True Small Caps Religion, Spirituality, and Meditation Book Reviews

Opening up the Scriptures

2011-12-31T13:56:00.001-08:00

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

2011-12-21T16:54:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-20T11:00:00.000-08:00

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!

2011-11-23T09:50:00.000-08:00

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

2011-07-21T06:38:00.001-07:00

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

2011-05-09T21:43:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-13T17:09:00.001-07:00

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

2011-02-26T13:09:00.001-08:00

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

2011-02-12T14:09:00.001-08:00

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

2011-02-04T08:39:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-26T18:57:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-29T08:24:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-22T18:39:00.000-08:00

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

2010-12-17T09:51:00.001-08:00

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

2010-12-10T21:30:00.001-08:00

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

2010-11-28T17:43:00.001-08:00

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

2010-11-23T13:32:00.001-08:00

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

2010-11-15T15:45:00.001-08:00

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.

First Glance at Adrienne Von Speyr

2010-11-12T17:02:00.001-08:00

Adrienne von Speyr was another suffering soul: a difficult birth, a childhood where her mother scolded her every day, and an adult life marked by long periods of poor health.

At the same time, she was a mystic of the first order, experiencing not only visions and locutions, but also precognition and out-of-the-body viewing of remote locations.

First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr is a collection of materials assembled by her mentor, Hans Urs von Balthasar, with the intent of introducing her. In the first part, he describes her life and works, of which the most famous are the commentaries on Scripture dictated while in a state of meditation. The second part is a collection of Adrienne von Speyr’s writings about herself. The third and final part is an anthology of her prayers.

The prayers are very beautiful. What strikes me about von Speyr is her astonishing empathy for the feelings of others.

Hans Urs von Balthasar. First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1981. Paperback. 249 pages. ISBN 9780898700039. $14.95.

Rebel Buddha

2010-11-03T18:11:00.001-07:00

There are hundred of introductions to Buddhism, but this one is sure to appeal. The starting point is the “rebel” of the title, the Western individualist who seeks to live free from restrictions. What blocks us from total freedom, says Dzogchen Ponlop, is our lack of awareness as to how our minds work. He then presents Buddhism not as a religion but rather as a program for shining a light on the workings of the mind, and hence liberating ourselves from the unseen restraint of mental ignorance. But this quest for inner freedom, says Dzogchen Ponlop, is not a carte blanche for indulging our whims. He advocates a disciplined life, one lived according to ethical principles, and where we systematically cultivate awareness even in situations where we’d rather not.

The goal of personal liberation might at first appear to be a self-centered agenda, but ultimately, says the author, we benefit others, in that our wise and insightful friendship — without coming from a place of supposed spiritual “superiority” — is the best we can possibly offer.

Dzogchen Ponlop was raised in Asia but came to North America as a teenager, and he is well aware of our world of Starbucks, Facebook, and even the Colbert Report. He questions the value of Westerners’ adopting Asian culture as though it were a prerequisite of liberation. At one point he half-jokingly suggests that Western Buddhists should abandon their icons, their cushions, and their shrines in favor of sitting in empty rooms.

While some presentations of Buddhism for beginners lapse into psychotherapeutic self-help programs, this one remains the real thing. Moreover, Dzogchen Ponlop continues to believe in the traditional relationship where the teacher takes charge of the student — provided that the student requests such a relationship. And if the lineages of Buddhism are to continue, at least some of today’s students will have to think in terms of one day becoming such teachers themselves.

What impressed me most about this book was the sharpness of the author’s analysis and his tell-it-like-it-is honesty. Not only that, but he manages to get through an entire book on Buddhism without using a single term of Sanskrit or Tibetan. The volume concludes with meditation instructions and a selection of the author’s poems.

Dzogchen Ponlop. Rebel Buddha: On the Road to Freedom. Boston, Mass.: Shambhala, 2010. Hardcover. 224 pages. ISBN 9781590308745. $21.95.

Do Tampons Take Your Virginity?

2010-10-18T21:02:00.001-07:00

Bawdy and brutal, sweet and sad, this is a memoir of growing up Portuguese Catholic in America, the product of a belt-wielding father and a mother who really did believe that good Catholic girls don’t use tampons — and this not in the 1950s but in the 1980s.

Here are grannies who start a feud so bitter they divide a community; a neighborhood where “the people who were the most uptight Catholics always had the best smut”; church clothes that are hung outside in the fresh air because it’s cheaper than dry cleaning; and above all the sorrow of life with an abusive father. Simas’s memories are striking for their raw emotive power, and they leave the reader rooting for her to succeed, as indeed she does when she first stands up to her father at the age of seventeen.

The book had me alternately holding my breath in horror and laughing out loud. Despite the fear and the shame of her upbringing, Simas manages to find dark humor in the ironies of the adults around her. She ends on an optimistic note: “Don’t regret your choices . . . don’t despair. . . . Just put one foot in front of the other, and you’ll do just fine.”

Marie Simas. Do Tampons Take Your Virginity? A Catholic Girl’s Memoir. CreateSpace, 2010. Paperback. 161 pages. ISBN 9781453799758. $9.75.

The Evolution of God

2010-10-16T10:27:00.000-07:00

The title is to be taken tongue in cheek, of course. This is not really the evolution of God, but rather the development of people’s ideas about God, focusing on monotheism in the Near East but including in its scope preliterate religion.

Primitive societies can be observed developing explanations for things they really don’t understand. We can see this process in action with the cargo cults of the Pacific islands. Gods and spirits — with no clear dividing line between the two — are said to be responsible for phenomena whose causes are otherwise unknown, and these stories are not the property of an individual but of the community as a whole.

These small groups of hunter-gatherers don’t need a moral code, though, because they don’t have any crime. They typically consists of groupings of a few dozen people, all vaguely related to each other, and many of whom will spend their entire lives together. It’s only when societies become bigger and more sophisticated that they need lists of thou-shalts and thou-shalt-nots.

What results is a sort of ethical polytheism, typified by the religion of the Hebrews in the early parts of the Old Testament.

The next stage was monolatry — and note the distinction between monolatry and the later monotheism.

It’s not certain why the Israelites moved toward monolatry, but perhaps it was because the cult of Yahweh served as a focal point for domestic power struggles and foreign wars. It was not until the Babylonian exile and the time of Deutero-Isaiah that Yahweh evolved from tribal champion into global God. And after the encounter with the Greeks, this monotheism developed philosophical and theological expressions, as found in Philo of Alexandria or indeed the “logos” philosophy that begins St. John’s gospel.

And so to Jesus. Wright belongs to the school of thought that sees the historical Jesus as having had a much smaller role than that depicted in the New Testament. Christianity as we know it today, he says, is largely the invention of St. Paul. And the reason it grew to become a universal religion is that conditions in the Roman Empire favored such a development. On the one hand, living under brutal, large-scale power structures promoted anxiety and engendered the need for a loving God; on the other, a religion that might encompass many ethnic groups had clear value as a unifying force.

Wright’s over-arching thesis is that religion responds to social needs. Hence, he says, now that we live in a global society, religion will have to evolve still further. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam will have to develop philosophies that allow their adherents to coexist peacefully, and they will have to acknowledge that non-Near Eastern religions have value, too.

I don’t think Robert Wright’s book is the last word on the social and anthropological history of religions, but it’s a much more convincing attempt than that one by Karen Armstrong I read recently.

Robert Wright. The Evolution of God. New York: Back Bay Books (Hachette), 2010. Paperback. 592 pages. ISBN 9780316067447. $16.99.

Demons and the Making of the Monk

2010-10-14T10:16:00.001-07:00

If you’ve ever dipped into the literature of the Desert Fathers, you’ll have come across scenes in which monks wrestle with demons in the middle of the night. Of course, these seem very strange to the modern mind. David Brakke’s goal in this book is not to explain these encounters, but rather to examine the way in which the struggle between monk and demon contributed to the cultural definition of both. This sounds like a narrow program, but Brakke uses this theme as a vehicle to introduce all sorts of interesting material on the Desert Fathers, so much so that the book might almost serve as a partial introduction to early Christian monasticism in Egypt.

