid to seize it.
I would say more, but it would be tacky for my review to be longer than the book itself. (I just checked: same word count).
∞
From the Spring 1994 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 10, No. 2)
Text © Joanna Macy
Author
