While it is not always thrilling, this account offers honest insights into the rigors of deep self-reflection.
A debut memoir focuses on one man’s lifelong spiritual quest.
Moser’s book begins in Redwood City, California, in 1974. His meditation practice at the time was quite masochistic: He ate very little; he was isolated from others; and he sat for long periods in an often painful position. Before readers are told of the repercussions of such a lifestyle, the story reaches back a couple decades. It was in the 1950s in the San Fernando Valley that the author grew up as a Roman Catholic with a “full-tilt maniac” of a father. Moser earned a degree at Stanford, became entranced with a paperback by Ram Dass called Be Here Now, and took a job in France. It was in Europe that he encountered the writings of an Indian philosopher named Jiddu Krishnamurti. He saw Krishnamurti speak in Switzerland and the experience proved profound. Upon returning to California, the author withdrew more and more from average American life. He attended talks by a Sufi master and he gave up a love of French wine. Moser would ultimately fast and meditate into a state of ecstasy that was impossible to replicate. He had, in his words, “overdosed on a perfectly legal substance: asceticism.” Although reading about someone’s long periods of meditation and disdain for fine food may not sound captivating, the book has much to offer. Who better to reflect on a spiritual journey than someone who has gone on one and lived to tell about it? In an era when a term like mindfulness has become a buzzword, it is edifying to learn of an individual who has committed serious time to this practice. This is especially true when that effort frayed relationships, finances, and mental well-being. There are of course episodes without much action. For instance, the author, after coming down from his ascetic mountain, became a teacher. The payoff is that he found he did not enjoy the job. This conclusion may not be astounding, but it adds to the sincerity of an indisputably earnest odyssey. Even with such diversions into the mundane, the memoir provides a full picture of the difficulty of enlightenment.
While it is not always thrilling, this account offers honest insights into the rigors of deep self-reflection.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 227
Publisher: Kurti Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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