Thorough, if dry, recollections from a guru’s follower.
A debut philosophical memoir describes the life of a spiritual thinker’s devotee.
A child of sunny Santa Barbara, California, in the 1950s, Lee began to ask the big questions early on: “What had stirred in me was an awareness that there is a very great and unexplainable and forceful otherworld presence in life that is ever present, just here—close and intimate—but seldom manifest.” Disenchanted by the limitations of Christianity from an early age, he discovered meditation on his own, though he had no word for it. Introduced to the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti by a friend, Lee had the opportunity to meet the guru at a talk in Switzerland in 1965 and quickly became one of his most devoted followers. Lee recalls: “When Krishnamurti entered the tent and took his place on the platform…I thought he was the most elegant and intelligent person I had ever seen.” Over the next half-century, Lee served as a teacher, administrator, and trustee in various schools and foundations dedicated to the teachings of Krishnamurti, a celebrated speaker and author—born in India—who hoped to reform society through a revolution in human consciousness. With this book, Lee recounts the lessons he learned as an associate of the thinker as well as his encounters with other luminaries of the time, including Indira Gandhi and the Dalai Lama. Lee, a serviceable writer, records his memories in clear prose that makes even the more abstract philosophical notions comprehensible. For those seriously interested in the life and teachings of Krishnamurti, the book represents a valuable resource regarding the inner workings of his movement. Even so, it is an arid read. Lee does not have much critical to say of his mentor, and there is little in the way of dynamism or a narrative arc. For all the discussion of the man’s teachings (along with some of Lee’s extrapolations), those unfamiliar with Krishnamurti are unlikely to become adherents. Readers with any passing familiarity with New Age movements will likely be left wondering just what all the fuss was about.
Thorough, if dry, recollections from a guru’s follower.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5043-6504-8
Page Count: 306
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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