Essential reading for anyone interested in the monastic tradition and those who follow it.
The noted traveler, journalist, and author turns to an unexpected subject: the monastic life of contemplation and meditation.
Iyer takes his title from the great fires that have lately ravaged California, where he has long retreated to a monastery run by Camaldolese monks, “the most contemplative congregation of Benedictines.” Contemplative the inhabitants may be, but they are very much people of the world. As he learns from another contemplative, this one a Zen monk in Japan, “Anyone can sit in a Zendo. The trick is to sit in the world.” The monks seemingly delight in defying stereotypes and misconceptions. (For one thing, they enjoy watching Monty Python on Sunday nights.) Iyer travels to other monasteries and other religious traditions, but Catholicism and Buddhism, which seem well suited to each other, occupy most of his attention. Some of his time is spent in the company of the gravel-voiced Leonard Cohen, the singer-songwriter who, though dying of cancer, kept busy doing his longtime work as a Buddhist monk in a mountain retreat above Los Angeles. One secret to Zen? “You can’t dwell on things.” Yet the world of things is always present, even in the transcendental mountains of Big Sur, perched over the roiling Pacific: great fires are burning, and though a Camaldolese brother reports of one that has consumed 130,000 acres, “other than that, all is quiet, and the bell calls us to morning prayers.” A lovely complement to the monastic writings of both Thomas Merton and Patrick Leigh Fermor, Iyer’s book speaks well to the qualities of those who live both outside and firmly within the daily world and the wisdom, rough and refined, that monks have to offer, as when one advises him, “If you do spot a mountain lion, make sure you don’t look like a deer!”
Essential reading for anyone interested in the monastic tradition and those who follow it.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780593420287
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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