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kmccubbin's review against another edition
5.0
Shainberg has a strange and deft touch in this memoir of his life through a succession of teachers.
No one that I've read has captured the relentless struggle and courage of maintaining a Zen practice. If you think such a practice is relaxing, please read this book before you step into the Zendo. Neither have I read an account more insightful about the pitfalls of teachers with egos of troubling proportion.
This is not to say that these teachers aren't earnest in their beliefs. They are both sincere and poorly skilled and Shainberg repeatedly, to the point of masochism, gives in until damage is done. While the reader might occasionally want to shout at him that this particular teacher is full of it or is taking him for a ride, Shainberg builds up his own biography so carefully, that the reader knows he's going to have to learn all this on his own.
No easy answers here. No apotheosis. No tragedy. Just a human doing his best to find answers and some peace and how that road can never be easy. I found this book riveting.
No one that I've read has captured the relentless struggle and courage of maintaining a Zen practice. If you think such a practice is relaxing, please read this book before you step into the Zendo. Neither have I read an account more insightful about the pitfalls of teachers with egos of troubling proportion.
This is not to say that these teachers aren't earnest in their beliefs. They are both sincere and poorly skilled and Shainberg repeatedly, to the point of masochism, gives in until damage is done. While the reader might occasionally want to shout at him that this particular teacher is full of it or is taking him for a ride, Shainberg builds up his own biography so carefully, that the reader knows he's going to have to learn all this on his own.
No easy answers here. No apotheosis. No tragedy. Just a human doing his best to find answers and some peace and how that road can never be easy. I found this book riveting.
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