Opening up the Scriptures

As soon as I started reading the preface in this Kindle edition, I noticed a problem I’ve seen in other Kindle books. Hyphens that might have made sense in a printed book appear in places where they’re not needed. Thus “Richard John Neuhaus” comes out as “Richard John Neu- haus.” I wondered if this might have something to do with the hack I did to allow left justification, but no. When I viewed the book on Kindle for PC, the unnecessary hyphen and space also appear.

In other places, too, spaces appear in odd places. For example, in one passage there is a space in the the middle of a date, followed in the next sentence by one in the middle of a word:

We take the clearest example: Theobold’s critical analysis of them in 198 7.⁴⁶ The title already speaks volumes: “The Autonomy of His torical Criticism, Expression of Incredulity or Theological Necessity.”

I also saw something I haven’t seen before. In the middle of the preface, a shaded box telling us about one of the editors suddenly and mysteriously appears in the middle of the text. I’ve never been a fan of sidebars and boxes in books, but in a Kindle edition they are particularly bizarre.

Now, on to the content. To enjoy this book, you’ll need to be somewhat familiar with the history of modern Biblical studies. In the nineteenth century, a “higher criticism” developed, which consisted of reading the Bible with a view to determining the history of its composition and redaction, rather than its meaning for the Christian life. This movement accelerated in the twentieth century. Particular mention should be made of Rudolf Bultmann, who explicitly sought to remove from consideration elements he saw as mythological. Protestants were at first at the forefront of this movement, but in 1943 the papal encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu gave Catholics the green light to join in.

The theme of the talks and papers collected in this book is that the historical-critical method in Biblical studies has run into problems. Despite the subtitle, only the first and last are by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (as he then was). The intervening essays are by other European scholars.

Among the criticisms of the historical-method are that it produces a never-ending maze of speculation and hypotheses; it ignores senses other than the purely historical; in its examination of minute parts of the Bible it ignores the whole; and that it rests on unquestioned philosophical presuppositions.

The task now, then, is to move forward, yet to do so in a way that incorporates rather than dismisses the findings of textual criticism. Thus one can ask, why are we reading the Bible anyway, and is there a larger sense to it than the purely historical meaning of small passages? This is a question that affects Protestants as much as Catholics, though for the Catholic Church there is the special problem of the relationship between the magisterium and textual scholars.

The contributions in the book are interesting as careful and thoughtful pieces of intellectual history, and no doubt the discussion will go on — Ratzinger thinks it might take a whole generation to come to fruition. How much impact all this will have on the average churchgoer is less certain.


Jose Granados, Carlos Granados, and Luis Sanchez-Navarro, editors. Opening up the Scriptures: Joseph Ratzinger and the Foundations of Biblical Interpretation. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2008. Kindle edition. ASIN B001GINV4C. $14.75.

Change Your Amazon Kindle to Allow Left Justification

Thanks to various kind people on the Internet (Gearhead, NiLuJe, and others), here’s how I changed my Kindle 4 to allow left justification instead of the appalling full justification it produces out of the box. Much better!

1. Download Notepad++ Installer to your PC from http://notepad-plus-plus.org. (You’ll need this software because Windows Notepad inserts the wrong kind of end-of-line characters, so I’m told.)

2. Run the Installer exe to install Notepad++ on your PC.

3. Turn on the Kindle.

4. Press the HOME button on Kindle.

5. Connect the Kindle to your PC with its USB cable. The Kindle goes into “USB Drive Mode.”

6. On the PC, open the Kindle “drive.” (In my case, it came up as the D: drive.)

7. In Windows Explorer, click ORGANIZE, then FOLDER AND SEARCH OPTIONS, then the VIEW tab. Under the ADVANCED SETTINGS section, select the radio button for SHOW HIDDEN FILES, FOLDERS, AND DRIVES. Uncheck HIDE PROTECTED OPERATING SYSTEM FILES. Click APPLY and then OK. A folder named “system” now shows up in Windows Explorer.

