An energetic accounting of life’s maladies and their survivability, conducted through prose and poetry.
A debut book offers a wide-ranging and deeply personal study of the process of individual healing.
As the underpinning for his work, Moore interviewed many people on all parts of the health care spectrum—from caregivers like nurses to the loved ones of patients—to explore concepts of healing, both mental and physical, and alternate therapies that might be effective in a wide variety of situations. The author, for example, suffers from chronic sciatic pain and describes at one point the array of treatment strategies he underwent, from physical therapy to spinal injections to reflexology to “pet therapy” and shamanic breath-control rituals. He looks at Eastern philosophy and other exotic practices, all with an aim to “liberate our spirits in ecstatic ways” and get readers in touch with their own inner resources. Moore uses extended passages of autobiography as well as humor and his own poetry to help make sense of a great many aspects of modern life, not only health-related issues, but also social topics like politics, sexuality, and 9/11. He always employs a holistic overview and the variously worded reminder to “enjoy every single miraculous moment in its endless new unfolding.” Each chapter ends with discussion questions and reflection prompts, and the main text likewise reflects this kind of interactive approach. Moore holds that the mistake of both science and religion is a tendency to generalize and dogmatize the personal medical and spiritual experiences that are in fact unique to each person, and he urges readers to “declare our divinity” by looking inward for healing and a sense of renewal. The book’s prose remains lively and approachable throughout, although Moore has perhaps misjudged the balance of his materials: his own chunks of autobiography are almost always more intriguing than his more philosophical discussions, for instance, and like most personal poetry, the author’s own verses can at times be more awkward than enlightening. The main strength of the book lies in the sense it gives of Moore’s own journey.
An energetic accounting of life’s maladies and their survivability, conducted through prose and poetry.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4907-7496-1
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Trafford
Review Posted Online: Jan. 17, 2017
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
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
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