A gentle and thoughtful book about sex and its place in a full life, a bit handicapped by its aphoristic style.
In this Zen guide to sex, Hawaiian journalist Sudo (Zen Computer, not reviewed) portrays lovemaking as a glorious pathway to self-fulfillment.
Despite the fact that Zen Buddhism demands celibacy on the journey to enlightenment, Sudo constructs sexuality as a positive force within a Zen paradigm. He reads the poetry of iconoclastic Zen master Ikkyu Sojun (1394–1481) in order to support his mission to integrate a healthy sexuality into the celibate principles of Zen Buddhism. Through this goal, Sudo attempts both to help people achieve emotionally and spiritually satisfying sex lives and to appreciate the beauty of life around them. In three units, the book addresses the seven ways of the mind (desire, fantasy, discovery, initiating, anticipation, surprise, familiar), the seven ways of the body (entering, accepting, touch, scent, the eyes, the mouth, the cry), and the seven ways of the spirit (interplay, giving, clouds, union, release, creation, birth and rebirth). Following each of these 21 chapters, Sudo includes a “homework” exercise of reflective questions entitled “the way to zen sex”; these assignments direct the reader to ponder issues such as “what form will your lovemaking take tonight? how will you enter? how will you exit?” Notwithstanding the particulars of entrances and exits, cheesy moments could have been avoided more energetically: only one with true enlightenment could refrain from squirming when Sudo thanks his partner Tracy “for all the nights of research.” Ultimately, Sudo’s message is that we should focus on the experience of life and of sex in order to perceive the beauty and completeness of ourselves. Although the book is primarily directed to a heterosexual audience, Sudo makes inclusive gestures to the homosexual reader as well, as enlightenment through sexuality is not dependent upon the sex of one’s partner.
A gentle and thoughtful book about sex and its place in a full life, a bit handicapped by its aphoristic style.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-251679-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.
The Book of Genesis as imagined by a veteran voice of underground comics.
R. Crumb’s pass at the opening chapters of the Bible isn’t nearly the act of heresy the comic artist’s reputation might suggest. In fact, the creator of Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural is fastidiously respectful. Crumb took pains to preserve every word of Genesis—drawing from numerous source texts, but mainly Robert Alter’s translation, The Five Books of Moses (2004)—and he clearly did his homework on the clothing, shelter and landscapes that surrounded Noah, Abraham and Isaac. This dedication to faithful representation makes the book, as Crumb writes in his introduction, a “straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes.” But his efforts are in their own way irreverent, and Crumb feels no particular need to deify even the most divine characters. God Himself is not much taller than Adam and Eve, and instead of omnisciently imparting orders and judgment He stands beside them in Eden, speaking to them directly. Jacob wrestles not with an angel, as is so often depicted in paintings, but with a man who looks not much different from himself. The women are uniformly Crumbian, voluptuous Earth goddesses who are both sexualized and strong-willed. (The endnotes offer a close study of the kinds of power women wielded in Genesis.) The downside of fitting all the text in is that many pages are packed tight with small panels, and too rarely—as with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—does Crumb expand his lens and treat signature events dramatically. Even the Flood is fairly restrained, though the exodus of the animals from the Ark is beautifully detailed. The author’s respect for Genesis is admirable, but it may leave readers wishing he had taken a few more chances with his interpretation, as when he draws the serpent in the Garden of Eden as a provocative half-man/half-lizard. On the whole, though, the book is largely a tribute to Crumb’s immense talents as a draftsman and stubborn adherence to the script.
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-393-06102-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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