8. The file you want is in a folder within “system” named “D:\system\com.amazon.ebook.booklet.reader” and the file is named “reader.pref.” COPY and PASTE this file to somewhere on your PC (e.g., in “Documents”).

9. Make a second copy of the unaltered file on your PC, named for example “reader.pref_old.” (This is just a backup in case you mess up the editing.)

10. Launch Notepad++.

11. Open the copy of the “reader.pref” file on your PC.

12. Add the hack line to the bottom of the file:

ALLOW_JUSTIFICATION_CHANGE=true

13. Do FILE SAVE and FILE EXIT in Notepad++.

14. Now COPY and PASTE the edited “reader.pref” file from your PC back to its original place on the Kindle “drive.” This will prompt you to COPY AND REPLACE the original file.

15. Unplug the USB cable connecting the Kindle to the PC.

16. On the Kindle, do HOME button, MENU button, SETTINGS option, MENU button, and RESTART option.

17. Wait thirty seconds or so until the Kindle has completely restarted itself.

18. Go into a book on the Kindle.

19. Press MENU then select CHANGE FONT SIZE. You should now have an option to select JUSTIFICATION LEFT.

19. Here’s the tricky part. Some books apparently make changing the justification disabled. The justification options appear grayed out in this case. To get around this, find a book that allows justification changes, change the setting to LEFT in that book, then go back to the one where it was grayed out. It will still be grayed out, but your change to LEFT will remain in place.

20. I’m not a computer expert, so you use the above procedure at your own risk!

Amazon Kindle

I bought a Kindle.

My main reason for buying it was to save storage space. I’ve bought about 30–40 books a year for the past fifteen years or so, and I’m continually running out of bookshelf space. I have to take books to used bookstores or donate them to the library, not because I don’t want them, but because I need to free up space.

A second reason was that shipping books to Canada is relatively expensive and takes much longer than shipping books domestically within the United States. To save on the time and expense of shipping the Kindle itself, I bought the device at a local Staples, where the price was $119 Canadian dollars plus Canadian taxes.

I chose the Kindle because, although only about 10 percent of books in print are available for the Kindle, that’s a far higher percentage than any competing device.

Registering it was relatively straightforward, though the onscreen keyboard was a pain to operate with only the five-way key at the bottom. The model I bought doesn’t have a real keyboard or a touchscreen.

I then purchased a Kindle ebook via my PC, and presto, it shows up on my Kindle. (Of course, this assumes you already have a Wi-Fi router.)

It’s relatively easy to read the characters on the Kindle screen, but you do need to have just the right amount of light — enough to see the text, but not so much that you get glare reflected back.

Now for the things I don’t like.

The text justification is awful. I mean absolutely AWFUL. It doesn’t hyphenate words, and it uses monster wordspaces to produce full justification. An option for ragged right margins doesn’t exist on this model, unless you go in and do a hack described in various places on the Internet. (Google KINDLE ALLOW JUSTIFICATION CHANGE.)

Finding a particular page in the ebook is much harder than it would be with a real book.

And, at six inches diagonally, the screen is just a tad small for my liking.

On the whole, then, I would describe myself as “moderately pleased” with my purchase.

You're Not Going Crazy . . . You're Just Waking Up!

As the title suggests, You’re Not Going Crazy . . . You’re Just Waking Up! is aimed at those who have just woken up and who are wondering what is happening. This is the same ground that Adyashanti specializes in, but Mirdad’s treatment is rooted in the Course in Miracles. Specifically, much of what he says forms a sort of expanded commentary on chapter 4 section I.A of the Manual for Teachers, a section titled “Development of Trust.” Mirdad proposes a five-stage model for the process after awakening, consisting of dismantling, emptiness, disorientation, rebuilding, and a new life.