In Athanasius’ Life of Antony, Antony is depicted as a heroic warrior on the front lines in the battle between Christianity and paganism, successor to the martyrs of the first century. Evagrius’ knowledgeable strategies for dealing with inner demons (the Eight Thoughts) make the monk into a storehouse of incisive wisdom. Pachomius, one of the early organizers of community monasticism, saw demons at work whenever the life of the community was disrupted, and hence the accomplished monk becomes a mediator in social conflict. And some monks developed clairvoyant or healing powers as a result of having defeated demons.

With this astonishing range of capabilities, it’s not surprising that people — John Cassian is a well-known exemplar — went out into the desert to seek wisdom from the monks. The combination of the monk’s powers created a kind of shaman-like figure, the wise man the villagers could turn to when faced with otherwise insoluble problems. Yet the monk is wholly Christian, and given that the demons were often equated with the old pagan gods, he is not the inheritor of an ancient tradition but rather the pioneer of a new one.

David Brakke. Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity. Harvard University Press, 2006. Hardcover. 322 pages. ISBN 9780674018754. $59.50.

God's Continent

2010-10-13T10:47:00.000-07:00

“Attendance at Britain’s mosques has outstripped the number of regular worshippers in the Church of England for the first time,” London’s Sunday Times reported on January 25, 2004. “Figures compiled from government and academic sources show that 930,000 Muslims attend a place of worship at least once a week, compared with 916,000 Anglicans.”

Given declining birth rates and church attendance, alongside large-scale Muslim immigration, might Europe one day become an Islamic continent?

Not necessarily so, says Philip Jenkins in God’s Continent. His argument is two-pronged. First, he aims to counter the idea that Christianity in Europe is in a state of terminal decline. Second, he aims to show that Islam will itself be changed by its European surroundings.

I found the first part of his argument to be the least persuasive. It’s true that one can find bright spots in European Christianity. London’s Catholic churches are packed — though not, as it turns out, with newly fervent Brits but recent immigrants from Poland. And ’s true that pilgrimages, papal visits, and Christmas services all draw large numbers. But these examples all have the air of exceptions that prove the rule.

The second part of his argument I did find persuasive. Islam in southeast Asia has a different character from Islam in the Middle East; birthrates among Muslims vary enormously from country to country. (Birthrates in Iran are actually below the 2.0 replacement level.) Why should Islam in Europe not in turn have a different character? In France, an aggressively secular country, it turns out that Muslim attendance at mosques is down to just 5 percent. Existing in a milieu that has traditionally believed in freedom of speech has had less predictable effects. On the one hand, freedom of speech allows for militant, politicized Islam to make its case; on the other, it allows a Muslim writer to argue in favor of Salman Rushdie’s right to blaspheme. The outcome remains to be seen.

Jenkins concludes that Europe may in fact be at the low point that precedes a large-scale religious revival. I’m less sanguine, and I think it’s sad to see a European Christian culture that has endured for fifteen hundred years now in such a state of decay. Still, I think Jenkins’ book adds a welcome nuancing to an often simplistic debate.

Philip Jenkins. God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis. Oxford University Press, 2007. Hardcover. 352 pages. ISBN 9780195313956. $28.00.

The Case for God

2010-10-11T14:51:00.001-07:00

Having enjoyed Karen Armstrong’s memoir, I went out and bought her newest book, The Case for God. It was written as a response to that spate of “new atheist” books that appeared a few years back. I haven’t read those books, but I understand that their chief complaint is that religion just isn’t logical enough. Armstrong’s rejoinder depends on comparing and contrasting premodern and modern ways of construing the world. By buying into the modern view that rational thought trumps all other ways of experiencing reality, she says, the new atheists have overlooked whole regions of human consciousness.

I sympathize with Armstrong’s position, and after getting to know her via her memoir I wanted to like this book, but I’m sorry to say that I didn’t. Her argument is full of one unwarranted generalization after another, and references, where given, are too often to secondary sources. It’s a fascinating subject — religion and the rise of rationalism — and it justifies surveying some fascinating material, but this particular attempt at addressing the issue is a long way from satisfying.

Karen Armstrong. The Case for God. New York: Anchor (Random House), 2010. Paperback. 432 pages. ISBN 9780307389800. $16.95.

The Spiral Staircase

2010-10-10T10:22:00.000-07:00

Karen Armstrong is best known, at least in the United States, for her popular works on the history of religion (A History of God, The Great Transformation, etc.). This memoir covers her life following her reentry into the world after seven years as a young nun in a convent.

Armstrong really is a suffering soul. Her efforts to fit herself into the totalitarian regime of the convent eventually led to a breakdown. Her subsequent years of study for an academic career also came to nothing when her doctorate was unjustly denied. Part of her distress in life turned out to be caused by temporal lobe epilepsy, a condition mistaken for attention-seeking by her callous religious superiors, and misdiagnosed as the product of a flawed childhood by psychiatrists who ought to have known better.

A crucial discovery comes halfway through the book: “I had deliberately told myself lies and stamped hard on my mind whenever it had reached out toward the truth. As a result I had warped and incapacitated my mental powers. From now on I must be scrupulous about telling the truth, especially to myself” (p. 143), she decides. This truth-telling was a lengthy process, and it would be many years before she learned to articulate her own perspective as opposed to repeating the view of others. But she does manage it, and in contrast to the repeated setbacks of her earlier life, success in television and writing then follows almost effortlessly. “The great myths show,” she later concludes, “that when you follow somebody else’s path, you go astray.”

I found this book to be a real page-turner, even when Armstrong was describing the minutiae of life-events, and her gradual self-discovery and self-acceptance make for a heart-warming read.

Karen Armstrong. The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness. New York: Anchor (Random House), 2005. Paperback. 336 pages. ISBN 9780385721271. $14.95.

The Guru Looked Good

2010-09-17T08:13:00.001-07:00

Another winner in the spiritual memoirs category. Marta Szabo becomes a resident in Swami Chidvilasananda’s ashram in New York state, working her way up through the ranks until she is entitled to serve Chidvilasananda (“Gurumayi” to her followers) directly. Having worked under the petty tyrants of the ashram hierarchy, Szabo now gets to be subject to Chidvilasananda’s catty remarks in person. It’s a strangely fascinating tale, and I stayed up late to finish it. I was quite struck by the differences between this and the Buddhist spiritual memoir I mentioned in my previous post. In Buddhism, nothing is solid, and concepts are ephemeral products of the mind. The Hindu seekers, by contrast, all take themselves very seriously.

Marta Szabo. The Guru Looked Good: A Memoir. Woodstock, N.Y.: Tinker Street, 2009. Paperback. 408 pages. ISBN 9780578006260. $19.95.

The Mahasiddha and His Idiot Servant

2010-09-16T19:47:00.001-07:00

John Perks, who immigrated to America from England as a teenager, served as Chögyam Trungpa’s butler during the 1970s. This is Perks’ story, focusing primarily on his years with his guru. The pair’s madcap adventures leave one wondering whether this is crazy wisdom or just plain crazy, but they are always entertaining. A continued theme of their escapades is that Chögyam Trungpa is a senior foreign military or political leader, and Perks is traveling with him as his assistant. “Let’s put on our uniforms,” the guru would say as he initiated yet another elaborate prank with the sometimes reluctant author. At the end of each chapter, Perks notes what Buddhist principles he learned from the apparently pointless behavior of his teacher. I enjoyed this book tremendously.

John Riley Perks. The Mahāsiddha and His Idiot Servant. Putney, Vermont: Crazy Heart, 2004. Paperback. 249 pages. $17.95.

Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian

2010-09-11T16:45:00.001-07:00

Nowadays, even the Pope engages in polite interfaith dialogue without trying to browbeat his opponents into becoming Catholic. But what’s the theology behind that? How can thoughtful Christians exist in an increasingly intermingled and pluralistic world, where we readily come into contact with worldviews wholly outside the experience of historical Christendom?

In the provocatively titled Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian, Paul F. Knitter tackles head on some of the really difficult issues. He says he wrote the book primarily for himself, but I’m reminded of Carl Rogers’ observation that when one becomes deeply personal, one also becomes deeply universal.

In particular, there lurks the hornets’-nest question of exclusivity. For Christians, Jesus Christ is not just the Son of God, but the only Son of God; not just Savior, but only Savior. What, then, are we to make of the soteriological role of the Buddha? A preparatory step toward the Gospel? Or must we revise our understanding of what the Gospel really is?

Knitter favors the latter solution. He suggests that the early Christian community used language that reflected their experience rather than what Jesus himself actually did or said. The Gospel is a truth that sets us free rather than a literal truth.

Like Bruno Barnhart, Knitter views the ultimate effect of an encounter with the East as an increased focus by Christians on their inner East, a contemplative or mystical Christianity that was there all along but is now discovered anew. In particular, he points to the fact that the emphasis on spiritual practice in Buddhism leads to a renewed emphasis on prayer and meditation for Christians.

Yet Knitter’s study of Buddhism leads him to go a step beyond taking a new look at Christianity, and he ends by self-identifying as a “Buddhist Christian.” He feels uneasy about this label and wonders about its consequences, yet it seems to fit the facts.

The author comes with impressive qualifications, including studies with Lonergan and Rahner, and subsequent teaching duties at Catholic universities. What lets the book down, though, is that its Buddhism reflects more a reading of popular paperbacks than a serious study of the primary sources. Still, the author is to be congratulated on this brave, courageous, and above all honest approach to such difficult questions.

Paul F. Knitter. Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2009. Paperback. 258 pages. ISBN 9781851686735. $22.95.

Nothing Sacred

2010-09-10T15:07:00.001-07:00

Rigelhof went all the way through the Catholic education system, from altar boy to seminarian, before finally becoming disillusioned with the Church. He paints a picture of a world that is both safe and frightening: safe because he lived in a well-ordered universe, where daily events took place according to the ringing of buzzers, and where well-meaning restrictions protected even his intellectual life; frightening because he lived in constant fear of breaking rules and, above all, constant fear of sexual abuse. The subject matter is disturbing, but Rigelhof writes so well that his book is worth a read.

T. F. Rigelhof. Nothing Sacred: A Journey Beyond Belief. Fredericton, New Brunswick: Goose Lane Editions, 2004. Paperback. 236 pages. ISBN 9780864923820. $21.95.

Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha

2010-07-23T04:12:00.001-07:00

Whereas my previous blog post was about an academic guide to Buddhism, Daniel Ingram’s Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha is very much aimed at the practitioner. Its middle section, which offers a pointed critique of the way Euro-Americans have presented Buddhism thus far, is the one that has attracted attention to the book. However, the first and last sections are, to my mind, the ones that are really worthwhile. On the basis of extensive practical experience with meditation, the author offers a lucid and cogent presentation of Buddhist theory and practice. Unlike so many popular books on Buddhism, this one comes without fluff. Ingram gets straight to the point with what he calls his “hardcore” approach to Buddhism. Although there is a rather expensive paperback hardcopy of the book available from booksellers, the author has also made free PDF copies available on the internet. Highly recommended.

Daniel M. Ingram. Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha: An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book. London: Aeon Books, 2008. Paperback. 408 pages. ISBN 9781904658405. $38.95.

Mahayana Buddhism

2010-07-10T10:35:00.001-07:00

Paul Williams’ first point is that Mahayana Buddhism was not, at the time of its emergence, a monolithic movement. Rather, it was a collection of sometimes related and sometimes unrelated trends. In the quest for the origins of these trends, particularly interesting are texts such as the Ajitasena Sutra, where the beginnings of Mahayana ideas can be seen in what is clearly a Theravada context. Then followed the Mahayana proper: the Prajnaparamita texts and the philosophical treatises of the Madhyamika and Yogacara schools. After introducing these, Williams explores particular Mahayana ideas: the doctrine of the tathagata-garbha (loosely, “buddha-seed”), the East Asian “Flower Garland” tradition, the Lotus Sutra, the three bodies of the Buddha, the bodhisattva ideal, and the devotional forms of Buddhism centered around particular buddhas and bodhisattvas.

There’s certainly a lot of intellectual meat in Williams’ book — I found the chapters on Madhyamika and Yogacara particularly challenging! — but Williams does a good job of explaining the ideas involved. Although he occasionally lapses into apologetics, I would recommend his book to anyone who wants a substantial introduction to Mahayana Buddhist thinking. As the subtitle indicates, it is not, though, intended to be an introduction to Mahayana Buddhist practice.

Paul Williams. Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations. 2d edition. London: Routledge, 2009. Paperback. 455 pages. ISBN 9780415356534. $35.95.

Cities of Ladies

2010-07-02T18:38:00.001-07:00

Cities of Ladies is a social and economic (rather than a theological) study of the Beguines. What emerges from this perspective is that spiritual communities are as much a product of economic forces as ideological ones. I found it interesting, as I was reading, to contrast the multi-generational success of the Beguines with the many relatively short-lived lay communities of the 1960s and 70s.

In the early thirteenth century, it was easy for young women to migrate from the countryside to the growing towns of the Low Countries. There was plenty of work in domestic service and the skilled crafts. However, once they became grown women, there were only two respectable lifestyle choices: marriage or the cloister. The surplus of young women in the cities made marriage impossible for many, and at the same time the traditional religious orders had closed their doors to new female postulants. Hence there was a real economic and social purpose for informal lay communities of religiously motivated women. Provided they stayed close to the cities, they could support themselves with teaching and crafts. Moreover, there was huge social support for any form of piety.

Compare this with the lay communities of the 1960s and 1970s, when there were many more economic avenues open to young people, and in any case, people by now were the product of a culture of individualism. No wonder so many of the experimental communities of the time disintegrated after only a few years.

There were religious reasons for the decline of the Beguine communities: a few naughty Beguines apparently got their whole communities a bad reputation, and some of their ideas raised ecclesiastical suspicions. But quite apart from this, economic depressions in the Low Countries led to the communities’ being unable to support themselves.

This is a good study, but for those of you who like value for your reading dollar, I should point out that only half the pages of the volume are taken up by the text, the remainder consisting of notes, appendices, a bibliography, and an index.

Walter Simons. Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200-1565. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. Paperback. 351 pages. ISBN 9780812218534. $27.50.

The Mystic Mind

2010-07-01T10:35:00.001-07:00

One of the points the authors suggest in the early pages of The Mystic Mind is that Western Christian mysticism, at least in medieval times, was hampered by the lack of a body of knowledge as to how prayer and meditation actually work. This may have made ascetic practices more appealing, because you don’t need to understand very much to apply them.

What they’ve done is to take the modern psychological understanding of altered states of consciousness, and the known effects of the ascetic practices of pain, fasting, and sleep deprivation, and then attempt to apply this knowledge to the lives of the medieval mystics. In particular, they describe the lives of four of the less well-known medieval ascetics and mystics: Radegund, Beatrice of Nazareth, Beatrice of Ornacieux, and the better-known Henry Suso.

It’s a very good book, enjoyable, thoughtful, and well written, but I found its focus frustratingly narrow. There’s a lot more to mysticism than temporarily altered states of consciousness, and there’s a lot more to the lives of the mystics than mortification of the flesh. For example, the authors don’t delve into the effects on the psyche of solitude, celibacy, and prayer. And even with their narrow focus, they aren’t able to go so far as to propose a technology of mysticism: do A, B, and C, and X percent of people will get result Y, where X is a function of grace.

