Reflections on Reality: The Three Natures and Non-Natures in the Mind-Only School: Dynamic Responses to Dzong-ka-ba's The Essence of Eloquence, Volume 2 Review

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(More customer reviews)The first volume is in four parts:
A historical and doctrinal introduction
A translation of the General Explanation and the Section on the Mind-Only School in The Essence of Eloquence with frequent annotations in the brackets, footnotes, and backnotes
A detailed synopsis of the translation
A critical edition in Tibetan script of these sections in The Essence of Eloquence
The second volume, Reflections on Reality, will:
Place reactions to Tsongkhapa's text in historical and social context by examining the tension between allegiance and rational inquirer in monastic colleges
Expand on the religious significance of the three natures of phenomena
Present Jonangpa views on the thoroughly established nature and Gelukpa criticisms
Explain the reasonings establishing mind-only as means to overcome basic dread of reality, and
Consider how Tsongkhapa and his commentators present the provocative issue of the relationship between the two types of emptiness in the Mind-Only School and compare how the topic of two emptinesses is debated today in America, Europe, and Japan, thereby demonstrating how the two forms of scholarship refine and enhance each other.
The third volume, Absorption in No External World, will examine a plethora of fascinating points on the three natures raised in six centuries of commentary through:
Identifying the teachings in the first wheel of doctrine,
Probing the meaning of "own-character" and "established by way of its own character,"
Untangling the implications of Tsongkhapa's criticisms of Wongchuk, and treating many engaging points on the three natures and the three non-natures, including 1) how to apply these two grids to uncompounded space; 2) whether the selflessness of persons is a thoroughly established nature; 3) how to consider the emptiness of emptiness; and 4) the ways the Great Vehicle schools delineate the three natures and the three non-natures.

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This is the second volume in Jeffrey Hopkins's valuable series on the Mind-Only School of Buddhism. Dzong-ka-ba (1357-1419) is generally regarded as one of the greatest Tibetan philosophers, and his "Mind-Only" discourse on emptiness is considered a landmark in Buddhist philosophy. In Volume 2, Emptiness in the Mind-Only School of Buddhism, Hopkins provided a translation of the introduction and section on the Mind-Only School in The Essence of Eloquence. The present volume places this enigmatic and influential exposition in its historical and philosophical contexts. Reflections on Reality conveys the intellectual vibrancy of the different cultural interpretations of this text and expands the key philosophical issues it addresses.

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Study and Practice of Meditation: Tibetan Interpretations of the Concentrations and Formless Absorptions Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is a real tome, and one has to admire the depth of scholarship displayed. The author makes it clear that this is basically a record from within the Gelugpa tradition of scholarship about types of meditation not generally practiced by those writing about it. That scholars-only flavor comes through loud and clear in the dense, heavily-annotated text, and I wish I had known that this was purely an academic treatise before plunking down money for it. The other reviews here do the potential reader a disservice by failing to mention this important fact. This is most definitely NOT a book from which to actually learn these practices, and if I were reviewing it on those grounds it would rate one star. Out of great respect for the scholarship, I give it 4.
Books to actually learn these techniques and put them into practice: The Attention Revolution, by B. Alan Wallace (superb), and the related text Calming the Mind: Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on Cultivating Meditative Quiescence, by Gelugpa meditation master Gen Lamrimpa. For most readers these will be far better choices.

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This book gives a vivid abd dewtailed accont of the meditative practices necessary to develop a calm, alert mind that is capable pf penetrating the depths of reality. The reader is exposed to Tibetan Buddhist views on the mental states attained through meditation by the author's relying on oral commentaries by three contemporary Tibetan lamas.

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Absorption in No External World: 170 Issues in Mind Only Buddhism (Dynamic Responses to Dzong-Ka-Ba's the Essence of Eloquence) Review