The book certainly is short, but given that I was reading it on the computer, I welcomed this. Also, Mirdad gets straight to the point as he discusses each topic, and he doesn’t pad his book out with chatter — his discussion is dense with distilled wisdom. Hence, I’m very satisfied with this, my first e-book purchase.

Michael Mirdad. You’re Not Going Crazy . . . You’re Just Waking Up! The Five Stages of the Soul Transformation Process. Kindle Edition. Sedona, Ariz.: Grail Press, 2011. ASIN B005ELPGEA. $7.99.

Bringing Home the Dharma

Coming out just before Christmas 2011 is this latest offering from author and retreat leader Jack Kornfield. Its stated theme is that awakening, though it may be fueled by formal meditation, is intimately related to every aspect of life. I say “stated” because the book is really a broad retrospective on Kornfield’s long career as a meditation teacher. He addresses mindfulness in the light of decades of practice, celebrates the teachers who originally inspired him in the 1970s, and surveys the particular difficulties Buddhism faced as it filtered into an American context over the last forty years.

With such an extensive background, Kornfield is able to address Buddhist meditation not only from the Pali texts and from his own experience, but also by drawing on huge experience in dealing with the problems and successes of retreatants. This has demonstrated to him again and again the healing power of choiceless awareness. Though some basic meditation instructions appear in the last section of the book, the emphasis is on offering reflections for experienced meditators.

Kornfield’s Buddhism is very much Buddhism for Westerners rather than traditional, “hardcore” Buddhism. He discusses the value of a peaceful mind when encountering the world, and in particular when facing its political conflicts. He also covers the subject of parenting for meditators. One chapter addresses the issue of forgiveness, certainly a concern for many, while not being an issue emphasized in more traditional approaches. The path to enlightenment is often turbulent, he goes on to say, and the peace that follows the turbulence is then agitated when we come back into contact with the world outside of retreat centers.

In the middle sections of the book, Kornfield surveys the history of his involvement in Buddhism. He reflects on his initiation into Buddhism as a twenty-something monk in Thailand and repeats stories of his interactions with Ajahn Chah. The material on Dipa Ma I found particularly powerful and inspiring. Kornfield then describes the characteristics of the type of Buddhism he has developed since the 1970s — a lay Theravada movement led by converts and centered around meditation rather than monasteries. He calls this “American Buddhism,” though it has to be said that it’s really only one of the many forms of Buddhism in America, since it coexists with other, more traditional varieties. He describes the founding of the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts and Spirit Rock meditation center in California. Other topics covered include some of the hot topics of the last forty years — drugs, the sex lives of gurus, and the relationship between meditation and psychotherapy.

Though Bringing Home the Dharma offers little that will be new to fans of Kornfield’s earlier works, I think they will enjoy it as a summing up of his long teaching career.

Jack Kornfield. Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are. Shambhala, 2011. Hardcover. 304 pages. ISBN 9781590309131. $24.95.

The Mandala of Being: A Compass for Living in the Now

By Richard Moss, Author of Inside-Out Healing: Transforming Your Life Through the Power of Presence


Mandala is a Sanskrit word meaning “circle.” It has been a universal symbol over millennia, particularly in Eastern Spiritual traditions. In those traditions, mandalas are a form of sacred art — elaborate paintings that symbolically depict the journey from the world of illusion created by the ego to the realization of the timeless self at the center of us all.

The Mandala of Being is a simple way of modeling how your thinking mind operates relative to being aware in the present moment. It teaches you how to consistently live in the Now by graphically illustrating that there are only four places your thinking can carry you into when you aren’t fully grounded in the present. Once you grasp the four ways you leave the Now, you simultneously understand how to return to your aware self, which always in the Now.

A practical tool for the practice of presence, the Mandala of Being will help you wake up and live more in awareness instead of in your head. In this way, you learn how to meet life’s greatest challenges with much less suffering. And sometimes, as I have observed in my retreats, a deep experience of presence results in physical healing.

