A warmhearted, if not groundbreaking, work about the transmission of wisdom.
In Turner’s debut novel, a young man traveling through Alaska meets a mysterious figure in the wilderness who instructs him on the true nature of wisdom.
Gabriel is a young college student looking for adventure. While backpacking with friends in Alaska and hoping to earn money working on the new pipeline, Gabriel goes for a solitary moonlight walk and encounters a flute-playing mountain man. This strange, elderly man has a wolf and a raven as companions. Although he looks shaggy and scraggly, he turns out to be highly cultured. His cabin, which appears to be bigger inside than out, has a good library, Persian carpets and a baby grand piano. He and Gabriel have a wide-ranging conversation in which Gabriel learns, among other things, to use strength in service to others, to not mistake humility for weakness, to question one’s own truths and to seek wisdom. Turner, who has lived in Alaska for 30 years, writes vivid and evocative descriptions of nature: “Rough-hewn mountains rose to the sky all around, and the forests carpeted them as far up as they could before losing breath and the ability to climb any higher.” Once Gabriel meets the wizard, however, the novel’s focus turns to the old man’s teachings, conducted in a single overnight conversation. “I had always enjoyed campfire philosophy and mountaintop metaphysics,” says Gabriel, and readers who feel similarly will enjoy this book. Gabriel learns about the Noble Arts (including language, listening, patience, imagination, influence, finance and giving) and the two Great Powers of the Spirit (the abilities to love and create). Although this information is imparted with liveliness and humor, some readers may find much of it familiar—a conglomeration of well-known ideas from literature, self-help books, New Age philosophy, psychology and other tales of shamanic encounters.
A warmhearted, if not groundbreaking, work about the transmission of wisdom.Pub Date: Dec. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-1475107074
Page Count: 162
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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