Books in Brief
Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are
By Jack Kornfield
Shambhala Publications 2011; 304 pp., $24.95 (cloth) A Lamp in the Darkness: Illuminating the Path Through Difficult Times
By Jack Kornfield
Sounds True 2011; 248 pp., $19.95 (cloth) Jack
Kornfield, who trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma, and
India, is a founder of both Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock
Meditation Center. His previous books, including A Path With Heart and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, have sold more than a million copies. Now he has two new books out. Bringing Home the Dharma,
a synthesis of twenty-five years of Kornfield’s writings, has a wide
scope— everything from parenting to drugs to the nature of
enlightenment. “All aspects of your life are your field of practice,”
Kornfield says in the introduction. “This very life, your work, your
family, your community is the only place for awakening.” A Lamp in the Darkness,
which includes a CD, will be especially appealing to readers who are
dealing with difficult situations. According to Kornfield, we each have
“one who knows,” a witnessing consciousness that is calm, clear, and
accepting, even in the face of illness, loss, or depression. The
meditations and teachings in A Lamp in the Darkness will help readers begin to trust this life force and thereby transform their difficulties. EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think, to Create the World We Want
By Frances Moore Lappé
Nation Books 2011; 304 pp., $26 (cloth) Several years ago, Frances Moore Lappé, author of the groundbreaking Diet for a Small Planet,
participated in a conference on the global environmental crisis. But
instead of leaving the conference pumped up to put into practice new
tools for helping the planet, she left feeling overwhelmed and hopeless,
and she suspected a lot of other people felt the same way. Such
feelings, says Lappé, prevent us from taking action, and we can’t afford
inaction. The environmental crisis is grave and we need all hands on
deck to survive it. But—and she’s very clear about this—we can survive
it. In EcoMind,
Lappé argues that the first thing we need to do to effect change is to
transform our way of thinking. There are seven “thought-traps” that keep
us paralyzed and powerless, but there are seven contrasting
“thought-leaps” that could enable us to find green solutions. This is an
empowering, hopeful book, full of examples of how a wide range of
communities have solved environmental problems. The Way of Natural History
Edited by Thomas Lowe Fleischner
Trinity University Press 2011; 204 pp., $16.95 (paper) The Way of Natural History
is an anthology of nature writing with a contemplative bent. Its
editor, Thomas Lowe Fleischner, says it is probably not coincidental
that the Buddha reached enlightenment while seated under a tree.
“Natural history and mindfulness,” he says, “are two surfaces of the
same leaf, a seamless merging of attentiveness outward and inward.” Some
people find it easier to look inward, others to look outward. But in
either case, the practice of mindful attention is the same and the two
practices are complementary. Contributors to this handsome volume
include Zen poet Jane Hirshfield and Zen master Robert Aitken, an
important voice for socially engaged Buddhism who died in 2010. A Profound Mind: Cultivating Wisdom in Everyday Life
By the Dalai Lama
Harmony Books 2011; 160 pp., $23 (cloth) A Profound Mind is based on talks the Dalai Lama gave in New York City in which he delved into the meaning of ancient texts such as the Diamond Cutter Sutra and Seventy Verses on Emptiness.
I’m not trying to tell you that the final result is beach reading, but
it is also not the inaccessible tome you might think. His teachings are
clear, concise, and fresh, and they have a practical aspect. His
aspiration for this book is to dispel misconceptions about Buddhism by
mapping out its true beliefs, and to invite people of other faiths to
incorporate into their practice any elements of Buddhism that they feel
would be helpful. The afterword is by Richard Gere. Your True Home: The Everyday Wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh
Compiled and edited by Melvin McLeod
Shambhala Publications 2011; 384 pp., $17.95 (paper) According
to Thich Nhat Hanh, our true home is in the here and the now. This
isn’t an abstract idea, but something we can touch and live in every
moment. Your True Home is a collection of 365 pithy teachings by Thay. In the editor’s preface, the Shambhala Sun’s
Melvin McLeod suggests reading them slowly, maybe one or two a day, in
order to savor and digest them more fully. This is excellent advice, but
whenever I sit down with the book, I find myself reading “just one
more” and “just one more” again. The diverse themes include
reconciliation, freedom, sexuality, and conscious breathing. One of my
favorites is No. 76: “Sometimes you encounter people who are so pure,
beautiful, and content. They give you the impression that they are
divine, that they are actually saints or holy beings. What you perceive
in them is their awakened self, their buddhanature, and what they
reflect back to you is your own capacity for being awake.” Our Secret Territory: The Essence of Storytelling
By Laura Simms
Sentient Publications 2011; 160 pp., $14.95 (paper) Storytelling,
says Laura Simms, provides us with immediate relief from stress and
self-preoccupation; urges us into wisdom; and ultimately connects us to
our buddhanature. Part lyrical treatise on the power of storytelling,
part memoir, Our Secret Territory
is woven through with quotes, poems, and tales. Simms is the adoptive
mother of ex-child soldier Ishmael Beah, author of the bestseller A Long Way Gone,
and some of the most moving parts of her book deal with their
relationship. When Beah first came to the U.S., Simms thought that he’d
just stay with her for the summer, then in the fall she’d find a “real”
family for him to live with. He was silent when she told him this plan.
Finally, he said: “I thought you were going to be my mother.” Simms
suddenly felt every cell in her body adjust to a binding decision. “You
are right,” she said. “I am your mother.” And that was that, she writes,
“as fast and decisive as an event in a fairytale, and as true as the
best stories.” A Fish Trapped Inside the Wind
By Christien Gholson
Parthian 2011; 268 pp., $14.95 (paper)
This
debut novel is described as having six main characters: a Buddhist
magician, a journalist, a clairvoyant, an aging Casanova, a Catholic
priest, and a Rimbaud scholar. But I think the mysterious fish threading
throughout the story have such surreal weight that they almost
constitute a seventh character. On the morning of the festival day of
St. Woelfred, fish are found dead, scattered everywhere throughout a
small cement factory town in Belgium. Did the saint leave the fish as
some kind of sign or was it Contexture, an environmental activist dance
troupe known to get naked? Illusion is the theme of A Fish Trapped Inside the Wind
and this is best summed up by the book’s opening epigraph from the
Lankavantara Sutra: “Things are not what they seem. Nor are they
otherwise…” The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment
By Anne Waldman
Coffee House Press 2011; 720 pp., $40 (cloth)
In
a world where most poetry collections are slender to the point of being
anorexic, kudos to Coffee House Press for publishing such a substantial
work. The Iovis Trilogy
is Anne Waldman’s epic, richly textured poem exploring the
manifestations of patriarchy, braiding history and myth, Buddhist
philosophy, and conversation snippets. An award-winning poet, longtime
Buddhist, and social activist, Waldman was referred to by Allen Ginsberg
as his “spiritual wife,” and in 1974 they founded The Jack Kerouac
School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. Waldman is now the
artistic director of the school’s summer writing program and she has
forty books and chapbooks of poetry under her belt.
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