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(More customer reviews)Absorption in No External World: 170 Issues in Mind Only Buddhism by Jeffrey Hopkins (Dynamic Responses to Dzong-Ka-Ba's the Essence of Eloquence: Snow Lion Publications) "This is without question the finest and most complete discussion of the renowned Mind-Only School and its Tibetan context." -Anne C. Klein, author of Knowledge & Liberation
"An exceptionally clear and detailed account of a central debate in Tibetan Buddhist scholastic philosophy."
-Matthew Kapstein, University of Chicago
This book examines a surfeit of intriguing issues raised in six centuries of Tibetan and Mongolian debate and commentary concerning the first two sections of Dzong-ka-ba's (usually transliterated; Tsong-kha-pa) The Essence of Eloquence, the Prologue and the section on the Mind-Only School. By providing vivid detail, Jeffrey Hopkins reveals the liveliness of Tibetan scholastic controversies, showing the dynamism of thoughtful commentary and stimulating the reader's metaphysical imagination. In the process of examining 170 issues, this volume treats many engaging points on Great Vehicle presentations of the three natures and the three non-natures, including how to apply these to all phenomena, the selflessness of persons, and the emptiness of emptiness. It concludes with a delineation of the approaches through which the Mind-Only School interprets scriptures.
This stand-alone book is the final volume of a trilogy on Mind-Only that Hopkins composed over the last twenty-two years. His heavily annotated translation of these sections in Dzongka-ba's text is contained in the first volume, Emptiness in the Mind-Only School of Buddhism, along with a historical and doctrinal introduction, a detailed synopsis of the text, and a critical edition. The second volume, Reflections on Reality: The Three Natures and Non-Natures in the Mind-Only School, provides historical and social context, a basic presentation of the three natures, the two types of emptiness in the Mind-Only School, and the contrasting of Shay-rap-gyel-tsen of the Jo-nang-ba order of Tibetan Buddhism.
In this volume Hopkins presents opinions on crucial issues from twenty-two commentaries on Dzong-ka-ba's The Essence of Eloquence, considered by his followers to be so challenging that it is called his steel bow and steel arrow, hard to pull but powerful when one succeeds. The careful analysis with which these scholar-yogis probe the issues provides an avenue into patterns of thought that constitute the environment of the text over this long period of intense interest to the present day. Hopkins' lively style draws the reader into the drama, revealing horizons of transformative meaning,
This book identifies the teachings in the first wheel of doctrine and probes the meaning of "own-character" and "established by way of its own character." It untangles the implications of Dzong-ka-ba's criticisms of the Korean scholar Wonch'uk and
treats many engaging points on the three natures and the three non-natures, including (1) how to apply these two grids to uncompounded space; (2) whether the selflessness of persons is a thoroughly established nature; (3) how to consider the emptiness of emptiness; and (4) the ways the Great Vehicle schools delineate the three natures and the three non-natures and presents the approaches through which the Mind-Only School interprets scriptures.
The aim of this study is to bring to life scholastic controversies in order both to stimulate the metaphysical imagination and to show the non-monolithic excess of examination by the followers of a seminal figure in the Tibetan cultural region.
Hopkins annotated translation of these sections in Dzong-ka-ba's text are in the first volume of this series, Emptiness in the Mind-Only School of Buddhism. It is in four parts:
1.a historical and doctrinal introduction
2.a translation of the General Explanation and the Section on the Mind-Only School in The Essence of Eloquence with frequent annotations in brackets, footnotes, and backnotes
3.a detailed synopsis of the translation that re-renders the text, with additional information, in more free-flowing English
4.a critical edition in Tibetan script of these sections in The Essence of Eloquence.
The second volume of this series, Reflections on Reality: The Three Natures and Non-Natures in the Mind-Only School, presents an introduction to and analysis of many facets of volume one. It places reactions to Dzong-ka-ba's text in historical and social context by examining the tension between allegiance and rational inquiry in monastic colleges and the inter-relationships between faith, reason, and mystical insight. Hopkins develops the religious significance of the central doctrine of the Mind-Only School, the three natures of phenomena by examining in detail the exchange between the Bodhisattva Paramarthasamudgata and Buddha in the seventh chapter of the Sutra Unraveling the Thought concerning the three wheels of doctrine and the three natures documents the markedly different view on the status of reality presented by the fourteenth-century scholar-yogi Shay-rap-gyel-tsen of the Jo-nang-ba order as well as criticisms by Dzong-ka-ba and his Ge-luk-ba` followers. Hopkins fleshes out Tibetan presentations of the provocative issue of the relationship between two types of emptiness in the Mind-Only School and how the topic of two emptinesses is debated today in America, Europe, and Japan, thereby demonstrating how the two forms of scholarship refine and enhance each other (these discussions continue in the three Appendices in this volume). Hopkins demonstrates the types of reasonings established by mind-only practitioners as means to overcome a basic dread of reality.
Dzong-ka-ba was a genius at creating consistency in systems of thought, but sometimes he provided only brief expositions and at other times only suggested his views. Scholars of the Ge-luk-ba sect-like others following a founder's words-have been drawn into the complex problems of extending his thought into those areas that he did not clearly explicate and into re-thinking what was clear but did not manifest the presumed consistency. The working premise is that Dzong-ka-ba's The Essence of Eloquence, though carefully crafted, is subject to the highly creative strategy of "positing his thought as long as consonance with the corpus of his work is maintained. The attempt at resolving apparent contradictions itself fuels increasing interest in the topics, this being a central reason why the Ge-luk-ba system of education, centered around scholastic debate, has been so influential throughout Inner Asia.
Although the superfluity of issues raised in The Essence of Eloquence is susceptible to being laid out in a linear run like a table of contents, (this being shown in the analytical outline after the table of contents in this volume) the only way a reader can react to the multi-sided style of confronting these points is to be within the perspective of the system being considered. Juxtaposing different parts of a treatise and examining their cross-implications, Tibetan monastic textbooks manifest a basic procedure of bringing the whole treatise to bear on a single part, thereby coaxing the participant into developing the worldview of the system. In this way, the overriding context of exposition involves the ramifications of every part (or at least many parts) of a text; the only way for the reader to adjust to this environment is to form the worldview.
Because the exposition moves from issue to issue in a format of confrontational challenges that are episodic, it can at times seem even disjointed, but monastic students learn to live from within a system by being led-in twice-daily debates-to react inside its viewpoint to a plethora of problems. The center of the process, never communicable in words, is the wholeness of the world-view from within which the student learns to live. Like debaters in a monastic college, we also can experience this only by confronting issue after issue, major and minor, in lively embroilment and with hope that the larger perspective will dawn. With this in mind, Hopkins addresses 170 such focal issues in this book.
Tibetan and Mongolian commentators employ various strategies for getting at the meaning of a text by:
dividing the text into sections
providing a synopsis of the topics through an elaborate outline
exploring the range of meanings of particular words
placing an issue in a larger context
extracting issues for extended analysis
juxtaposing seemingly conflicting assertions
finding internal and external evidence to resolve contradictions manipulating meanings so as to create coherence
raising a parallel concern from another context
exposing terminology hardened over centuries of use to analysis of historical development.
These modes of analysis, like those employed by scholars throughout the world, expose knotty problems and resolve seeming or actual contradictions.
Texts are not viewed in isolation as if they live outside of the situation of their culture; they are related to a body of literature and knowledge in such a way that the study of a text is a study of the world. Also, the context provided is not just that of the culture contemporary to or preceding Dzong-ka-ba's text; often, views of scholars subsequent to the text are similarly juxtaposed because the aim is to provide a worldview relevant to the reader's present situation, a comprehensive perspective that makes use of whatever is available. Beyond this, points peripheral to central topics often take center stage such that they provide a wide cultural context for more important issues-the context imbedding the reader in an all-encompassing worldview. These scholars, even when working on small issues, draw on a reserve of...Read more›

