by Daniel Chapelle ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 9, 2016
A probing, useful guide to soothing the soul with Buddhist teachings.
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This deep-thinking primer presents Buddhist meditation as a treatment that alleviates normal unhappiness better than the methods of modern psychotherapeutic tradition.
Psychologist Chapelle’s (The Soul in Everyday Life, 2003, etc.) discussion, built around eight “Views,” or principles, poses a radical challenge to Western notions of the psyche, identity, and knowledge. Unhappiness, he argues, rises from our obsession with an untenable sense of who we are and a mistaken belief that we have a “personal self” at all. To resolve it and attain a “profound cheerfulness,” he says, we must suspend fixed beliefs about our identities (and everything else) and open up to a vast and formless “awareness itself” that’s the true stuff of reality behind ephemeral objects and events. He also advocates exchanging judgmental moralism for an ethic of emulating idealized role models (like the Buddha) and ceasing our anxious, future-oriented busyness to live in the immediate here and now. The eight meditative “Practices” accompanying these lessons mainly consist of contemplative exercises that rejigger perspectives by defusing obsessive, particularistic thoughts with metaphors—stillness, silence, mirrors, space, seas—and activities. One practice involves imagining the mythic hero Manjushri touching his flaming sword of enlightenment to false beliefs in order to dematerialize them; another has practitioners do some mundane task, such as dressing, very slowly in order to immerse themselves in the moment. Mystical themes abound in this book: the oneness of all being; the dissolution of the individual in oceanic connectedness (the bogus distinction between “self and not-self,” the author says, is “the source of all unhappiness”); the futility of purposive action; and direct experience, not intellectual discourse, as the path to understanding. These notions have some intrinsic murkiness, but for the most part, Chapelle’s exposition of Buddhist doctrine is lucid and readable, and it broadens into insightful commentary on points of contention and resonance with the Abrahamic faiths. Although Chapelle discounts Western psychology’s central concept of an ego struggling with psychic trauma, his meditative techniques will strike many readers as a cogent approach to dealing with everyday neurosis.
A probing, useful guide to soothing the soul with Buddhist teachings.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5405-7753-5
Page Count: 260
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Glennon Doyle ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2020
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
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More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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SEEN & HEARD
by Matt Haig ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 2016
A vibrant, encouraging depiction of a sinister disorder.
A British novelist turns to autobiography to report the manifold symptoms and management of his debilitating disease, depression.
Clever author Haig (The Humans, 2013, etc.) writes brief, episodic vignettes, not of a tranquil life but of an existence of unbearable, unsustainable melancholy. Throughout his story, presented in bits frequently less than a page long (e.g., “Things you think during your 1,000th panic attack”), the author considers phases he describes in turn as Falling, Landing, Rising, Living, and, finally, simply Being with spells of depression. Haig lists markers of his unseen disease, including adolescent angst, pain, continual dread, inability to speak, hypochondria, and insomnia. He describes his frequent panic attacks and near-constant anhedonia, the inability to experience pleasure. Haig also assesses the efficacy of neuroscience, yoga, St. John’s wort, exercise, pharmaceuticals, silence, talking, walking, running, staying put, and working up the courage to do even the most seemingly mundane of tasks, like visiting the village store. Best for the author were reading, writing, and the frequent dispensing of kindnesses and love. He acknowledges particularly his debt to his then-girlfriend, now-wife. After nearly 15 years, Haig is doing better. He appreciates being alive and savors the miracle of existence. His writing is infectious though sometimes facile—and grammarians may be upset with the writer’s occasional confusion of the nominative and objective cases of personal pronouns. Less tidy and more eclectic than William Styron’s equally brief, iconic Darkness Visible, Haig’s book provides unobjectionable advice that will offer some help and succor to those who experience depression and other related illnesses. For families and friends of the afflicted, Haig’s book, like Styron’s, will provide understanding and support.
A vibrant, encouraging depiction of a sinister disorder.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-14-312872-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
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Readers Donate Depression Book After Star Suicide
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