Spend a few moments contemplating the following diagram. It is a representation of every single moment of your life. Notice that the arrows are pointing away from the Now and toward Me, You, Past, and Future. This represents where your thinking mind takes you when you are not truly present. As we progress in the work with the Mandala, you will see that what you are learning is how to turn those arrows around so that you are grounded in the present, in awareness.

The Mandala of Being: The Four Places the Mind Goes When Attention Leaves the Now

As you examine the Mandala diagram, how many Nows do you see? (Hint: This is a trick question.)

If you answered “One,” look again. The Mandala of Being illustrates that there is only Now, but in a psychological sense, there are five different states of Now.

First and foremost, there is a particular quality of “Nowness” represented by the central Now position that is your aware self. In this central Now, you are fully embodied in the present moment. It can be likened to the state of flow or meditation. Your body is awake and ready, yet profoundly relaxed; your mind is simultaneously focused yet spacious. You are present with, and not at all in conflict with, what is. This state is what is meant by the expression Being in the Now. Relative to this, there are four other states of Now-ness:

1. The Past position represents when your thinking mind carries you into the past, and you identify with your thoughts about specific memories. Past stories will either generate a sense of pleasant reminiscence (for example, remembering something that made you proud or happy) or unpleasant reminiscence (as when you remember a situation that made you feel sad, guilty, or regretful).

2. The Future position represents any moment when you identify with your thoughts about the future, and as a result, your emotional state becomes determined by the nature of those thoughts. Since the future is always imaginary, these Future stories will either generate positive anticipation with emotions of hopefulness or eagerness, or negative anticipation with emotions of anxiety or even terror.

3. The Me position represents the emotional quality you experience in the present moment as a result of identifying with your judgments about yourself. As we have discussed, Me stories inevitably make you feel special: either grandiose or depressive.

4. And, finally, the You position represents what happens when you identify with your beliefs and judgments about other people or anything else you can think of: your career, the situation you are in, money, politics, God. . . the list is really endless. These stories will either elevate or diminish the person or thing you are thinking about, and as you identify with these You stories, you will experience emotions ranging from adoration to hate to hurt.

What the Mandala shows is that your emotional reality is not caused by something outside you. Rather, it is caused by your own thoughts: the stories you tell yourself about yourself, others, the past, and the future. These are the four ways you build a mental reality that is not actually real and in which you can create immense emotional suffering. You lose connection to your true self.

By working with the Mandala model, you will start to understand the relationship between what you are thinking and the emotions you are feeling, along with the corresponding effects you experience in your body.


The above is an excerpt from the book Inside-Out Healing: Transforming Your Life Through the Power of Presence by Richard Moss. The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

Copyright © 2011 Richard Moss, author of Inside-Out Healing: Transforming Your Life Through the Power of Presence

Michael Washburn

In his 1930 essay Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud termed the spiritual feeling of oneness the “the oceanic experience” and dismissed it as a regression to an infantile state of consciousness. Fifty years later, Ken Wilber criticized Freud’s assessment as the “pre-equals-trans fallacy.”

In Michael Washburn’s Embodied Spirituality in a Sacred World, the discussion moves forward. Washburn’s view is that early experiences of unity and later experiences of unity do have something in common, even though they are not identical. He proposes a spiral model: after progressing along life’s path, we arrive at a similar place in a more developed form.

His book examines six aspects of this path, some of which are interior (basic energy, the ego), and some of which are exterior (the other, the world). He tracks each aspect over the human life-cycle.

By about the age of about six months, the infant conceives that its sensory experiences represent not an undifferentiated whole but rather discrete objects. At the same time, instead having to passively consume whatever experiences come to it, the young child gains the ability to select its experiences, working to gain pleasant ones and avoid unpleasant ones. The child begins to identify with its body as “me.”

This process of identification continues until some time in midlife, when a crisis occurs. At the time of this crisis, the individual feels alienated and disillusioned with life. He or she turns within.

