Customer Reviews

Ambivalent Zen : One Man's Adventures on the Dharma Path

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Shainberg's book is great for all of the reasons given in the earlier customer reviews. I read it in one sitting on the shinkansen from Tokyo to Hiroshima. Couldn't put it down. It is honest and very well-written. Going past Okayama, I realized what Shainberg clearly understands, you cannot be enlightened unless you can say to yourself, "I am as enlightened as I am ever going to be." Believing that may not be a sufficient condition for actually being enlightened, but it sure is a necessary condition.

Tackles his spiritual search w/ alternating humor and seriousness--was a book I couldn't leave half finished.

Reads like a novel. I couldn't put it down. Every time I would nod my head in agreement, the next page would reveal a completely different way of looking at the thing. Then I would nod my head, once again. Amusing, insightful and genuine.

First, a little background for this review. I spent 35 years searching for the truth (Who am I? Where did I come from? Is there a God? What are subatomic particles? What could explain the "observer paradoxes" in quantum mechanics? etc.). Zen helped me find everything I was searching for (it required 15 years of attentiveness). Although I ultimately left Zen behind, I am unspeakably grateful for all the help I received from various Zen Masters and other Zen practitioners I met along the way.

I read Shainberg's book when it first came out and then re-read it again this last weekend. I had forgotten how incredibly funny the book is and how honest Shainberg is in reporting his experiences. When I read it the second time, I was struck most strongly by the pernicious power of Shainberg's "monkey mind." It's hard to believe that someone could do as much zen practice as he did without his mind quietening down enough to allow a few major insights. Nevertheless, I take him at his word. It reminds me of one of my friends who told me that after meditating for two years, his internal dialogue had not diminished at all and that he had never had a single moment of mental silence. I guess some people just have bad karma. Either that, or some people just don't want to know the truth badly enough. Personally, I was eaten up by the need to understand. I felt like a rat in a trap, and the idea of dying without ever understanding the universe struck me as absolutely intolerable. I was willing to die to know the truth. Ironically, what I discovered at the end of the trip is that I had never been born! For those who are still trapped by their thinking habits, try to make sense out of that statement.

At any rate, I strongly recommend Ambivalent Zen, either as pure comedy, or as a warning about the kinds of craziness one is likely to encounter on the spiritual path. Fortunately, during his journey Shainberg met at least one authentic Zen Master who was clearly awake, and the Zen Master's conversations with Shainberg throughout the book provide a sharp contrast between an enlightened perspective and one that is still trapped in duality.

For anyone who is serious about waking up, here is the condensed version of how to do it. Stop and be still. Meditate or do whatever you have to do to create some mental silence and space. (everything you are searching for will appear out of silence). Focus your attention upon what you can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. Trust yourself 100% (you already know what you want to know at a deep level of mind, but that level is far below the intellect--you have to go deeper than usual to get access to it). Simply bear in mind what you want to know until your questioning becomes non-verbal. Don't give up. Keep searching until you find the treasure. Hint: You searcher is not who you think it is!

Other wonderful books on the same subject include, The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle, Collision With The Infinite, by Suzanne Segal, and From Onions To Pearls, by Satyam Nadeen. If you can't find help anywhere else, then write to Bob Harwood, The Very Center, 1615 Brown Avenue, Cookeville, TN 38501. Cheers.

I have laughed with relief since picking up this book. Similar doubts, questions, revelations, joy, pain and peace have entered and left my practice. Every person interested in buddhism should read this book on their "adventures on the Dharma path."

Troubled, troubling, restless--this is a wonderful read across the American (and New York) Zen experience. Shainberg is of course funny, sometimes corrosive, and deeply concerned/consumed by his efforts to "get" zen practice. If you want a non-exotic, textured view of that practice, and of dealing with its eccentric Sanghas, this is a sharp introduction.

Luckily, it's also not an inspiring one.

After all, this stuff is hard work.

