Fear and Fearlessness
Spring 2003 Vol. 19 #2
Spring 2003 Vol. 19 #2
Short reviews of Advice on Dying, and Living a Better Life by His Holiness the Dalai Lama • Buddhas of Burma & Angkor by Jean-Pierre Grandjean • Top of My Lungs: Poems and Paintings by Natalie Goldberg • Worship and Wilderness: Culture, Religion, and Law in Public Lands Management by Lloyd Burton • Mindfulness in the Marketplace: Compassionate Responses to Consumerism, edited by Allan Hunt Badiner • Buddha in Your Backpack: Everyday Buddhism for Teens by Franz Metcalf • Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing by Jed McKenna
Advice on Dying, and Living a Better Life
by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins
(240 pp., Atria Books, 2002)
As death takes on greater relevance to aging baby boomers, so too do bardo teachings. Most available literature consists of translations and analyses of the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book of the Dead). Advice on Dying is the Dalai Lama’s commentary on “Wishes for Release from the Perilous Straits of the Intermediate State, Hero Releasing from Fright,” a seventeen-stanza poem by the first Panchen Lama. This well-integrated teaching covers, in condensed form, awareness of death as motivation for practice, the perils of denying one’s own impermanence, liberation from the fears of death, and using death as a springboard to achieve if not enlightenment at least a favorable rebirth. The Dalai Lama encourages individuals to “institute a continuous practice of reflection on the process of death and the intermediate state between lives.” As an inspiring, trustworthy and thoroughly practical guide upon which to base such a practice, Advice on Dying is a gift of inestimable value. —BH
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Buddhas of Burma and Angkor
by Jean-Pierre Grandjean
(Both books: 64 photos, Shambhala Publications, 2002)
Jean-Pierre Grandjean’s two toast-sized volumes are essentially slide shows in pocket format. Here’s a luscious sampling of the “best of” Burma and the ancient city of Angkor. A single page of text orients us. We are then left to wander at our leisure through a collection of portraits, landscapes and interiors, in color and black-and-white. While there is no key to the images and no explanation of what we are seeing, it’s no great trick figuring it out—we’re in either Burma or Cambodia, and what we’re seeing are temples, Buddhas, monks and local people.
Grandjean is a gifted scenic photographer. Many of his photos are sublime, and some—like an image of Angkor Wat’s towers reflected upside-down in a lotus pond—are even surprising. A few, like a misty panorama of the ancient city of Pagan, have the hallucinatory quality of surrealist paintings. But the absence of a narrative thread makes it difficult to engage with the subject, and by the end I felt more like a voyeur than a participant. One hopes that Grandjean will have the opportunity to feature his images in a larger format, with text that reflects his poetic vision. In the meantime, these small, inexpensive books are a lovely introduction to his work. —JG
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Top of My Lungs: Poems and Paintings
by Natalie Goldberg
(93 pp., Overlook Press, 2002)
Natalie Goldberg’s new book of poems and paintings, Top of My Lungs, is a vibrant expression of her appreciation of the ordinary. In poems inspired by Whitman and Ginsberg, in paintings that bring to mind the subjects of Hopper and the whimsy of Matisse, Goldberg writes and paints about day-to-day American life. In her best-known book, Writing Down the Bones, Goldberg adapts Zen mindfulness practice to writing exercises that invite her students to notice the vivid details of their experience. Following her own advice, she writes poetry that is alive with the details of life, often given a fanciful cast. In “Coming Together” she writes of love:
like Cokes on a counter in Nebraska
or the stove and refrigerator wanting each other
all day across the kitchen
The bright colors, shapes and lines of Goldberg’s paintings have childlike wobbles and imaginative stripes, dots and checkers. My favorites include a jukebox and a café, a three-story city walkup, a ’48 Plymouth, a ’48 Chevy truck, and a portrait of Goldberg’s father. Like her poetry, Goldberg’s paintings combine nostalgia with delight, grief with humor. —BG
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Worship and Wilderness: Culture, Religion, and Law in Public Lands Management
by Lloyd Burton
(341 pp., University of Wisconsin Press, 2002)
Worship and Wilderness is a beautifully written exploration of human disputes over the natural world: its ownership, usage and, ultimately, its value. Lloyd Burton—a Community Dharma Leader, cofounder of Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and associate professor of environmental law at the University of Colorado in Denver—offers a uniquely spiritual perspective on some nitty-gritty, real-life legal struggles over land use. To bring his thesis to life, Burton describes a few fascinating cases, such as a dispute between rock climbers and American Indians who consider a certain mountain to be sacred, or a clash between endangered species laws and the Hopi’s need for ritual eagle feathers. If you are interested in a brief history of the role of wilderness in religious traditions, or want to understand the difficulties of preserving the natural world as a spiritual “commons,” Worship and Wilderness is an excellent guidebook and a fascinating read as well. —WN
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Mindfulness in the Marketplace: Compassionate Responses to Consumerism
Edited by Allan Hunt Badiner
(330 pp., Parallax Press, 2002)
What the world needs now is an alternative economic system, and this anthology presents some of the pioneers of that long-term project, exploring the spiritual foundations that must be constructed. Mindfulness in the Marketplace offers an excellent selection of articles by the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Fritjof Capra, Joan Halifax, Stephen Batchelor and Paul Hawken, among others, exploring our current “religion of consumption” and the growing spiritual challenge to this unsatisfying and life-threatening way of life. Although not limited to a Buddhist approach, most of the articles deal with principles of dharma and how we can incorporate them into our personal economic lives as well as the marketplace. —WN
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Buddha in Your Backpack: Everyday Buddhism for Teens
by Franz Metcalf
(244 pp., Ulysses Press, 2002)
This book is a guide to Buddhist practice for teenagers. Franz Metcalf divides his book into three parts—the life story of the Buddha and basic tenets of Buddhism (Four Noble Truths, Five Precepts, Noble Eightfold Path), “Everyday Buddhism,” and Buddhist practices, including meditation. I particularly enjoyed the reinterpretation of the Buddha’s life before enlightenment, expressed in terms which will appeal to the teenage mind—“You know the expression ‘He had it all’? Well, Siddhartha did.”
The emphasis of this book is on the practical application of the Buddha’s teachings, or “everyday Buddhism.” Here, issues that loom large in the life of a teenager—including school, home life, the body and sex—are addressed in a refreshingly straightforward and uninhibited manner. Metcalf has deemphasized formal meditation practice by placing it at the end of the book and devoting a relatively small portion of the text to this subject. This book is a useful tool for teens to have in their backpacks, as it offers an open-minded and nonjudgmental perspective well-tailored for the teenage mind. —CS
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Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing
by Jed McKenna
(274 pp., Wisefool Press, 2002)
Apparently a memoir, this is the story of a few days or weeks in the life of Jed McKenna, a 40-year-old homegrown, iconoclastic, Advaita-Taoist-Zen master from Iowa. He knocks down most of the prevailing myths and ideas about spirituality and enlightenment, and leaves you with some great questions. That’s why I loved the book. It doesn’t matter whether the story is fact or fiction, whether you totally agree with everything McKenna says or like everything he does. I recommend this book because I think it stirs things up and raises great questions, and because ultimately, I think it speaks the truth. In addition, it’s entertaining, at times funny, and not the usual spiritual fare. Check it out; see what you think. —JT
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From the Spring 2003 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 19, No. 2)
© 2003 Inquiring Mind
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