This inward-directed attention causes a build-up of biopsychic energy in what Washburn calls the “Dynamic Ground,” to the point that it erupts in what Washburn calls an “awakening.” This is the beginning of a process of undoing repression.

Embodied Spirituality in a Sacred World is interesting as a theory, but what it needed, I felt, was more support from documented evidence. The early parts of life have certainly been verified by experimental observation of young children, but my perspective is that the later parts of life are far more variable than the author’s Jungian model suggests. Still, the book comes with my wholehearted recommendation.

Michael Washburn. Embodied Spirituality in a Sacred World. State University of New York Press, 2003. Paperback. 247 pages. ISBN 9780791458488. $29.95.

Living Dharma

Shambhala has reissued this set of interviews with a dozen Buddhist masters that Jack Kornfield carried out during his time in Thailand in the 1970s. They provide a rich sample of different perspectives on meditation in the tradition of Theravada Buddhism. Some are deeply rooted in the Pali texts; others are more intuitive and inspired by contemporary wisdom. While some are difficult reading, all will repay careful study. What they demonstrate is that each meditator, after a lifetime of practice, can and will develop his or her own view on the essentials. Not only that, but the collection as a whole provides a snapshot of the Thai meditation tradition as it stood almost four decades ago.

Jack Kornfield. Living Dharma: Teachings and Meditation Instructions from Twelve Theravada Masters. 2nd edition. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2010. Paperback. 336 pages. ISBN 9781590308325. $18.95.

Falling into Grace

Adyashanti, the post-Zen teacher from the San Francisco Bay Area, has a new book coming out in a few weeks’ time. Many of those who go to his events have decades of experience with spiritual groups. His editor asked him if he would write something instead for beginners. Adyashanti replied that he had noticed that repeating the basics was, perhaps surprisingly, equally valuable for experienced people. Hence his approach in this new book is to go over the basic questions of human suffering and the construction of personal identity. Falling into Grace is available for pre-order on Amazon (click the cover or the link below), or you can order the book from Adyashanti’s website.

Adyashanti. Falling into Grace: Insights on the End of Suffering. Boulder, Col.: Sounds True, 2011. Hardcover. 240 pages. ISBN 9781604070873. $24.95.

What the Mystics Know

Richard Rohr sure is a prolific writer. I’ve only just finished his last book, The Naked Now, and now I learn he has a new one coming out in April 2011. It turns out that the next one is not entirely new, but is rather a compilation from his writings over the last quarter-century — a good way to get to know how his thought has ranged. However, it’s more than a simple anthology, since the content is arranged thematically around seven topics that begin with dissatisfaction with ordinary life and lead on to mystical insight.

Richard Rohr. What the Mystics Know: Seven Profound Principles for Discovering Your Deeper Self. Crossroad, 2011. Paperback. 192 pages. ISBN 9780824526221. $19.95.

Light of the World

Light of the World is the new book-length interview with Pope Benedict XVI by Peter Seewald, the third such project the author has undertaken. In it, the pope is asked to address the issues of the day, including the really difficult issues such as the clerical abuse scandals, the position of Christianity in a secular world, and the relationship between Christianity and Islam.

The Holy Father’s responses to the questions are always interesting and thoughtful. His way of approaching problems is to look for the broad intellectual and social trends involved. Rarely does he get down to practical details.

For example, it’s clear that the pope would like to see a renewal of Christianity in Europe. However, about the most concrete suggestion he has is that bishops should “give catechesis a new heart and a new face” (p. 140).

Despite the fuss made back in November by misinformed journalists, there’s really nothing new in the book. What it does offer, though, is an insight into Pope Benedict’s thought.

Pope Benedict XVI, Peter Seewald. Light of the World: The Pope, The Church and The Signs Of The Times. Ignatius, 2010. Hardcover. 256 pages. ISBN 9781586176068. $21.95.