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This book offers a fascinating exploration of how provocative issues about reality are refined and debated by Tibetan scholar-practitioners.

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A Saint in Seattle: The Life of the Tibetan Mystic Dezhung Rinpoche Review

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(More customer reviews)A Saint in Seattle is a fascinating book that I did not want to lay aside. The early chapters are devoted to Dhezhung Rinpoche's childhood and early adulthood, and are a wonderful depiction of what intensive spiritual training was like for a gifted lama in early twentieth century Tibet. The brief biographies of his primary teachers are also great to read--both informative and inspiring.
The later chapters focus upon Dhezung Rinpoche's life and teaching activities outside Tibet, primarily in the United States. As one of the very first Tibetan lamas to reside in the United States in the early 1960s, he experienced first hand and helped nurture the gradual spiritual maturing of western students until his death nearly four decades later. This part of the book is filled with anecdotes about dharma in the west--some amusing and some inspiring--that include descriptions of several other famous Tibetan lamas and many Western students. As one of his earlier students, I enjoyed reading about many westerners I have known but had never read about in a publication before who helped to shape Buddhism in the west.
The author, Dr. David Jackson, demonstrates a scholar's attention to detail and accuracy throughout the book that I appreciated. He portrays Dhezhung Rinpoche's many-faceted personality through numerous anecdotes, capturing his great kindness and wisdom, sense of humor, unflagging patience and persistence, seemingly boundless energy, intense focus on meditation throughout all aspects of daily life, amazing breadth of knowledge, and profound humility.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in integrating spiritual practice into everyday life, particularly but not exclusively through the Tibetan Buddhist path. A Saint in Seattle provides spiritual inspiration and a tremendous wealth of information about Tibetan Buddhism as practiced traditionally in Tibet and as transmitted to and practiced by westerners. It is also a wonderfully captivating story of a great spiritual teacher and of the dramatically changing history of Tibetan Buddhism as it migrated west in the 20th century.

