A broad and engaging guide to a deeper personal philosophy.
A debut spiritual book explores the quest for meaning in life.
Kokatay begins her wide-ranging work on the Big Island of Hawaii with an incident in January 2018 that nobody living there at that time will likely ever forget: the instance when their phones relayed an emergency notice that a ballistic missile was incoming. For 38 minutes, until the all-clear signal was sent, Hawaiians thought they were moments away from incineration. The author uses the profound relief and inner questioning of that startling event as a parallel for the age-old human search for profound meaning in life. “I wonder how we can experience being truly awake and alive in the present without being on the verge of dying,” Kokatay ponders. “Maybe the answer is by coming face-to-face with the reality that we conveniently try to ignore: that we are on the verge of dying.” The fateful episode came as a kind of culmination in a lifetime of seeking deeper meaning in, among other places, “temples, ashrams, and ancient caves in India.” In a series of quick, anecdotal chapters drawing on stories from her years working at a hospice, the author synthesizes a series of “non-principles” underlying the struggles of existence, sentiments like “Allow life to touch and teach you,” “See that you are not in control,” “Be empty and open,” and “Embrace what is.” The spotlight on these ideas is sharpened by “Contemplation” questions and comments ending each chapter, things like “Reflect on what it means to live life rather than a concept of life” or “Reflect on heartbreak and suffering as an opportunity for awakening to wholeness.” Kokatay colors in these self-help generalities with vivid tales of her travels in India (and very movingly of the feel and tenor of life in Hawaii). The end result is a heartfelt book probing the meaning of life in intriguingly nondenominational terms, creating from multiple spiritual traditions a more general conception of sacredness in everyday occurrences.
A broad and engaging guide to a deeper personal philosophy.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-982214-54-8
Page Count: 366
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: March 21, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
An eye-opening glimpse into the attempted self-unmaking of one of Hollywood’s most recognizable talents.
The debut memoir from the pop and fashion star.
Early on, Simpson describes the book she didn’t write: “a motivational manual telling you how to live your best life.” Though having committed to the lucrative deal years before, she “walked away,” fearing any sort of self-help advice she might give would be hypocritical. Outwardly, Simpson was at the peak of her success, with her fashion line generating “one billion dollars in annual sales.” However, anxiety was getting the better of her, and she admits she’d become a “feelings addict,” just needing “enough noise to distract me from the pain I’d been avoiding since childhood. The demons of traumatic abuse that refused to let me sleep at night—Tylenol PM at age twelve, red wine and Ambien as a grown, scared woman. Those same demons who perched on my shoulder, and when they saw a man as dark as them, leaned in to my ear to whisper, ‘Just give him your light. See if it saves him…’ ” On Halloween 2017, Simpson hit rock bottom, and, with the intervention of her devoted friends and husband, began to address her addictions and underlying fears. In this readable but overlong narrative, the author traces her childhood as a Baptist preacher’s daughter moving 18 times before she “hit fifth grade,” and follows her remarkable rise to fame as a singer. She reveals the psychological trauma resulting from years of sexual abuse by a family friend, experiences that drew her repeatedly into bad relationships with men, most publicly with ex-husband Nick Lachey. Admitting that she was attracted to the validating power of an audience, Simpson analyzes how her failings and triumphs have enabled her to take control of her life, even as she was hounded by the press and various music and movie executives about her weight. Simpson’s memoir contains plenty of personal and professional moments for fans to savor. One of Kirkus and Rolling Stone’s Best Music Books of 2020.
An eye-opening glimpse into the attempted self-unmaking of one of Hollywood’s most recognizable talents.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-289996-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
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