The Naked Now

I think I’ve found out what happened to The Third Eye book, which appeared on the Internet for a while and then disappeared again. I’ve been reading Fr. Rohr’s 2009 book The Naked Now, and the “third eye” terminology appears frequently in it. So perhaps the material that was to have been a book titled The Third Eye morphed into The Naked Now.

In the three-eyes metaphor, the first eye is our senses, the second eye is our capacity for rational thought, and the third eye is our ability to “taste” the wholeness of something. This occurs when “our heart space, our mind space, and our body awareness are all simultaneously open and nonresistant” (p. 28).

“As you will see, contemplation, my word for this larger seeing, keeps the whole field open; it remains vulnerable before the moment, the event, or the person — before it divides and tries to conquer or control it. Contemplatives refuse to create false dichotomies, dividing the field for the sake of the quick comfort of their ego. They do not rush to polarity thinking to take away their mental anxiety” (p. 34).

He uses the word “nondual“ a lot in the book, but he seems to mean by it something like “not being seduced into hasty propositional conclusions.“ “Nondual thinking,” “contemplation,” and “non-polarity thinking” are all synonyms in Fr. Rohr’s vocabulary. He devotes chapter 17 to defining what nondual thinking is not. So, for example, he says it’s not “relativism,” “esoteric Eastern philosophy,” or “avoidance of appropriate judgments” (pp. 129-130).

Third-eye seeing can only occur in the present moment, and this immersion in the present, without rushing into conceptual thinking, is the “naked now” of the title. Fr. Rohr may have started thinking about the present moment after reading The Power of Now, but he seems to be coming from a different place. He points to Luke 17:23, where Jesus says: “There will be those who will say to you, ‘Look, there he is,’ or ‘Look, here he is.’ Do not go off, do not run in pursuit.” This, he says, is Jesus’ way of stopping people from limiting God’s action and presence to a particular location. Then Fr. Rohr comments: “In relativizing both time and space, Jesus is doing something similar to what Eckhart Tolle is doing for many today with his ‘power of now’” (p. 76).

Eight appendices give practical exercises for cultivating this third-eye, “naked now” seeing.

Richard Rohr. The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See. New York: Crossroad, 2009. Paperback. 192 pages. ISBN 9780824525439. $19.95.

Kundalini Rising

There have been so many discussions about kuṇḍalinī that I wanted to find out more about the phenomenon. Kundalini Rising is a collection of a couple of dozen essays by different authors, thus allowing one to hear from multiple voices on the subject.

The most informative part of the book for me was its first quarter, where half a dozen writers describe their personal experiences of kuṇḍalinī. These give insider accounts with a minimum of theoretical superstructure.

The remaining three quarters of the book offer medical, cultural, and spiritual perspectives on kuṇḍalinī. I have to say that these ventures into a theory of kuṇḍalinī didn’t inspire confidence. The general impression I’m left with is one of “We don’t really know, but we’re going to speculate anyway.” Perhaps the wisest perspective came from an interview with Gopi Krishna. He compares the efforts of psychologists to understand kuṇḍalinī with the difficulties that medieval alchemists might have faced if introduced to modern chemistry. Ultimately, he suggests, “The Reality which is unveiled in the duration of the experience is beyond the grasp of the intellect and the power of language to describe” (p. 278). This doesn’t stop him, though, from speculating that kuṇḍalinī represents evolution in progress — a view since widely taken up without critical examination. I’m not familiar with the rest of the literature on kuṇḍalinī, but I get the idea we’re still a long way off from anything that might be considered definitive and authoritative.

Lawrence Edwards et al. Kundalini Rising: Exploring the Energy of Awakening. Boulder, Col.: Sounds True, 2009. Paperback. 405 pages. ISBN 9781591797289. $19.95.

The Experience of No-Self

Reading this book for perhaps the third time, and having engaged in lengthy discussions on the subject, I still don’t know what to make of Bernadette Roberts.