Still, it’s an interesting book, and if you’re willing to accept that its subject matter is much narrower than the title suggests, then I’d recommend it.

Jerome Kroll and Bernard Bachrach. The Mystic Mind: The Psychology of Medieval Mystics and Ascetics. New York: Routledge, 2005. Paperback. 288 pages. ISBN 9780415340519. $35.95.

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

2010-06-15T12:34:00.000-07:00

The edition I mentioned the other day, by Hariharananda, provides a practitioner’s view of the Yoga Sutras. Edwin F. Bryant offers the scholar’s perspective — and a very good one it is, too.

The Sanskrit is given in both devanagari and Roman script, with a word-by-word gloss and an idiomatic translation into English. These are followed by Bryant’s commentary. Bryant’s approach is to weave material from the traditional commentaries and other Indic literature into a coherent discussion of the meaning of each aphorism — which does vary, depending on whom you consult.

The strength of the Bryant edition is that it reveals the history of Indian thought. However, where the interpretation of sutras requires practical experience — for example, sutra III.19 on how to read people’s minds — he can only offer a listing of earlier views without providing much insight into their merits.

The book comes with plenty of study aids — introductory historical essays, a bibliography, glossary, and a concordance of Sanskrit words (in English alphabetical order).

Edwin F. Bryant. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary. New York: North Point Press (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), 2009. Paperback. 666 pages. ISBN 9780865477360. $35.00.

Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali

2010-06-13T18:16:00.001-07:00

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are of mysterious provenance. Their date is uncertain, they may not have been written by someone named Patanjali, and they may be an amalgamation of earlier aphorisms rather than an original composition. Certainly they are only tangentially related to the stretching exercises that go by the name “yoga” today. What they really are is a catalog of psychospiritual practices. Since they are virtually unintelligible without further explanation, around the fourth century A.D. a man named Vyasa wrote some brief notes on each one. But the combination of Patanjali plus Vyasa still needs some fleshing out, and hence the need for modern commentaries.

What makes the SUNY Press edition particularly worthwhile is that the commentary is written by a man who had extensively practiced the techniques described in the Yoga Sutras. Swami Hariharananda Aranya (1869–1947) took to yoga as soon as he had finished his education, and he spent his entire adult life secluded in caves and hermitages. For the last two decades of his life, he lived as a complete anchorite, his only contact with the outside world being through a slot in the wall of his cave. Many people in our active world would disapprove of such an existence, but it provides ideal conditions for exploring the deep and subtle structures of the human mind. Perhaps surprisingly, he offers highly practical advice applicable to those in the world as well as those who have withdrawn from it.

In this edition Patanjali’s and Vyasa’s texts are given in Sanskrit (in devanagari script, i.e., not transliterated) followed by an English translation and then Swami Hariharananda’s commentary, which was originally written in Bengali but is given here in English. This is a revised edition of the one first published by Calcutta University Press in 1963.

Swami Hariharananda Aranya. Yoga Philosophy of Patanjali: Containing His Yoga Aphorisms with Vyasa’s Commentary in Sanskrit and a Translation with Annotations Including Many Suggestions for the Practice of Yoga. State University of New York Press, 1983. Paperback. 507 pages. ISBN 9780873957298. $31.95.

The Future of Man

2010-06-09T11:26:00.001-07:00

Rome has recently done an about-face on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. On June 30, 1962, the Holy Office warned that his works might corrupt minds, “particularly of the youth.” Yet a lecture on July 24, 2009, praised “the great vision of Teilhard de Chardin.” The lecturer on this latter occasion was none other than Pope Benedict XVI.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Teilhard de Chardin wrote a remarkably optimistic piece on “The Planetization of Mankind.” In the 1990s it would gain the name “globalization,” but Teilhard de Chardin saw it coming a long way before that.

Humanity, he said, was becoming conscious of itself. Like it or not, the very presence of this idea would cause humanity’s future to be a collective future rather than an individual future. Moreover, this would happen naturally rather than by force. The drawing in of Asia into the developed world of the West would be an important step. Planetization would lead to:

(a) “the appearance of a collective memory”
(b) “increasingly rapid transmission of thought”
(c) “the emergence [of a] common vision”

Teilhard de Chardin predicted that the next stage would be the emergence of a new kind of humanity, “homo progressivus, that is to say, the man to whom the terrestial future matters more than the present.” These new people would be drawn together into groups composed of like-minded souls from all over the world, even thought their social origins might be quite different.

It’s astonishing how closely these predictions from the 1940s have come to mirroring our present globalized Internet Age.

Teilhard de Chardin. The Future of Man. Reprint, New York: Doubleday Image, 2004. Paperback. ISBN 9780385510721. $19.00.

Nil Sorsky

2010-06-05T10:48:00.001-07:00

So little is certain about Nil Sorsky’s life that any attempt to introduce him must be speculative. Born in Russia about 1433, he traveled to Mount Athos, where he likely immersed himself in hesychastic monasticism. On his return to Russia he founded a scete in a forest on the banks of the Sora river. His writings aimed at providing instruction for the monks around him, along with what the translator of this edition calls “hesychastic ‘distance learning.’”

The “Predanie” or Tradition starts with a creed and then states that everything that follows is culled from the Fathers, rather than being original to Sorsky himself. What follows is a set of rules for the monks of the scete. They are to live by their own labor, accepting alms only if sick. When buying requisites, they are not to haggle over the price. There should be no luxuries or excesses beyond that which is strictly necessary.

The longest text is the “Ustav” or treatise on Mental Activity, a sort of how-to manual for hesychasts. As with all of Sorsky’s writings, the Ustav refers to the authority of tradition, beginning with Jesus (“out of the heart,” etc., Matthew 15:19), and then quoting from Sorsky’s neptic predecessors. He gives instructions for the life of the hesychast, a life that can only be lived removed from worldliness, and that consists of a daily round of psalms, reading, prayer, and labor. Like Evagrius and Cassian, he lists eight vices along with methods of dealing with them. Tears, grieving, and contrition for one’s sins are recommended on the path to achieving stillness, characterized by freedom from the cares of the world.

The book ends with some shorter letters of encouragement and advice.

The translator says in his preface that he aimed to produce a “faithful” (i.e., literal) translation, but I found it very readable. It comes with real footnotes, too, and not those unwieldy endnotes you find in many books today. Sorsky approaches the spiritual life with the same uncompromising rigor we find in Evagrius, Cassian, and the Philokalia.

David M. Goldfrank, trans. Nil Sorsky: The Authentic Writings. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 2008. Paperback. 393 pages. ISBN 978-0879073213. $39.95.

Zen Training

2010-05-24T06:02:00.001-07:00

On March 12, 1959, Thomas Merton wrote a letter to Daisetz T. Suzuki introducing himself and forwarding some translations he had made of the Desert Fathers. So began a dialogue between the two that would eventually result in published materials (Zen and the Birds of Appetite, etc.).

While Suzuki’s interests were cultural and aesthetic, Katsuki Sekida’s Zen Training is wholly concerned with practice. Chapters cover breathing, posture, the importance of the belly (tanden), the nature and value of absorption (samadhi), and so on. Though Sekida was a high-school English teacher, he approaches his subject as a cognitive psychologist, and this he does with almost scientific precision. The fact that the book is still in print after thirty years is a testimony to its value.

Katsuki Sekida. Zen Training: Methods and Philosophy. 1975. Reprint. Boston: Shambhala, 2005. Paperback. 262 pages. ISBN 9781590302835. $19.95.

