20th Anniversary Issue
Fall 2003 Vol. 20 #1
Fall 2003 Vol. 20 #1
Short reviews of Buddhism: A Concise Introduction by Huston Smith and Philip Novak • Silence: How to Find Inner Peace in a Busy World by Christina Feldman • Pressing Out Pure Honey: A Practitioner’s Study Guide by Sharda Rogell • Mindfulness and Money: The Buddhist Path of Abundance by Kulananda and Dominic Houlder • The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory by David R. Loy • The New Social Face of Buddhism: A Call to Action by Ken Jones• Beside Still Waters: Jews, Christians, and the Way of the Buddha, edited by Harold Kasimow, John P. Keenan and Linda Klepinger Keenan • Stillness: Daily Gifts of Solitude by Richard Mahler
Buddhism: A Concise Introduction
by Huston Smith and Philip Novak
(242 pp., HarperSanFrancisco, 2003)
Many Western seekers have been introduced to Buddhism through a chapter in Huston Smith’s classic text, The World’s Religions. Smith’s new and informative book, coauthored with Philip Novak, focuses on Buddhism exclusively. This book is an impressive and accessible overview of the core teachings (e.g., Four Noble Truths, nirvana, dependent origination, emptiness). In addition to providing a succinct and heartfelt history of Buddhism, the authors identify five unique aspects of the “New Buddhism of America.” In the West, Buddhism is meditation-centered, a lay (rather than a monastic) phenomenon, free of gender bias, interdisciplinary and socially engaged. The authors note that in the last sixty years, more than 1,000 new meditation centers have been established. This book also examines the Zen, Tibetan and vipassana movements in America, and explores the various ways in which they connect and collide. The final chapter, “The Flowering of Faith,” explores Buddhism’s Pure Land tradition. This is a particularly useful book for those interested in the contrast between Buddhism in Asia
and Buddhism in the West. —RK
♦
Silence: How to Find Inner Peace in a Busy World
by Christina Feldman
(256 pp., Rodmell Press, 2003)
Given the fact that most Western-style retreats are conducted in silence, there is very little discussion by meditation teachers about the experience of silence and what it offers. This useful and thoughtful book fills that gap. Feldman has outlined a four-part course to accessing and sustaining silence in the midst of chaos and change. She writes, “Silence is at the heart of all the great spiritual traditions and pilgrimages.” Once we develop our innate capacity for silence and recognize the treasure it is, she writes, “We soon begin to understand that silence is not a vacuum or a barren desert of the heart, but the source of creativity, love, compassion and transforming wisdom.” Beautiful pictures and visual images enhance the book and put the reader in the mood for the sacred sound of silence. —RK
♦
Pressing Out Pure Honey: A Practitioner’s Study Guide
by Sharda Rogell
(160 pp., Dhamma Dana Publications, 2003)
This study guide to Bhikkhu Bodhi’s excellent translation of the Majjhima Nikaya, or Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, is based on the notes that vipassana teacher Sharda Rogell took during a two-month silent retreat at Gaia House in England. Her intention in studying this ancient text was to discover what the Buddha actually taught and didn’t teach. Each morning she wrote down parts of the discourses that stood out to her, and the rest of the day she spent in silent meditation and reflection as a way to assemble the profound insights of the Buddha. Pressing Out Pure Honey has proven to be a superb companion to my own sutta study group, with very useful practice guides, notes and summaries of the suttas. It makes the teachings accessible to beginners as well as advanced practitioners. Rogell’s commitment to the Buddhadharma is apparent and brings a genuine and authentic integrity to these treasured teachings. —M
♦
Mindfulness and Money: The Buddhist Path of Abundance
by Kulananda and Dominic Houlder
(241 pp., Broadway Books, 2002)