She is best classified as a contemporary Catholic mystic. At the age of eighteen she joined a Carmelite monastery, where she spent the next ten years. Having reached the unitive stage of the mystical life, she left the monastery, married, and had children.

The first two thirds of the present book describe what happened next: the transition from the unitive stage (a life lived in constant union with God) to the no-self stage. This no-self stage is, she admits, not described in any of the extant literature on Christian mysticism.

Though she advocates no explicit contemplative technique, Roberts’ practice was essentially the practice of inner silence. She had found various types of mental silence over the years. One, for example, she experienced while wholly absorbed in listening to music. Another occurred while she rested in the “still-point” within.

Drawn to these silences, Roberts eventually found a stillness so deep that she never wholly emerged from it. This began a series of strange and sometimes disturbing experiences, culminating in the loss of her sense of a self. At times she felt as though her being was in the grip of “icy fingers”; at times she perceived there to be only a single oneness filling the entire universe; at other times this oneness gave way to nothingness.

The final third of the book discusses the issues raised by her story: responses from friends, the question of where Christ is in all this, and the question of what the self is to begin with. This final question is explored in (much) greater detail in her later book, What is Self? The revised edition of the present work omits a foreword by Fr. Thomas Keating that was included in original edition.

Bernadette Roberts. The Experience of No-Self: A Contemplative Journey. Revised edition. Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1993. Paperback. 213 pages. ISBN 9780791416945. $29.95.

Just Use This Mind

Miao Tsan is abbot of a Taiwanese-American Zen temple in southern California. The stated goal of Just Use This Mind is to reveal universal truths that do not depend on any particular religion, culture, or school of thought.

Given this goal, it’s odd that the material that follows turns out to be deeply rooted in the Mind-Only school of Buddhism. Doctrinaire propositions about karma and the mind-created nature of reality are made without being substantiated by either evidence or argument. Terms such as sambhogakaya and parinirvana are introduced without explanation, sending the reader scurrying to the glossary at the back of the book.

The gist of the author’s point of view is that the mind is originally pure. However, the mind has become defiled by habits and attachments, the most noxious of which is the idea of a solid and permanent self. The practioner’s task is to undo these habits and attachments to reveal the mind in its pristine clarity.

Each chapter of the book consists of short sections addressing different aspects of this task. Often, there’s no strong dependency between the chapters, so that they could be read in any order. On the other hand, this does mean that the same basic points end up being repeated in multiple places.

I could see this book provding insight and encouragement to practitioners who are already committed to the Mind-Only point of view. I’m less sure, though, that it would be convincing to those unfamilar with this perspective.

Venerable Master Miao Tsan. Just Use This Mind: Follow the Universal Truth to Oneness of Mind, Body, and Spirit. Houston, Tex.: Bright Sky Press, 2010. Paperback. 298 pages. ISBN 9781933979908. $14.95.

Emptiness Dancing

I bought this book about two months ago, and since then it’s been my occasional night time reading in small chunks. That’s unusual for me. Usually I like to read a book straight through. I think the reason this one is taking so long is that each point the author makes needs to be savored for a while.

In an interview included at the back of the book, author Steven Gray tells his story, beginning with mystical experiences in childhood and going on to describe his adult life from the time he was a nineteen-year-old college student.

An encounter with a Zen book sparked an interest in enlightenment, and a book on astral projection got him meditating. A year later, he found a teacher named Arvis Justi, who, though not famous, was listed in the back of a Ram Dass book. Justi mentored Gray, sending him off on retreats when necessary, until he had two “awakening” experiences in his mid-twenties. At the same time as his Zen practice, Gray was reading St. Teresa of Avila books, which opened his heart in a way he says the Zen tradition was unable to do. Once he was into his thirties, he was asked to begin teaching by Justi. This he has done ever since under the name “Adyashanti.”

Each chapter is taken from a talk given by Adyashanti, often succeeded by a question-and-answer session. The general thrust of his teaching is not to add to the reader’s stock of concepts, but rather to disabuse them of notions they might already hold, and to bring into awareness agendas they might not realize they have.