Thomas Merton

2010-05-22T07:51:00.001-07:00

More Thomas Merton, this time his letters. The present collection offers a selection from the five previously published volumes. It’s arranged by subject rather than chronologically so that it reveals Merton’s views on each of the selected subjects more readily than it does the development of his thinking over time. His personality comes across more forcefully in his letters than it does in his books. One anecdote I liked (p. 179): apparently they were always short of time in the monastery, and so spiritual direction had to be combined with confession. Even so, only 10–15 minutes could be allocated for the whole thing, and confession took up most of this, leaving scarcely any time at the end for direction. I mean, if you can’t get spiritual direction in a Trappist monastery, where can you get spiritual direction?

William H. Shannon and Christine M. Bochen, eds. Thomas Merton: A Life in Letters. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. Hardcover. 416 pages. ISBN 9780061348327. $25.95.

Called Out of Darkness

2010-04-02T07:44:00.000-07:00

The first half of this spiritual memoir covers the author’s Catholic childhood. Above all, she remembers the aesthetic experiences: beautiful churches, evocative incense, eucharistic adoration, and the exotic words of litanies (“Mystical Rose ... Tower of Ivory ... House of Gold”).

Rice had at this time a personal and intimate relationship with Jesus. But when she went to college, she discovered a whole world outside the Catholic mindset in which she had been raised. She read Camus and Sartre, and watched films by European intellectuals. Her stomping ground became the secular humanist wastelands of San Francisco and Berkeley. After graduate school she wrote novels in which — and she only realized this in retrospect — her characters are exiles, living in a Godless world where anything can happen.

Her return to the Church was a long and gradual process. She would visit churches on tourist trips and discover that Mass was about to begin. She would turn on the TV and find the moment of consecration was being televised on EWTN. Rice felt as though God was calling her. Finally, in December 1998, she let go of her objections and surrendered in spite of herself to God’s love, though it would be another four years before she fully committed herself to Christ.

Anne Rice’s book reads like a long letter, if not from a friend then at least from an internet acquaintance. She occasionally mentions her writing, and fans of her novels will enjoy these glimpses of the author’s life and thinking.

Anne Rice. Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession. New York: Random House, 2010. Paperback. 256 pages. ISBN 9780307388483. $15.95.

The Apostolic Fathers

2010-03-21T08:38:00.001-07:00

The formative period of Christianity has always been a mystery to me. In the first century, we have the New Testament; in the fourth century a fully formed creed and canon. So what happened in between?

The Apostolic Fathers covers the early part of this period. These are men who might have known an apostle directly, or known someone who did: Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, and so on. The Church that appears in their letters is remarkably continuous with that of the New Testament, and for a while it looked as though their writings might be included in the canon of Scripture. We see the Church struggling to define its relationship to Judaism and at the same time warding off unorthodox versions of Christianity — the “strange doctrines.” The need for unity raised the importance of the local bishop, who (reading between the lines) had sometimes been more or less ignored by the Christian community.

The volume includes “The Shepherd of Hermas,” whose accessible stories and parables gave it a large popular audience in the second and third centuries. Again, it was regarded as canonical by some at the time.

My favorite, though, is “The Epistle to Diognetus,” which dates from perhaps the end of the second century. It was written to a non-Christian inquirer to try to persuade him to become a Christian. Most religions at that time were peculiar to a specific area or ethnic group, but here the author paints a picture of Christians living in many cities and among many cultures, undistinguished from others by their dress or diet, and yet separate from the mainstream mindset. “In a word, what the soul is to the body, Christians are to the world” (6:1).

For about a thousand years, the writings of the Apostolic Fathers were lost to the West. The full texts were rediscovered only in the seventeenth century, and fully translated into English in the nineteenth by J. B. Lightfoot. Michael Holmes’ edition is a substantial revision of Lightfoot’s work. It is a well-manufactured book, printed on Bible paper, so that despite its 800 pages its size remains manageable.

Michael W. Holmes. The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations. 3d edition. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2007. Hardcover. 831 pages. ISBN 9780801034688. $44.99.

Practicing the Jhanas

2010-03-04T05:45:00.000-08:00

The Buddhist jhanas are highly concentrated, fixed states of meditative focus on a single subject. The jhanas were central to early Buddhism and the Buddha’s own enlightenment, but modern introductions to Buddhist practice either dismiss them or omit them entirely. Stephen Snyder’s and Tina Rasmussen’s Practicing the Jhanas is therefore a valuable addition to the literature. The book is conceived of as a user-friendly guide to Pa Auk Sayadaw’s more technical Knowing and Seeing (widely available on the internet), which is in itself an introduction to a five-volume work available only in Burmese.

The method depends on leading a morally pure life and having unselfish intentions. Like a presbyterian, one should avoid cosmetics, dancing, and entertainment. The meditator then selects an “anapana spot” somewhere between the upper lip and the entrance to the nostrils. The awareness of the breath as it passes over this spot becomes the meditator’s focus — not only during meditation periods, but for the entire duration of the retreat. As for the length of the individual meditation periods, two to four hours is considered ideal. It is not necessary to sit cross-legged on the floor; the authors’ Burmese teacher encouraged Westerners to use a chair.

The meditator may spend weeks, months, or even years focusing on the awareness at the “anapana spot” before developing the required level of concentration. If all goes well, after an unpredictable length of time a “nimitta” (a circle of light) appears in the meditation and progresses until the meditator is “grabbed by the lapels and pulled face-first” into the first jhana (p. 62). Reaching this stage depends at times on active effort and at times on receptive allowing. Once the first jhana has been reached for the first time, the meditator practices until the jhana can be entered and left at will. Then the meditator proceeds to master the second jhana, and so on. Entering the four further immaterial jhanas involves visualizing (with the eyes closed) disks of various colors and characteristics.

Snyder and Rasmussen have produced a very practical and friendly guide to this form of meditation. As far as I know, theirs is the only book on the subject.

Stephen Snyder and Tina Rasmussen. Practicing the Jhanas: Traditional Concentration Meditation as Presented by the Venerable Pa Auk Sayadaw. Boston, Mass.: Shambhala, 2009. Paperback. 159 pages. ISBN 9781590307335. $18.95.

A Marginal Jew: Mentor, Message, and Miracles

2010-02-27T10:52:00.001-08:00

In John P. Meier’s A Marginal Jew Volume 2, the blogger meets his match. It simply isn’t the sort of book that’s amenable to a 200-word review. And no, I haven’t read all of its one thousand, one hundred, and thirty-four pages. Hence I am reduced to offering some preliminary impressions.

The reason I chose Volume Two is that its subjects are Jesus’ relationship to John the Baptist, his message, and his miracles. I wanted particularly to study Jesus’ message. The lightweight offerings they have in bookstores have become unsatisfying — the self-help preachers, the amateur scholars who think they’ve bested the professionals, the physicians turned neo-Vedantin gurus, and so on. (Sorry, Deepak, couldn’t resist that one.) Hence I went online and ordered this book.

In contrast to the come-up-with-a-theory-then-select-evidence people, Fr. Meier has an explicity methodolgy. Of course this is good, but it seems to me that his methodology has its limits. On this point, perhaps I need to read Volume 1, which I understand forms an extended discussion on the problem and its methodology.

I’ll give you an example of the methodology in action. We’ll use the cursing of the fig tree. Fr. Meier points out that this miracle’s character is inconsistent with that of Jesus’ other miracles. Luke even omits it entirely. Fair enough. Then he shows that punitive miracles are attested both before and after the time of Jesus. That’s okay, though I don’t see that it proves very much. But then he tries to explain its insertion into Mark 11 as a sort of theological preface to the story of Jesus throwing the money-changers out of the temple. That seems forced and doesn’t make sense to me at all.

The methodology also causes Fr. Meier to focus his material on Jesus’ message on the kingdom teachings. We have the kingdom to come, already a theme of John the Baptist, and then (uniquely to Jesus) the announcement of the kingdom as already present.