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In 1960, the Tibetan lama Dezhung Rinpoche (1906-87) arrived in Seattle after being forced into exile from his native land by the Communist Chinese. Already a revered master of the teachings of all Tibetan Buddhist schools, he would eventually become a teacher of some of Western Buddhism's most notable scholars. This inspiring and unlikely biography of a modern Buddha is fully annotated, and includes photographs.

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Jainism: An Introduction (I.B. Taurus Introductions to Religion) Review

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(More customer reviews)Professor Long's book, Jainism: An Introduction, is a thoroughly researched overview of the Jain tradition, a religion and set of philosophical constructs that have influenced Indian thought for over 2500 years. This succinct, completely engaging overview of Jainism, the historical contexts of Jain intellectual thought, and the relationship of Jainism and Jain philosophers within the greater context of Hinduism, brahminical/Vedic thought, Buddhism, and Indic philosophical movements is indeed quite relevant to understanding and appreciating the Jain communities in India and in the West.
This highly-readable monograph is intended as a an introduction to the Jain tradition; and it is aimed at a college-level audience, but it is also a book with considerable relevance to any person interested in philosophy, religion, history, India, or the evolution of intellectual movements. I highly recommend this book for every reader--it is accessible, engaging, and provocative. One of the aims of the book is to put core Jain (and for that matter, Buddhist and Hindu) beliefs and assumptions about the nature and meaning of existence into an intellectual context, both historical, and applicable to modern-day societies. With an exceptionally clear explanation of core Jain beliefs including non-violence, non-absolutism (or perhaps more easily understood as religious pluralism), detachment from materialism, and the karmic cycle, the author has indeed put the evolution of Jain thought into an appropriate historical context vis-à-vis Buddhism and Hinduism.
Jainism: An Introduction provides the historical context of the Jain founders, Mahavira, and other philosophers; and, how their intellectual thought challenged historical, philosophical movements within Buddhism and Hinduism. Additionally, the book provides a survey of current literature and academic thought concerning the importance of Jain thought within its historical, philosophical, and religious context. I found the examination of current academic thought quite well presented. The examination of Jainism (like Buddhism) as a reaction (in the literal sense) in many regards to brahminical religious structures and thought is quite interesting. The analyses of academic views concerning Jainism and Buddhism as part of the Greater Magadha culture, recent archaeological evidence, and new postulations on the influence of north Indian philosophers provide a greater understanding of core Jain beliefs, and the subsequent influence of the Jain community in India. This book argues for the relevance of Jain thought as a potential solution to many modern crises of religious intolerance, violence, consumerism, materialism, and ecological disasters that the human community continually faces. Interestingly enough, there is also an overview of how Jain thought has actually influenced modern history with a brief examination of Jain influence upon Gandhi and the Indian independence movement.
It is fascinating to learn that the small Jain community has influenced Indic and world religious thought in a variety of ways, and the book provides a thorough overview of the internal logic and consistency of Jain thought over 2500 years. Professor Long presents both the historical context of Jainism, and its relevance to modern society--particularly Jain views on non-violence, religious tolerance, renouncing materialism, ecological sustainability, and vegetarianism. Jainism indeed has a great deal to teach western societies about environmental sustainability and social justice, and may provide a solution for sustainable populations living in balance with nature.
I highly recommend this book to students and to anyone interested in the subject. And, if you happen to believe that Jain thought is just too exotic to read about, think again, for the Jain tradition has a great deal to teach western societies. Perhaps, if more people adopted some of the core beliefs of Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism, we might just find ourselves living in a better world. One should fully understand the historical context and evolution of Jain thought, but perhaps more importantly, one should appreciate the relevance of Jainism in order to solve some of the difficulties modern societies confront.

And...don't forget to read the footnotes and historical chronology!

Do yourself a favor and get this book, and Long's outstanding first book--A Vision for Hinduism: Beyond Hindu Nationalism--about the nature of modern Hindu identity, nationalism, and the relevance of Hindu thought for all contemporary societies.

