Being a Buddha on Broadway [Perfect Paperback]

Bertram Salzman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2004

At the age of eight, Bert Salzman experienced a profound mystical transformation amid and environment of deep despair. This event radically changed his experience of life, bringing with it an experience of universal love and lasting happiness. At that time, young Bert made a promise to himself to discover the source of this transformation. Being a Buddha on Broadway contains much more than just Bert Salzman’s compelling story: it is a truly practical guide to help us reclaim our own spiritual essence. Through the power of attention, the simple but dramatic exercises contained in these pages can give any reader a joyful ability to see beyond the drama each of us calls “ my life.”

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Being a Buddha on Broadway is a unique approach to the meditative experience that helps free us from the limiting belief that we exist as the mental noise, which is the gross aspect of the mind. It demonstrates that what we seek we "already are," though we are unable to access it because of the overactive nature of thought. This simple yet profound premise is conveyed through talks, aphorisms, and a series of Attention Exercises that powerfully free us from the self-imposed limitations we've created.

Developed by Academy Award-winning director and mystic, B. W. Salzman, the results-oriented system helps us experience the joy and happiness of the "subtle mind," which is always naturally calm and peaceful. It addresses the fundamental problem of "mind control," by stepping out of this age-old, circular process entirely. Using the Power of Attention, the exercises in this book will help the reader--in an easy and precise manner--access the always-present, naturally peaceful mind, which is untouched by surface noise and disturbance. This natural state of inner peace and tranquility is our birthright.

This book will appeal to a wide number of people interested in obtaining and maintaining peace of mind and freedom from overactive thinking. Salzman has dedicated his life making this approach available--an approach that grew from his own profound and lifelong experience in meditation.

About the Author

At the age of eight, B. W. Salzman experienced a major mystical transformation amidst an environment of deep despair. This event radically changed him, bringing with it a profound experience of universal love and lasting happiness. At that time, he made a promise to himself to discover and share access to the source of this radical transformation.

At the age of fifty, during the height of his film and television career as an Academy Award-winning director, Salzman abandoned the lure of Broadway and Hollywood in order to fulfill his earlier promise. The result is Being a Buddha on Broadway.

Product Details

• Perfect Paperback: 146 pages
• Publisher: Inner Directions (April 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1878019228
• ISBN-13: 978-1878019226
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,612,724 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Definitely Rewarding and Accessible!, April 25, 2004

By 

Ramón Sender Barayón (http://www.raysender.com) (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Being a Buddha on Broadway (Perfect Paperback)

The Universal Source has blessed the author of this engagingly written and benevolent book. In the first chapter, Bert Salzman describes how, ever since his epiphany as an eight-year old in a Jewish orphanage, he has been given access to an ineffable golden light. I experienced something similar during a traumatic infancy, and also can identify with how he zeroed in on Zen Buddhism as an art student (we must have bumped elbows browsing the same bookshelves in Manhattan). A successful twenty-two-year career in film production resulted in an Oscar - and in enough wisdom to retire early to a French village. There, with his partner Jeannie, he devoted ten years to developing the attention exercises that he shares in the second half of this book.
Salzman has no axes to sharpen other than the reader's nose, which he holds firmly to that grindstone phrase, "Who Am I," but with the warning that you should not allow your mind to attempt to answer, but remain still in an expectant silence for whatever may come. The "Locate - Be Still Procedure" teaches the reader to widen their gaze to something the author calls "Open Attention." Other exercises allow you to hone your practice to 'Watching the Watcher.' 'Slowing Down' and 'Silent Listening, Silent Speech.'
As an inveterate underliner, I marked the following passages:
"I could never look at those trees again and think of them as just trees. In "unnaming" them and myself, I had been freed! They rushed fully alive into my void-like consciousness."
"The human mind, I suddenly realized, is the mirror in which life can reflect upon itself. At that moment I saw that the entire purpose of human existence is to facilitate the awakening of life to itself as eternal consciousness."
"When the inquiry 'Who am I?' takes place, and the mind is asked not to provide an answer - yet attention is held on the question - the source of this attention responds by removing the limited boundary of thought and reveals our unlimited and boundless nature."
"The journey is never really complete, for our lives represent only tiny movements in the ever-expanding flow of consciousness."'

Anyone who has ever expanded their consciousness via traditional methods will find the regimen that this book offers rewarding. For those just beginning the journey to their deeper selves, Salzman offers smooth traveling and easy access. Try his exercises! You'll like them!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You don't have to be enlightened to love this book, May 1, 2004

By 

Murray I. Suid "nonprofiteer" (Inverness, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Being a Buddha on Broadway (Perfect Paperback)

Bert Salzman's BEING A BUDDHA ON BROADWAY will obviously appeal to people already embarked on spiritual journeys. But I'm not one of them. I consider myself a highly UNspiritual person. And yet I love this book.

I love BEING A BUDDHA ON BROADWAY for its stories. Bert is an Academy Award-winning director; he knows how to tell a tale, whether set in a New York orphanage or a Korean battlefield.

I love the book for its humor and wise sayings. I'm a collector of aphorisms.

I love the book for its creative structure. Bert blends memoir, interviews, and how-to-do-it exercises in a way that's absolutely engaging and useful. I'd say that the practices are even fun, but maybe that's the wrong word for describing meditation.

I love the book for the entertaining way it presents the really difficult of subject of understanding who we are and why we are. I've been in education my whole adult life, and Bert is flat out the best teacher I've encountered.

Most of all, I love Bert's book because it has made me less skeptical about the possibility of achieving a calm mind. I'm still far from calm, but I'm a bit closer.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Liberation through the Cultivation of Attention, May 1, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Being a Buddha on Broadway (Perfect Paperback)

This book of Bert Salzman has three parts. First, there is a touching spirtual memoir describing how a liberating childhood experience set the tone for understanding life events as well as evaluating meditational methods through many years. If you have ever had such a liberating experience or contemplated or attempted any spiritual path, this memoir will probably strike you as somehow familiar. Second, there is an explanation of the workings of what Salzman calls the gross and subtle minds and their actions. If you are familiar with spiritual writings you will probably see correspondences with other explanations, but if you are not, it doesn't matter. Those explanations are really to provide a little working terminology for the third part of the book in which Salzman lays out a set of exercises. If you do the execises you will learn through direct experience the nature of attention and awareness and what is required to bring them forth when you wish. The presentation of the exercises is so straightforward and practical that the only way you can fail is not doing them. So if you're interested in your liberation through the cultivation of attention, this book is a deal!