Shepherd’s experience with Zen is not everyone’s, but it should prove helpful to those struggling with spiritual practice.
A memoir of Zen study in the 1970s.
There are many books showing how the Zen experience translates into the West, but this debut book by Shepherd (Music/Kauai Community Coll.) is as much about falling away from the path as following it. When he came to meditation during the latter stages of the hippie era, it was during a time of drugs, hedonism and excess. A long-distance runner with a more ascetic older brother (who adhered to the path and has become a Zen monk), the author came to his practice with a combination of innocence, idealism and competitiveness. “I would be a Zen Man extraordinaire, of this I was certain,” he writes of a path that would take him from his native New Jersey to a meditation community in Hawaii and a more dedicated, disciplined commitment in Japan. When he arrived there, he thought of the "Eightfold Path as Easy Street or the Yellow Brick Road. It would take several more years, but I would gradually go from wide-eyed naivete to gimlet-eyed disenchantment. For now, though, I was drowning in milk and honey.” The milk curdled as he grew increasingly resentful of being considered a “foreign weirdo” by so many Japanese, who felt that Zen was their birthright and that for an American to practice was like “a dog trying to master verb conjugations.” Shepherd also discovered that as the meditation practice might help him dissolve the ego, it was leaving him with nightmares and neuroses. Ultimately, he took a different path as a music professor, where meditation has continued to enrich his life.
Shepherd’s experience with Zen is not everyone’s, but it should prove helpful to those struggling with spiritual practice.Pub Date: April 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61172-011-2
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Stone Bridge Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2013
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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