The overall effect I’d describe as “cleansing.” The book is enjoyable in a totally different way from most books. Highly recommended.

Adyashanti. Emptiness Dancing. 2d ed. Boulder, Colo.: Sounds True, 2006. Paperback. 195 pages. ISBN 9781591794592. $18.95.

The Search for the Buddha

This is such a good idea for a book, I’m surprised no one’s done it before.

Until quite recently, Europeans knew virtually nothing about the Buddha. Alexander the Great was in India, of course, and there are occasional references to India by ancient writers — Clement of Alexandria even mentions the Buddhists by name — but that was about it. It would take several generations of scholarship before an accurate picture of the Buddha entered European consciousness.

Charles Allen (Plain Tales from the Raj) has documented the story of this discovery. Many of the early scholars were British colonial administrators. Sir William Jones, eighteenth century Sanskritist and founder of the Asiatick Society, was followed in the nineteenth century by a line of successors that included Brian Hodgson and T. W. Rhys Davids. Finally, Sir Edwin Arnold had enough information to popularize the life of the Buddha in The Light of Asia.

What distinguishes this book, though, is that Allen brings the story to life. The Search for the Buddha really is an enjoyable read.

Charles Allen. The Search for the Buddha: The Men Who Discovered India’s Lost Religion. New York: Basic Books, 2004. Paperback. 322 pages. ISBN 9780786713745. $15.00.

Memoirs of an Ordinary Mystic

Having been a Dorothy Maclean fan for many years, I was delighted to learn that her full-length autobiography — five years in the writing — has now been published.

The story, briefly, is this. Born in Canada, Dorothy trained as a secretary, then went to work for MI6 (the real-life James Bonds) in New York during the war. She traveled to almost every continent in the course of her duties, and after the war she settled in London. In the early 50s, while attending art school, she began to write down inspirational messages. In this she was encouraged by her friend Sheena Govan. Also part of Sheena’s circle at that time were Peter Caddy and Eileen Combe.

In the late 50s, Dorothy, Peter, and Eileen spent a couple of years meandering from job to job and place to place before obtaining jobs at a hotel in the north of Scotland. There the three of them worked for five years, receiving divine guidance on how to live their lives, and carrying out spiritual practices as their time allowed in the evenings.

When they lost their jobs, the three moved to a trailer park near the village of Findhorn, not far from the hotel where they had been working. Though confused by the situation, they continued living and meditating together as before. As their sensitivity increased in this isolated location, Dorothy began to connect with nature on an energy level. A garden they had started then flourished as they learned to cooperate with nature, and intrigued visitors began to settle near them, eventually forming a community. Dorothy would remain in the community near Findhorn until 1973, when she joined a group returning to North America. Since then, she has lectured and written on her experiences.

The book fills in the details and lines of connection that are missing from To Hear the Angels Sing. Having spent a week with Dorothy and Freya Secrest at Johnson’s Landing, I could hear each sentence in Dorothy’s voice. Her sense of humor comes across, too. I particularly laughed at her remark about Peter Caddy at the bottom of page 27, and her account of taking minutes of imaginary board meetings on page 110.

An appendix gives the exercises she includes in her workshop for receiving guidance. At the back of the book are some photographs, many from the 20s and 30s, along with the oil paintings she made of her parents. I can see what she means when she says that, had events turned out differently, she might have established herself as a professional portrait painter. Also included is a scan of the certificate of employment she received from William Stephenson. And, since the book offers encouragement to those wishing to live by guidance, perhaps the last word on Dorothy, Peter, and Eileen ought to go to their former mentor, Sheena Govan: “If you three can make the inner connection to God, anybody can” (p. 111).

Dorothy G. Maclean. Memoirs of an Ordinary Mystic. Everett, Wash.: Lorian Press, 2010. Paperback. 266 pages. ISBN 9780936878317. $17.95.