I wrote about a couple of books and a Teaching Company course yesterday. There is another book that has gotten a good grip on me and that is "Hand Wash Cold" by Karen Maezen Miller. This same woman has a blog that I follow on my own blog. Her latest post is here: http://www.karenmaezenmiller.com/your-light-still-shines. This is a woman in her late 30's or early 40's who is married and has children but who had a rough time getting there. After a somewhat lost and confused late adolescence and early adulthood, with one failed marriage, she found among her beloved grandfather's books, a small volume on Zen and Buddhist practice. One thing again lead to another and now she has much experience as a practitioner and a teacher of meditation and personal awareness and serenity.
"Hand Wash Cold" is actually her 2nd book but is the only one currently available on Kindle. Her message and style remind me of that other excellent American woman Zen writer, Charlotte Beck. As I explained to my interested friend, D., both women take a tough but knowing attitude toward our widespread tendency to focus on how lovely, wonderful and ok some soon-to-realized future state will be. That is, when I get a haircut, when I lose weight, when I get my bills paid, when I grow up, etc., etc. They like to advise taking a clear-eyed stance that sees the lovely coming benefits, yes, but also notes some of the blessing now in hand and an honest view of how little and temporary the effect of that coming state of bliss.
Kindle users can easily highlight passages in books that interest them. I have many highlighted in Hand Wash Cold. Here is one:
"Hand Wash Cold" is actually her 2nd book but is the only one currently available on Kindle. Her message and style remind me of that other excellent American woman Zen writer, Charlotte Beck. As I explained to my interested friend, D., both women take a tough but knowing attitude toward our widespread tendency to focus on how lovely, wonderful and ok some soon-to-realized future state will be. That is, when I get a haircut, when I lose weight, when I get my bills paid, when I grow up, etc., etc. They like to advise taking a clear-eyed stance that sees the lovely coming benefits, yes, but also notes some of the blessing now in hand and an honest view of how little and temporary the effect of that coming state of bliss.
Kindle users can easily highlight passages in books that interest them. I have many highlighted in Hand Wash Cold. Here is one:
Psychological reflection can help for some. It's a start on self-inquiry, but too much of it further conceals, not reveals, who we are. It conceals us by giving us yet more erroneous self-concepts: new labels for phony notions of what we are and what we aren't, and from these concepts we construct what is laughably called a comfort zone. The walls of this zone are the limitations we set for ourselves, the beliefs we hold inviolable, the ground we will not bridge, the no-ways and the no-hows. We pad the inside of this cell with familiar habits and preferences. That's just the way I am, we say, to end the conversation. Get used to it.