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Jainism evokes images of monks wearing face-masks to protect insects and mico-organisms from being inhaled. Or of Jains sweeping the ground in front of them to ensure that living creatures are not inadvertently crushed: a practice of non-violence so radical as to defy easy comprehension. Yet for all its apparent exoticism, Jainism is still little understood in the West. What is this mysterious philosophy which originated in the 6th century BCE, whose absolute requirement is vegetarianism, and which now commands a following of four million adherents both in its native India and diaspora communities across the globe? In his welcome new treatment of the Jain religion, Long makes an ancient tradition fully intelligible to the modern reader. Plunging back more than two and a half millennia, to the plains of northern India and the life of a prince who--much like the Buddha--gave up a life of luxury to pursue enlightenment, Long traces the history of the Jain community from founding sage Mahavira to the present day. He explores asceticism, worship, the life of the Jain layperson, relations between Jainism and other Indic traditions, the Jain philosophy of relativity, and the implications of Jain ideals for the contemporary world. The book presents Jainism in a way that is authentic and engaging to specialists and non-specialists alike.

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Meditation on Emptiness Review

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(More customer reviews)This encyclopedic and gound-breaking work inaugurated a new era of Buddhist scholarship in the West and significantly raised the standard for the study of Buddhism. This book is based on Professor Hopkins' Ph.D. dissertation of the same name. Since writing this book he has gone on to supervise the scholarship of numerous leaders in the field of Tibetan Buddhist studies at the University of Virginia, such as Elizabeth Napper, Anne Klein, Joe Wilson, Daniel Perdue, Donald Lopez, Guy Newland, and Georges Dreyfus among others. Together these scholars have produced a body of work which gives us a context and a philosophical vocabulary with which we can plunge into the world of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. This is of immense benefit not only to scholars but to Buddhist practitioners as well. This book started it all. It is a work of amazing depth which plunges into the Tibetan exegesis of the Indian Madhyamaka meditation. This analytical meditation tradition is designed to induce, through meticulous analysis, a direct perception of the absence of the mental and perceptual distortions which are at the root of suffering. The core delusion under which all mind-posessing beings suffer is the belief that phenomena exist inherently, or independently of their causes and conditions, their parts, and their designation by a valid consciousness. The fact that they do not exist in this way is called emptiness. Indian Madhyamaka masters Nagarjuna, Aryadeva, Chandrakirti, and Shantideva express this view in their works. Their analysis is picked up by great luminaries of the Ge-lug-ba tradition in Tibet, such as Dzong-ka-ba and his disciples. Professor Hopkins primarily focuses his exegesis on the practical instructions of Chandrakirti as they are espoused by Tibetan masters Jam-yang-shay-ba, Nga-wang-bel-den, and Jang-gya. It is said by some that an analytic approach to meditation is contrary to the non-dual nature of realization in the Buddhist tradition. Such a view loses sight of the fact that all of these reasonings are aimed precisely at giving rise to such a direct experience. Putting these reasonings into practice can be the basis of profound and transformative growth, but it is up to the reader to breath life into the tradition by bringing these reasonings alive for one's self. Professor Hopkins here gives us a monumental collection of reasonings as well as a supportive analysis of pertinent aspects of Buddhist philosophy and the philosophical history of the Prasangika-Madhyamaka position which can be a cornerstone of our practice as well as future scholarship. Few works before, or even since, can begin to match the ambitious nature of this work which, in my opinion, is fully realized. In this book we see the serious engagement with some questions of fundamental import continued in the West.

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In bringing this remarkable and complex philosophy to life, Jeffrey Hopkins describes the meditational practices by which the Buddhist ideal of emptiness can be realized and shows that, far from being merely abstract, these teachings can be vivid and utterly practical.

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Suffering Is Optional: Three Keys to Freedom and Joy Review

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(More customer reviews)"It takes courage to look deeply into oneself," Cheri Huber writes in the Introduction to this book. She has been practicing Zen meditation for nearly thirty years. This book is the insightful culmination of both her own experience on the cushion, and the results of a 12-week course she taught on suffering. As children we experienced life by living in each moment. As adults we have been conditioned to suffer: "we want what we don't get, aren't satisfied with what we do get, are separated from those or that which we love, and are forced to endure those and that which we do not love," Huber writes. "We suffer when we resist life. We suffer when we believe life should be different. We suffer when we think there is something wrong with life that needs to be changed or fixed." The "clamor of modern life and the endless chatter in our heads" (p. 83) restrict our ability to see beyond our conditioned suffering and return to our childlike sense of wonder in everything we experience.
"It took us a while to get trained in these faulty belief systems," Huber writes, "and it will take us a while to unhook ourselves. We sit still, we see the conditioning and the sabotage for what it is, and we find the courage not to go back to old, familiar, hurtful ways" (p. 16). These "automatic, conditioned, karmic patterns" steal our time, our joy, our good feeling toward ourselves. They steal our life (p. 21). The "three keys" to ending our suffering involve paying attention to everything (pp. 3-54), believing nothing (pp. 57-92), and not taking anything personally (pp. 95-131).
For anyone interested in looking deeply into the nature of suffering and learning how to return to the present moment, Huber's recommended book offers "helpful awareness, helpful insight, helpful friend" (p. 101).
G. Merritt