Money is not the “root of all evil” that we often make it out to be. Rather, it is a magical invention of the mind that we can skillfully use to create a better world for us all. Mindfulness and Money leads the reader on the “Path of Abundance”—a monetary journey through familiar Buddhist teachings such as the Wheel of Life, the Five Precepts, lovingkindness, generosity, right livelihood and living purposefully. There are many exercises along this path, giving us the opportunity to question and explore our relationships to our money and our work. The nature of these relationships can be either constricting or liberating—we are reminded and challenged that this choice is ours. Cutting through our layers of superficial fears and desires, we begin to discover the truth about ourselves, which hopefully leads us to mindfulness. —CH
♦
The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory
by David R. Loy
(240 pp., Wisdom Publications, 2003)
David Loy, a professor of international studies in Japan as well as dharma heir to Kohun Yamada, has fused his two vocations and broad reading (from Nietzsche and Heidegger to critiques of the IMF) into this intelligent, wide-reaching, provocative book. In the spirit of Gandhi and deep ecology, he grounds the problem of remaking society in the Buddhist need, through the Four Noble Truths, to remake ourselves. In a chapter which asks “Is Zen Buddhism?” he suggests that Zen’s “slight regard” for scripture and tradition may have sanctioned a permissive amorality in America. (Ken Jones’ examination of Zen is even sharper; see next volume.) —PDS
♦
The New Social Face of Buddhism: A Call to Action
by Ken Jones
(320 pp., Wisdom Publications, 2003)
An excellent, necessary book. It reads as a complement to Loy’s (the two books cite each other), where a shared Buddhist social theory is converted into a call to action. Jones skillfully links meditation and spiritual awakening—opening the third eye—to opening the “fourth eye” of social awareness (“the gift of modernity to the traditional spiritualities”). Engaged Buddhism in Asia is surveyed, from the Sarvodaya movement of Sri Lanka to the new Buddhist movements in postwar Japan (including the “uncompromisingly dogmatic” Soka Gakkai). Citing “the inaction of the young Dutch United Nations conscripts at Srebrenica” while thousands of innocent people died, he argues that a Buddhist belief in nonviolence should embrace reality with a scary openness which, when necessary, will drop even pacifist conviction. —PDS
♦
Beside Still Waters: Jews, Christians, and the Way of the Buddha
Edited by Harold Kasimow, John P. Keenan and Linda Klepinger Keenan
(284 pp., Wisdom Publications, 2003)
We live in a society of hyphenated cultural and spiritual identities. How then do we negotiate the terrain of different traditions? Beside Still Waters offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of Jews and Christians engaged in Buddhist practice without giving up their birth religion. This unique collection of fourteen personal essays and four perspectives on Jewish and Christian encounters with the Way of the Buddha includes such familiar teachers as Sylvia Boorstein and Norman Fischer. Although many of the other writers are academics, their accounts are not at all dry but juicy in the details and variety of experiences and feelings. As they have developed respect for the Buddha’s teaching, they also have gained renewed appreciation for the riches of their own faith. They reveal that authentic interfaith dialogue is not necessarily the kind that takes place around a conference table but inside our bodies, hearts and minds as we try to make sense of different spiritual teachings and apply them to how
we live each day. —MK
♦
Stillness: Daily Gifts of Solitude
by Richard Mahler
(166 pp., Red Wheel, 2003)
“What is the greatest length of time you have ever spent alone, physically apart from other humans?” Richard Mahler begins one chapter of his wonderful book, Stillness, with this question from environmentalist David Brower, and gives us his own answer—three months. Mahler’s book is a chronicle of the time he spent completely alone in the Tusas Mountains of northern New Mexico. Like Thoreau in Walden, Mahler is engaging in a profound reflection on how we live today. In fine prose style, Stillness explores how humans throughout history have sought solitude and silence and the gifts they have found there. A practitioner of Buddhist meditation, Mahler quotes from many sources literary and spiritual, and offers his own excellent advice on how we can bring more stillness into our lives. —WN
♦♦♦
From the Fall 2003 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 20, No. 1)
© 2003 Inquiring Mind
Author
