An innovative, thought-provoking premise unfortunately obscured in a deluge of perplexing metaphors.
Skydore’s debut New Age offering examines the secret to permanent peace on Earth.
The book opens with a preface stating that, in 2012, the author was contacted by the Cosmic Peace Council, an organization that transmitted the Alien Peace Scrolls to planet Earth in hopes that a select few people would follow its teachings and bring permanent peace to the planet. What follows is a discussion on the ideas of pain, war, and how one’s personal choices can either doom or save the world, divided into a series of essays (“Air Did Not Invent the Flower,” “Meaning Beyond Words and Truth Beyond Meaning,” “Peace on Planet Earth,” two essays titled “No Exceptions,” and others). It also includes two pages of definitions of key terms, including “Pain,” “Work (Reduce Pain),” “Peace,” and “Joy.” This unique, conversational work is part stream-of-consciousness, part question-and-answer session and reads much like a lecture. It seems to blend fiction and nonfiction, and readers may sometimes find it hard to determine when the author is being tongue-in-cheek or positing a serious point. Skydore claims that the style of the book, which includes short, sometimes-incomplete sentences and unusually capitalized words, is part of its power; it’s attention-grabbing, but it’s also confusing. The book is at its best when it keeps things simple. The underlying premise is important and worthy of examination: that everything and everyone is interconnected and that to find lasting peace on Earth, one must work to reduce pain. But Skydore spends an inordinate amount of time trying to convince readers why they should read the book instead of parsing out how peace, in her view, can be achieved. When the book does discuss its central theme, it’s oversimplified: “Be an Angel and Reduce Your Pain always and with No Exceptions.” The book’s definitions also generate more questions than answers. Peace, for example, is defined as “A Third Something in Existence, said Third Something including a First Something in Existence and a Second Something in Existence.”
An innovative, thought-provoking premise unfortunately obscured in a deluge of perplexing metaphors.Pub Date: July 23, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4782-1275-1
Page Count: 130
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2015
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
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.
Lessons about life from those preparing to die.
A longtime hospice chaplain, Egan (Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief, and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago, 2004) shares what she has learned through the stories of those nearing death. She notices that for every life, there are shared stories of heartbreak, pain, guilt, fear, and regret. “Every one of us will go through things that destroy our inner compass and pull meaning out from under us,” she writes. “Everyone who does not die young will go through some sort of spiritual crisis.” The author is also straightforward in noting that through her experiences with the brokenness of others, and in trying to assist in that brokenness, she has found healing for herself. Several years ago, during a C-section, Egan suffered a bad reaction to the anesthesia, leading to months of psychotic disorders and years of recovery. The experience left her with tremendous emotional pain and latent feelings of shame, regret, and anger. However, with each patient she helped, the author found herself better understanding her own past. Despite her role as a chaplain, Egan notes that she rarely discussed God or religious subjects with her patients. Mainly, when people could talk at all, they discussed their families, “because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives.” It is through families, Egan began to realize, that “we find meaning, and this is where our purpose becomes clear.” The author’s anecdotes are often thought-provoking combinations of sublime humor and tragic pathos. She is not afraid to point out times where she made mistakes, even downright failures, in the course of her work. However, the nature of her work means “living in the gray,” where right and wrong answers are often hard to identify.
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59463-481-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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