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Suffering Is Optional: Three Keys to Freedom and Joy centers around three basic aspects of Zen practice: pay attention, believe nothing, and don’t take anything personally.As ending suffering requires that one sees how suffering happens, the book urges readers to be willing to be quiet and pay attention to the process of suffering in effort to see each moment as an opportunity to step beyond illusion into freedom. It also argues that examining beliefs, abandoning them, and returning attention to the present is essential to ending suffering, as is living in the awareness that nothing in the universe is personal.

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Mipham's Dialectics and the Debates on Emptiness: To Be, Not to Be or Neither (Routledgecurzon Critical Studies in Buddhism) Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a useful and sometimes-challenging overview of Mipham's views on Madhyamaka with some big revelations for me, particularly pertaining to his basic posture with regards to the shentong or "emptiness-of-other" doctrine.
This book tries to have it both ways in that it treats a highly specialized topic but also shoots for a broad audience, giving a lot of introductory information on Madhyamaka and its history in India and Tibet. My hunch is that the people who are drawn to this book (like me) aren't going to need the review and are going to get impatient digging through that part of it (like I did).
We need more on Mipham in English. More, more, more. He may be the greatest Tibetan exegete of the last 200 years, an inspiring scholar of staggering genius.
Hey, you! Scholar! I see you working on yet another damned translation of Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika -- put it down! Translate some Mipham instead!

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This is an introduction to the Buddhist philosophy of Emptinesswhichexplores a number of themes in connection with the concept of Emptiness, a highly technical but very central notion in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. It examines the critique by the leading Nyingma school philosopher Mipham (1846-1912) formulated in his diverse writings. The book focuses on related issues such as what is negated by the doctrine of emptiness, the nature of ultimate reality, and the difference between 'extrinsic' and 'intrinsic' emptiness. Karma Phuntsho's book aptly undertakes a thematic and selective discussion of these debates and Mipham's qualms about the Gelukpa understanding of Emptiness in a mixture of narrative and analytic style.

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The Excellent Path to Enlightenment: Oral Teachings on the Root Text of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo Review

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(More customer reviews)It is an interesting book and being interested in philosophy/Buddhist philosophy it is a good read. I would suggest this as a book to other interested in similar genres of text, but I do find literature from the Dali Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh more reader friendly.
I guess this may be a read for the more knowledgeable - so if you have been reading such literature for some time it may be a book for you. If you get this for a good deal pick it up. If you are very keen to discover pick it up.

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Just Add Buddha: Quick Buddhist Solutions for Hellish Bosses, Traffic Jams, Stubborn Spouses, and Other Annoyances of Everyday Life Review

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(More customer reviews)If you're just starting out, this book is a wonderfully simple, accessible, straightforward way to ease yourself into Buddhism without all the mysticism favored in other texts. Laced with humor, this book makes Buddhism seem more do-able: full of practical tidbits for daily use in real life, such as coping with people you can't stand, remaining calm when politicians tick you off, or dealing with that last slice of pizza you really shouldn't have but want all the same. This is the most user-friendly book on Buddhism for absolute beginners that I've seen, and the writing style is humorous, personal, and honest. I've read his earlier book, "What Would Buddha Do?", and I like this book, its content, and its format even better.

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Written for spiritual seekers who deal with unenlightened coworkers and inconsiderate bank tellers more often than Zen masters and Tibetan monks, this book demonstrates the practical side of Buddhism. Author Franz Metcalf shows how to weave simple vows, quick rethinks, instant relaxations, fast visualizations, and many other stripped-down Buddhist practices into every area of life. Individually, Metcalf's techniques work as quick fixes for specific dilemmas, but woven together, they gradually strengthen one's spiritual base when one day a habitual way of being has been quietly transformed. While not written to impress pure Buddhists, this book takes Buddhism seriously. Approachable sections on Buddhism's rich tradition and a sprinkling of quotes from ancient scripture and contemporary teachers connect the book's practices to the deeper wisdom underlying them. Always, Just Add Buddha remains squarely focused on daily life, drawing out the most practical aspects of Buddhism.

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