I've read lots and lots of memoirs by Westerners on their experiences with Buddhism, but for me none are as well written and wisely perceptive as this. Shainberg has an unusual ability to report honestly and vividly on both his inner life and the behavior of his teacher. He doesn't try to be profound nor funny nor eloquent, but his account ends up having all these qualities.

Author Shainberg's honest and poignantly absurdist true storyof a life spent in pursuit of equanimity features a lineup of teachersas fascinatingly unconscious of their distance from equilibrium as the cast of Dallas.

First, there's the father, a successful Memphis department store magnate dominating dinnertime conversation with personal existential laments. A philosophical hummingbird who dips into the wells of Krishnamurtism, KarenHorneyism, AllanWattsism, DTSuzukism, the senior Shainberg makes their teachings a peculiar confirmation of some unspecified emotional malaise, happily projecting a sense of his own failure. In fact he is dominates at business and at home, the star of his own firmament, successfully competing for the lion's share of his family's attention and sympathies, and making an apparent virtue of self doubt. And, there's a legacy to be carried forward after his death. He sends both of his sons to psychiatrists as a matter of course.

Then there's the inscrutable family psychiatrist intent on remaining the long term inscrutable family psychiatrist who, after years of analysis, on the day Shainberg quits says. . . he's been looking forward to that day ... but why the need for approval?

There's a Japanese Zen Master whose mastery has affinities with Masters and Johnson.

There's an American Zen Master real estate developer.

There's a karate master who heals long distance by telephone energy, belly to belly.

And as a foil to all this madness one true voice, from a comically and brilliantly malaproping Japanese Zen monk, whose modesty in personal expectation, Lawrence, even by the end of the book, cannot make his own. In the end there is not Zen but ambivalence, its antithesis.

This is the story ultimately of the movement forward from self-doubt, to self-consciousness. But it ends at that point, short in the author's own estimation, of the final movement to un-self-consciousness. That is, to a faith. The journey, the story of a life, is by turns funny, affectionate, and painful, and in the beautifully written intimacy of many details, somehow familiar.

I see my own feeble and misdirected efforts as a beginner in a new light after finishing this book. It was like reading the loops in my own 'radio' mind. The parts that shed light on the history of some of the largest centers and their teachers are also very interesting. Great book!

Hmmm...I'm trying to keep an open mind on this one.

First, I've maintained a strong interest in Buddhism for my entire adult life, and am keen to hear or read others' impressions.

Second, I've never gotten involved in any formal practice for several reasons, which can all be boiled down to my own personal hang-ups, impressions and stereotypes (which - in the absence of active practice - won't be confirmed or refuted by facts or experience): that Western Zen is often too insular, class-bound, and very much adapted to an upscale and rather fashionable POV that has as much to do with the fantasies (or the ego) of the 'seeker' as it does with any truth that might be ascertained from a disciplined study of the philosophies in question.

Exoticism and navel-gazing do rankle; my own perspective is working-class, non-academic, non-affluent, and non-white, and I kept finding myself getting extremely annoyed with Shainberg's self-absorption. It's my own perspective and POV - such esoteric narcissism strikes me as a luxury many of us cannot afford; the discipline and toughness of Zen is attractive to many of us who are engaged with the world (and not seeking some ethereal retreat from it), and occasionally frustrated by the varied injustices and difficulties that we personally encounter on a day-to-day basis, so to me the luxury of literary dilletancy and self-reflective ponderings is very nearly insulting. It does strike me as a real affront to anyone who makes a serious effort to practice, and to learn the history and teaching that informs that practice.

I will allow that Shainberg does display the occasional humorous flash of insight, and he does offer some extremely revealing glimpses into certain famous characters, though this is too often adrift in a sea of leaden prose.

I wouldn't deny Shainberg's discomort at times, but would only insist that his discomfort doesn't make him any more special or interesting than anyone else.

-David Alston