(February List)
Occasionally, in life, people hand you books. People hand off books because it says something about themselves, but also something about how they see the person they hand the book to. A small but significant proportion of the books in my stacks and stacks of To-Be-Read books are a result of this. I love it when someone hands me a book because it's like a little puzzle on top of the book itself. Reading such a book gives me insight into the one who handed it to me, but also shows me something about how they see me. Sometimes these insights are simple, sometimes they are complex, but they are always interesting.
My mom handed me this one. For those of you who don't know, my mother is a Zen Buddhist teacher with a community in Finland. We were talking one day about how I view my role as a teacher and general life stuff. Next thing I knew she was ordering me a book.
I don't generally read spirituality books. It's not that I don't see value in them, I just have a hard time getting into a flow with them. If they are thought provoking, it means that they take time to process. Typically if I put such a book down for a minute, I often forget to pick it back up. I have started many, many spirituality books, and finished maybe four.
I did finish this one, although there was a dicey bit in the middle where I almost put it down. I can see why my mom handed me this book. Much of what Burkett talks about in the first part of the book echoes things I said in the conversation that inspired the gift. I am nominally Buddhist in a more philosophical sense. I don't go to services and it's been a very long time since I sat in meditation. Yet, many of the ideas resonate with me. They feel true.
This book runs through many of the underpinning ideas of Zen Buddhism and suggests practices for a person to try along with advice about sticking with it. I suspect the intended audience was a person relatively unfamiliar with Buddhism but with a basic understanding of spirituality. However, I think it helps to have a little background in Buddhism. Burkett moves through topics very quickly.
Burkett also does a very good job presenting and explaining many of the seemingly paradoxical core ideas of Zen. He includes several stories/koans to illustrate various ideas. His explanation of various practices is clear and he does a good job of explaining what to expect. Often he shares snippets of his own journey with Zen which makes it all feel easier to relate to.
My one real complaint is that he spends a large chunk of time talking about the heart sutra's effect on him. He comes back to it again and again, but he doesn't really give the reader the whole text or even enough of it, in my opinion, to really get a feel for it. I had to look it up. It is as Burkett noted rather frustratingly complex hidden under a veneer of simplicity. Pairing the whole sutra with Burkett's comments made the some of the information more accessible. In the end, this isn't a big thing. I just think he could of put it in an appendix to good effect.
Overall, this was a good accessible text and I will be sitting with some of the ideas for while. Something like this doesn't get processed in a hurry, but I feel comfortable recommending it to anyone curious about Zen Buddhism.