What this leaves out is Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross. To me, Jesus’ “message” (if you want to call it that) cannot be understood in isolation from his sacrifice. Without the crucifixion, Jesus is reduced to a talented graduate student, taking his courses on repentance, the coming of the kingdom, and the value of baptism from John the Baptist, then going one step further than his professor and introducing the doctrine of the kingdom here-and-now, and then substantiating his claim with a series of miracles.

And with these few remarks, I’ll gracefully bow out of this poor excuse for a book review. Fr. Meier’s series is, however you look at it, an astonishing accomplishment.

John P. Meier. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. Volume Two: Mentor, Message, and Miracles. New York: Doubleday, 1994. Hardcover. 1,134 pages. ISBN 9780300140330. $60.00

Yoga Body

2010-02-24T18:07:00.000-08:00

Mark Singleton’s Yoga Body is a cultural history of asana practice, concentrating on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Modern hatha yoga is only tenuously related to asana practice as described in the Sanskrit texts. Until the eighteenth century, real hatha yogins lived as itinerant petty criminals, despised and feared by Indians and British alike. Even Vivekananda, the great popularizer of Indian religion in the West, viewed hatha yoga as an inferior pursuit, and one that was perhaps not even a spiritual practice at all.

The sanitization of hatha yoga began with the European physical culture movement of the late nineteenth century. Gymnastics and bodybuilding became popular. A Christian man, it was held, should be a manly man. The movement was taken to India by the YMCA and by the British military, who included physical fitness in their training drills.

As Indian national pride developed in the early twentieth century, a desire developed to demonstrate that India had its own system of strength and fitness. Hatha yoga was then reinvented by grafting a careful selection of its elements on to the international culture of the body — though research has shown that many of its supposedly traditional postures look remarkably like ones from nineteenth-century European fitness books, and many were invented on the spot by Tirumalai Krishnamacharya in Mysore in the 1930s.

Mark Singleton’s well-documented research challenges the notion of the modern asana class as an ancient Indian tradition. The many period illustrations add charm to the book.

Mark Singleton. Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice. Oxford University Press, 2010. Paperback. 272 pages. ISBN 9780195395341. $17.95.

The Inner Experience

2010-02-21T07:48:00.000-08:00

Thomas Merton seems to have published more books since he died than he did while he was alive. The Inner Experience is a set of notes on contemplation he effectively began in 1948, revised and expanded in 1959, but was never happy enough with to allow publication during his lifetime. After excerpts had been serialized over the years, the Merton Legacy Trust finally allowed complete publication in a single volume.

This is not, Merton warns at the outset, a self-help book. Contemplation, he says, is not a program whereby the false “I” can manipulate the true “I.” On the contrary, so long as the false self is busy with its projects, the inner self will remain hidden. And even when the inner self emerges, the final goal has not been attained. While some Eastern religions stop with the awakening of the true self, Christians continue on to know God. Solitude and seclusion may be necessary for long stretches of this journey, but the contemplative vocation finds its ultimate fulfillment in a love that reaches out to others.

Merton has an interesting perspective on active contemplation. He sees it as a progressive letting go of the agendas and plans of the false self in favor of an approach to life where we simply discern the way events are flowing. This flow he sees as God’s will. Self-seeking motivations have been abandoned to the point that the contemplative is not even aware that he is contemplating.

Infused contemplation is, of course, beyond the control of the individual. While Merton sketches a few characteristics of infused contemplation — a passive, intuitive, non-conceptual, and above all loving knowledge of God — he avoids the fruitless question of exactly where active contemplation ends and infused contemplation begins. Instead he cite passages from five authors that may be helpful in recognizing the beginnings of infused contemplation. These writers are St. John of the Cross, John Ruysbroeck, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Meister Eckhart, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux. To emphasize the need to abandon the programs and desires of the false self and to replace them with pure love, Merton devotes a further chapter to St. John of the Cross on this point.

Among the dangers for the contemplative to avoid, Merton mentions blanking out, seeking some kind of self-annihilation, a withdrawal from reality, and straining after mystical experiences. Monasteries, with their one-size-fits-all regulation of life, paradoxically present special difficulties. But life outside the monasteries presents other problems. Silence has become an expensive luxury. Most people need group support, and for these Merton proposes something along the lines of contemplative third orders, but without stifling organizational structures. Merton sees these relatively informal lay or priestly-lay groups as offering promise for the future. In particular he admires the Little Brothers of Jesus and the simple Christian ashram of Fr. Jules Monchanin (a co-worker of Fr. Henri Le Saux in India).

The cover photo is by Merton himself, and the introduction is by the book’s editor, William H. Shannon.

Thomas Merton. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. New York: HarperOne, 2004. Paperback. 192 pages. ISBN 9780060593629. $15.99.

Anastasia

2009-12-02T19:00:00.000-08:00

The narrator of this magical realist fable is a Russian trader. On a river voyage to Siberia, he learns of a cedar whose wood has miraculous powers to promote physical and emotional health. The trader makes a return trip to the region to harvest this special tree. On the riverbank near where the tree grows, he meets a strange and beautiful young woman, Anastasia.

Anastasia takes the trader to her home in the forest. She shows him where sleeps in the open air and demonstrates to him that she has no need to earn a living, since squirrels bring her food. Over the course of three days, she explains to the narrator her way of seeing the world. Her monologues on this subject form the bulk of the book.

Human beings, says Anastasia, are naturally pure. But education, civilization, and technology suppress this purity and clarity. In our natural state, we can communicate with plants and animals, know things across space and time, and work with the natural energies of the universe. But due to our technocratic culture, we have exchanged these abilities for a dreary, tedious, humdrum existence. The solution is a reconnection with nature: a society where relationships between men and women are based on love rather than sexual neediness, and where children are kept in touch with nature by being raised in homesteads where food is grown in the garden.

Anastasia’s philosophy evokes for the reader a sense of lost Edenic innocence and an experience of infantile omnipotence. What cheapens the effect is the author’s insistence that the events in the book really happened. According to the back cover, he has now sold ten million copies of the book in twenty languages.

Vladimir Megre. Anastasia: The Ringing Cedars, Book 1. Kahului, Hawaii: Ringing Cedars Press, 2008. Paperback. 256 pages. ISBN 9780980181203. $15.95.

God Within

2009-12-01T08:27:00.000-08:00

Northern Europe seems incompatible with mysticism: skies too cold and gray to be congenial to long hours of prayer, and a people whose ancestors had a reputation, at least among the Greeks and Romans, of being bearded savages. And while mystics are often thought of as anti-rational and outside of organized religion, when mysticism did eventually flower in fourteenth-century northern Europe, its ranks were populated from within the rationalist structures of the universities and the religious orders. These, at least, were the origins of the writers whose teachings have come down to us; the lay mystical movements have left us far less material to study.

Meister Eckhart was one of these establishment mystics: a German, a Dominican, and a university man. Though charges of heresy were laid against him by the Archbishop of Cologne, Eckhart was very much part of the ecclesiastical power structures — the man in charge of a large Dominican province, and a professor of theology at the University of Paris. His writings reflect his thorough academic training and include philosphical analyses of creation, beingness, and the distinction between God and Godhead. It is our capacity for reason, he says, that shows we have a spark of the divine within us. And it is only by going deep within, detached from all created things, that we transcend the ego and arrive at this spark, the uncreated within. At this point, God’s will becomes our will and we see ourselves as we are: nothing.

It is likely but not certain that Eckhart influenced the later Dominican, Johannes Tauler. We know Tauler’s teachings from published collections of his transcribed sermons. While Eckhart taught that we have a spark of God within us, thus opening himself to accusations of monism or pantheism, Tauler would say only that we have an “image” of God within us. There is a point in the soul that lies closest to God, but this point is not itself God. By withdrawing into this point we can find God, even become joined to God, and yet we remain separate. In terms of practice, we arrive at this point by withdrawing from worldly things. However, it is God and not ourselves who takes the final initiative after our arrival at the still center.

