Miniatures of a Zen Master
By Robert Aitken
Counterpoint, 2008; 260 pp., $24 (cloth)
This collection of very short texts—brief teachings, insights, memories, and spiritual observations—from the venerable Robert Aitken make poignant reading. Perhaps it’s as close as we’ll get to an autobiography of the American Zen master, political activist, and man of letters. Aitken’s keen mind has weathered the years well and these “late thoughts” are its distillate. They include formative insights from boyhood, recollections of teaching moments, and reflections on everyday events. Most affecting, however, is the old master’s matter-of-fact awareness of mortality (“What happens after death? I really don’t know but—at ninety—I’ll find out soon”), his faith in humanity, and his appreciation for paradox. Aitken is a man of Zen to the end.
Brilliant Sanity: Buddhist Approaches to Psychotherapy
Edited by Francis J. Kaklauskas, Susan Nimanheminda, Louis Hoffman, and MacAndrew S. Jack
University of the Rockies Press, 2008; 396 pp., $34.95 (paper)
Of the many books exploring the common ground between Buddhism and psychology, this collection is distinct because all of its contributors are (or were—there is one posthumous contribution) accomplished in both disciplines. Brilliant Sanity, therefore, doesn’t have to make an argument for the existence of a complementary relationship between the two—that’s assumed. Rather, it maps the territory and suggests a path for the clinician who does both. What is the required conceptual framework? How does that framework relate to common psychotherapeutic models? What training is required for the contemplative psychotherapist? What are the advantages and potential pitfalls of practicing both? Brilliant Sanity is a capstone to the contemplative psychotherapy program at Naropa University, which celebrated its thirtieth year in 2006 with a conference where many of these contributors made presentations.
The Book of Tibetan Medicine: How to Use Tibetan Healing for Personal Wellbeing
By Ralph Quinlan Forde
Gaia, 2008; 176 pp., $19.95 (paper)
This book on Tibetan medicine, a thousand-year-old system that draws on theory and technique from ancient India, China, Persia, and Greece, is as informative as it is attractive. Author Ralph Quinlan Forde walks us through Tibetan medicine’s development, principles, and methods in pithy chapters that are accompanied by eye-catching photos and a pleasing design. But Forde’s treatment is not superficial. He takes pains to explain Tibetan medicine’s cultural and spiritual context, which is dramatically different from the milieu in which Western medicine is practiced. A holistic, integrated system, Tibetan medicine looks for the root causes of health and sickness in cosmology (such as seasonal changes), human factors (such as diet and behavior), and the effect of spiritual dynamics (such as karma). While many of its therapeutic techniques are commonplace these days (dietary changes, herbal remedies, massage, etc.), without knowledge of the back story, some cures will strike you as peculiar (cupping, pills made of valuable metals, special prayers). Still, Forde may have the power to make a believer out of you.
Haiku Mind: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness & Open Your Heart
By Patricia Donegan
Shambhala Publications, 2008; 231 pp., $18 (cloth)
My thin poetic education was launched in elementary school with an introduction to haiku—seventeen syllables in three phrases of 5–7–5. And because I could compose a haiku at ten, I concluded they were child’s play. Haiku are that, but so much more. Here poet, translator, and meditation teacher Patricia Donegan introduces us to the idea of haiku mind, which she defines as “a simple yet profound way of seeing our everyday world and living our lives with the awareness of the moment expressed in haiku.” To instill haiku mind in the reader, Donegan has us practice it through the 108 poems she’s selected from haiku masters past and present. Her format is similar to the Sun’s “About a Poem” department. Each poem is followed by a short (250-word) reflection on its theme and a brief biography of the poet. This short collection may unlock the door to your haiku mind.
The Paradox of Becoming
By Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Metta Forest Monastery, 2008; 186 pp., free (paper)
The concept of “becoming” is a central but still subtle topic in the Buddhist tradition. Most simply, it describes the process by which the mind creates itself. And by unraveling that tendency, the Buddha preached, we are released from suffering. There’s probably no one better than Thanissaro Bhikkhu, a doctrinal and intellectual heavyweight in American Buddhism, to try to explain the process of becoming. The strategy, says Thanissaro Bhikkhu, pointing to scripture from the Pali canon, is to “create a state of becoming in the mind from which one can watch the potentials of kamma as they come into being, but without fueling the desire to do anything with regard to these potentials at all.” In other words, “Don’t just do something, sit there!” You’ll have to read the whole book to realize why, coming from Thanissaro Bhikkhu, that’s not a glib statement.
Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha
By Jack Kerouac
Viking, 2008; 146 pp., $24.95 (cloth)
The Dharma Bums
By Jack Kerouac
Penguin Classics, 2008; 187 pp., $15 (paper)
In 1954, years before his breakthrough success with On the Road, Jack Kerouac toiled in the obscurity of public libraries, poring over Buddhist writings. The creative result was Wake Up, a Kerouac-styled biography of the historical Buddha. It was published posthumously in serialized form in Tricycle between 1993 and 1995. Its issue this year, coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of The Dharma Bums, marks its first publication in book form. If you’re a collector, you can also pick up a commemorative edition of The Dharma Bums, Kerouac’s semi-fictional chronicle of his West Coast adventures with poet–naturalist Gary Snyder and the rest of the Beat gang. The novel provides a loose paper trail of Kerouac’s deep, but ultimately fleeting, interest in Buddhism. Dharma Bums never received the positive critical acclaim of On the Road and by unhappy circumstance, its publication coincided with a parting of ways for Kerouac and many of his Beat contemporaries.
The Book of Tibetan Medicine: How to Use Tibetan Healing for Personal Wellbeing
By Ralph Quinlan Forde
Gaia, 2008; 176 pp., $19.95 (paper)
This book on Tibetan medicine, a thousand-year-old system that draws on theory and technique from ancient India, China, Persia, and Greece, is as informative as it is attractive. Author Ralph Quinlan Forde walks us through Tibetan medicine’s development, principles, and methods in pithy chapters that are accompanied by eye-catching photos and a pleasing design. But Forde’s treatment is not superficial. He takes pains to explain Tibetan medicine’s cultural and spiritual context, which is dramatically different from the milieu in which Western medicine is practiced. A holistic, integrated system, Tibetan medicine looks for the root causes of health and sickness in cosmology (such as seasonal changes), human factors (such as diet and behavior), and the effect of spiritual dynamics (such as karma). While many of its therapeutic techniques are commonplace these days (dietary changes, herbal remedies, massage, etc.), without knowledge of the back story, some cures will strike you as peculiar (cupping, pills made of valuable metals, special prayers). Still, Forde may have the power to make a believer out of you.
The Inner Tradition of Yoga: A Guide to Yoga Philosophy for the Contemporary Practitioner
By Michael Stone
Shambhala Publications, 2008; 234; $16.95 (paper)
While yoga has exploded in popularity in the last decade, many of the tradition’s leading practitioners have been working to correct a persistent misunderstanding about yoga—that it is a practice that works only with the body. Add Michael Stone—a young yoga teacher, Buddhist practitioner, and psychotherapist—to that list. Stone’s thoughtful and thorough presentation of yogic philosophy and Buddhist psychology, as it relates to working with the mind/body, will resonate with novices and veterans from both traditions.