We know more about the life of the southern German Dominican Henry Suso, at least if his biography is to be believed. He joined the Dominicans as a teenager, was counseled personally by Eckhart, and spent sixteen years practicing extreme mortifications until a vision told him to stop this. Suso, as may be gathered, was a mystic of the trances and visions variety that Ruth Burrows calls “lights on” mysticism.

The Dominicans — known originally for their preaching, of course — may have taken this mystical turn as a result of their responsibility to supervise and direct nuns. This brought them into contact with the mystical spirituality that flourished in northern European convents beginning in the twelfth century, of which Hildegard of Bingen is the best known exemplar. This mystical spirituality worked its way into popular consciousness in the form of lay movements such as the Beguines and the Brethren of the Free Spirit. The Beguines were particularly influential in the Low Countries, and it is to them that we owe the feast of Corpus Christi. From this Dutch soil came Jan van Ruusbroec. His mysticism is devotional, and while in some respects he resembles Eckhart, Ruusbroec puts the emphasis on love of God as the driving force.

While the German and Dutch mystics get a chapter each in this book, the English mystics must share one between them. What they have in common, says the author, is a preference for the practical over the theological. The Cloud of Unknowing receives the most attention, but sections in the English chapter also cover Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, and Julian of Norwich.

Finally, the author asks why the fourteenth century should produce so many mystics and even lay mystical movements. The answers must at best be speculative. One can point to clerical corruption, a low point in Papal power, and the Black Death, but these neither separately nor taken together provide a satisfactory explanation.

Throughout the book, Oliver Davies situates his subjects within their religious and political contexts, in addition to describing the chief characteristics of their writings. It would be interesting to know more about the mystics’ personalities and lives, but sadly very few facts have come down to us. This is the second edition of a work the author first published some twenty years ago.

Oliver Davies. God Within: The Mystical Tradition of Northern Europe. 2nd edition. Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 2006. Paperback. 242 pages. ISBN 9781565482401. $17.95.

The Cross and the Switchblade

2009-10-31T08:21:00.001-07:00

Julia Duin’s book prompted me to read David Wilkerson’s 1963 The Cross and the Switchblade, which sold 15 million copies and was made into a movie.

One evening in 1958, small-town pentecostal pastor David Wilkerson felt the urge to sell his television. He planned on praying during the hours he would normally have watched TV. This he did.

Once into his prayer routine, he received an even more significant prompting: to go to New York City to help members of a teenage gang he’d read about in Life magazine. They were on trial for a savage attack on a cripple.

When David Wilkerson got to New York, his inability to even make contact with the gang members forced him to abandon this mission. Not only that, but a photo of him holding up a Bible at the trial was featured on the front pages of the papers — the rube pastor making a fool of himself in the sophisticated city. He returned home, the laughing stock of the region.

Despite this humiliation, a line from the Bible (“all things work together for good”) persuaded him to return to New York — though for no reason he knew of. Once he got there, he was walking down the street one evening when suddenly some members of a rival gang recognized him from the photo that had been in the newspapers.

Wilkerson befriended the gang and was introduced to a world of heroin addicts, switchblade fights, and violence for thrills. His picture in the papers gave him an entry everywhere he went. And so began his street-ministry in the city — an eight-hour trip in each direction.

On the streets of New York, gang leaders got down on their knees to pray with him. When the police stopped him from preaching on the streets, it only gave him added credibility in the eyes of the gangs he was trying to help. A large-scale youth rally was followed by Wilkerson moving to New York full-time. His converts made a 13-week TV series with him. He founded the Teen Challenge Center, a safe place for the gang members to come to. And, since this book was written, the Teen Challenge format has been duplicated in over four hundred other cities.

In the tradition of the big bestseller, this is both a powerful book and an easy read. And I liked the cover, with its simple and refreshing type-only design in the style common in the 70s.

David Wilkerson. The Cross and the Switchblade. 1963. Reprint, New York: Jove Books (Penguin), 1977. Paperback. 176 pages. ISBN 0515090255. $5.99.

Days of Fire and Glory

2009-10-27T11:21:00.000-07:00

I couldn’t put this book down! Once I’d started, I read all 300+ pages in less than twenty-four hours.

Graham Pulkingham was an Episcopal priest in Houston, overwhelmed by the problems of serving a decaying neighborhood. He received what he took to be a message from God telling him to go to New York. There, at the hands of David Wilkerson (The Cross and the Switchblade), he received a pentecostal-style baptism in the Spirit. When Pulkingham returned to Houston, he discovered he had the power to bring about miraculous healings. Crutches were left at the altar rail. Incurable diseased were pronounced cured.

Many of his fellow Episcopalians were appalled by the charismatic direction Pulkingham’s spirituality had taken. Some questioned his sanity. Long-time members left the parish. But encouraged by prophetic utterances, Graham Pulkingham persisted. He formed a daily 5:30 a.m. prayer group, to which several dozen people committed themselves, despite their full-time jobs. People sold large homes to move to small apartments nearer his newly charismatic church and care for the poor of the neighborhood. Above all, there was praying in tongues.

Pulkingham’s church attracted more and more people. The weekday schedule grew to include two morning prayer meetings as well as Bible study and interpretation. They opened a street ministry and a coffee house. The young musicians at the coffee house made successful records. Many churchgoers formed communal households. People from out of town came to visit Redeemer church to see what was going on. CBS made an hour-long documentary about them. Graham Pulkington himself wrote the first of several books. Sunday attendance, which had once been 200 people, grew to 2,000 people. Even a Friday evening service would attract 800. People came from as far away as Europe.

And then, ever so slowly, things started to go wrong. The communal households became increasingly cult-like and dictatorial. Community became an end in itself rather than a means to an end. The church became so intensely inward-looking that some members only met outsiders a few times each year. As outreach locations were founded, the Redeemer leaders, including Graham Pulkingham, spread themselves too thinly. And money was tight. A household might have only three wage-earners to support two dozen people. The mentally ill were counseled by volunteers with no professional training.

In 1978, Redeemer church made televion news again — this time for a very different reason. The community was charged with holding young people against their will. When the parents brought a court case, a TV station ran a weeklong series branding Redeemer a cult.

Marriages broke down under the strain of such an intense and demanding life. While the church and its members had formerly seemed to be under divine protection in this rough neighborhood, robberies and even home invasions began to occur. Women were raped. After having spent several years absent from the church on a mission to the UK, Graham Pulkingham left Houston again, this time to move to Colorado. His replacement as leader seemed unable to cope with the responsibilities and stopped returning phone calls. Allegations of child abuse surfaced. People drifted away from Redeemer church and its problems.

Finally, in 1992 the truth about Graham Pulkingham himself emerged. Despite being married, he had been persuading the men he counseled to have homosexual sex with him. A year later, he was dead of a heart attack.

So what conclusions we can draw from this tale of disappointed hopes, with its cast of hundreds? Author Julia Duin had her own experience of living in a Christian community, and she describes community life as “so hard . . . the cost would be staggering.” Her book is published by the Crossland Foundation, who “seek to identify the causes for these disorders and the ways that these disorders can be eliminated from the church.”

Julia Duin. Days of Fire and Glory: The Rise and Fall of a Charismatic Community. Baltimore, Md.: Crossland Press, 2009. Hardcover. 368 pages. ISBN 0979027977. $24.95.

Quitting Church

2009-10-08T13:45:00.000-07:00

A few posts back, I mentioned a book describing how protestant churches have turned themselves into businesses. The consequences are inevitable: congregations have begun to think of themselves as consumers. And, boy, are there some unhappy customers out there.

According to journalist Julia Duin, people aren’t leaving just because they’ve become “no religion” or “spiritual but not religious.” They’re leaving because they’re not satisfied with the product on offer.

Churches, says Duin, don’t speak to the way people actually live and work today. They never get to grips with the really difficult issues. They over-promise and under-deliver on community. While 81 percent of pastors think their own preaching excellent, only 44 percent of their congregations agree. And with so many people working and raising children at the same time, Sundays have become too valuable to spend in church — especially in a church that fails to nourish.

So what’s to be done? Duin sees a few isolated bright spots, but for the most part, she says, the churches ain’t gonna change.

BTW, comments on book covers are also welcome on my blog. How do you like the “new plain” look that’s appeared over the last few years?

Julia Duin. Quitting Church: Why the Faithful are Fleeing and What to Do about It. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 2008. Paperback. 186 pages. ISBN 0801072271. $12.99.

As the World Dies: Siege

2009-10-03T10:45:00.000-07:00

Normally, this blog is a just a list of the books I’ve read, but on the blogosphere recently I came across a story that’s so amazing, I just have to tell you about it. Self-publishing fiction is said to be waste of time. This is a story of one writer who made it work.

Rhiannon Frater writes horror novels — not something I’d read myself, but wait till you hear her story. (You can read it in full on her blog, where she kindly shares a record of every step she took.)

She started off by posting one chapter at a time, as she wrote them, on a couple of internet forums. The stuff she was writing must have been head and shoulders above everyone else, because she started getting rave reviews and building a fanbase.

When she approached agents and publishers, though, all she got were form rejection letters. So then she started reading up on self-publishing. Again, the whole story is on her blog. After getting the cold shoulder for so long, she finally decided to go independent.

Rhiannon kept writing, kept blogging, and commissioned a cover painting for the print version of her book. She got the book copyedited and then inexpensively published on Amazon.

With the fanbase she had built up over several years, she started selling thousands and thousands of copies of her books. Now she’s again posting a chapter a day, this time on a special-purpose blog she set up for a limited time only.

I don’t like to clutter my posts here with links, but I’ve added a link to her blog on the right-hand side of the page if you want to read more. And, of course, I’m sure she’d be very happy if you went over to Amazon to check out her offering!

Rhiannon Frater. As The World Dies: Siege: A Zombie Trilogy. CreateSpace, 2009. Paperback. 398 pages. ISBN 1441405178. $16.95.

The Step-by-Step Guide to Self-Publishing for Profit

2009-09-28T12:48:00.000-07:00

At one time, self-publishing meant commissioning a printer to make up 5,000 copies of your book, then storing them in your basement until you sold them. Not any more. CreateSpace, a subsidiary of Amazon, will print just a single copy of your book at a time, and only in response to a customer order on Amazon. Christy Pinheiro’s and Nick Russell’s text walks you through the steps of self-publishing in this new and digital way.

The authors encourage you to think of self-publishing as a business venture. This means they give all the steps necessary to register and plan a business, and at the same time, they discourage the publication of fiction, memoirs, and personal opinions that really aren’t viable as commercial propositions.

This is a very practical book — precisely the kind of specialized how-to guide the authors say the CreateSpace process works best for. The only thing missing, I felt, was information on book design and typesetting, for which the authors refer the reader to volumes covering these subjects. All in all, this is an excellent guide for the publishing beginner who wants to be walked through the process of self-publishing from conception and planning to production and marketing.

C. Pinheiro and Nick Russell. The Step-by-Step Guide to Self-Publishing for Profit! Start Your Own Home-Based Publishing Company and Publish Your Non-Fiction Book with CreateSpace and Amazon. Pineapple Publications, 2009. Paperback. 189 pages. ISBN 0982266006. $18.95.

The Barony of Glasgow: A Window onto Church and People in Nineteenth-Century Scotland

2009-05-19T18:51:00.000-07:00

This is a social history of one particular parish in Glasgow. It’s certainly fact-filled, but it’s also evocative of the time and includes period illustrations. Peter Hillis shows how the Church of Scotland and its alternatives were very much part of the social structures of their time.

Peter Hillis. The Barony of Glasgow: A Window onto Church and People in Nineteenth-Century Scotland. Dunedin Academic Press, 2007. Hardcover. 242 pages. ISBN 190376579X. $48.30.

Religion and Society in Scotland Since 1707

2009-04-24T21:32:00.001-07:00

Scotland isn’t all bagpipes and whisky, you know. For centuries, the great formative influence on society was the Kirk. But as Callum Brown shows, the established church functioned as much as a form of local government than as a denomination. Even in the supposedly golden age of Victorian churchgoing, attendance in Scotland was never higher than 50%, and in many places it was more like 25%. Still, the decline in religious affiliation in modern times is only noticeable because the church was so vigorous in centuries past.

This is a superb study. A word of caution, though. Despite the book’s high price, I frequently came across lines of type that looked as though they had been printed at home on a cheap inkjet.

Callum G. Brown. Religion and Society in Scotland Since 1707. Edinburgh University Press, 1997. Paperback. 224 pages. ISBN 0748608869 $50.00.

A Biography of Bede Griffiths

2008-12-04T19:54:00.001-08:00

Rarely do I read a book twice in quick succession, but with this one I did just that. From Walton-on-Thames, to Oxford, to Eastington, to Prinknash, and finally to India, this is a riveting story. Shirley du Boulay’s biography of Father Bede is absolutely first class.

Shirley du Boulay. Beyond the Darkness: A Biography of Bede Griffiths. New York: O Books, 2003. Paperback. 320 pages. ISBN 1903816165. $17.95.

The Quest For Celtic Christianity

2008-12-04T06:53:00.001-08:00

This book debunks popular notions of “Celtic Christianity.” As the author repeatedly notes, to get to know the real Celtic Christianity, you have to go back and read the primary texts in their original language. A fascinating study of both the reality and its modern romanticizations.

Donald E. Meek. The Quest For Celtic Christianity. Edinburgh: The Handsel Press, 2000. Paperback. 281 pages. ISBN 1871828511. $18.95.

From St. John of the Cross to Us

2008-11-21T20:51:00.000-08:00

In the sixteenth century, St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila produced voluminous writings on contemplative prayer. Why then, did contemplative prayer disappear into obscurity until interest in it was revived in the twentieth century?

This is the question Jim Arraj sets out to answer in From St. John of the Cross to Us. His story takes us through mysterious manuscripts and literary detective work to arrive at the author of the notion of “acquired contemplation” — a concept not identified in St. John’s works. This was Tomas de Jesus, the Carmelite who prepared John’s writings for print. And Tomas’s whole notion of “acquired contemplation,” says Arraj, is a result of his misreading of John’s passage on the third of the three signs that indicate the transition to infused contemplation (Ascent, II.13).

As St. John’s writings spread across seventeenth-century Europe, Tomas de Jesus’ idea went with them. Eventually, says Arraj, the confusion caused by the notion of acquired contemplation led to the works of Molinos and the Quietists. It was the aggressive response to Quietism that destroyed any further interest in Christian mysticism for two whole centuries — the Dark Ages of contemplative prayer.

Arraj’s book is dense with detail and is definitely not for those with no background in the literature of contemplative prayer. Still, whether or not you are convinced by his central thesis, he has assembled here some fascinating material.

James Arraj. From St. John of the Cross to Us. Chiloquin: Inner Growth Books, 1999. Paperback. ISBN 0914073109. $18.00.

Kundalini Energy and Christian Spirituality

2008-11-16T11:11:00.000-08:00

This is a reissue of a unique book that provides a Christian perspective on kundalini. The author describes his experiences in contemplative prayer over a three-year period and goes on to offer psychological and physiological explanations for the emergence of kundalini. In doing so, he draws on a background in biology and psychotherapy. His conclusion is that, though the terminology of kundalini may be Sanskrit, it is a universal human phenomenon as relevant to Catholics as it is to followers of Eastern religions.

Philip St. Romain. Kundalini Energy and Christian Spirituality. Wichita: Contemplative Ministries, 2004. Paperback. ISBN 0824510623. 89 pages. $15.95.