Customer Reviews

The Ease of Being

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This book teaches simple effective ways to view life from the heart, instead of just the head. All there is, is Consciousness.
Duality appears in non-duality. Silence is our Real nature.
We are not the body. We are not the mind. The body and mind appear and disappear in our awareness. When we awaken in the morning, it is our body that awakens for Consciousness, what we
really are, never sleeps. We can learn to live from the heart.
Being aware of what I see, what I smell, what I taste, what I
hear, what I am touching, what I am thinking, takes me to a place of Silent Observation. This is what Jean Klein and other Self Realized Masters teach. We are the Self that shines on the world. I am not in the world, the world is in me.

Don't just read this book, digest it.

Namaste,

Michael

Jean Klein has the ability to create the stillness necessary to see the silent knowingness which Advaita Vedanta or other non-duality traditions point to.

Jean invites us to watch the mind, notice that we desire and fear, witness the arising of jealousy and greed. And in this simple looking without the desire for an outcome, we may find ourselves resting in being - the natural state.

Jean shows us that when we simply notice what's happening in the mind, a space is created, we are immediately outside the suffering - watching as an observer. And in this - we may see that it's all happening in our consciousness/awareness.

This book isn't the easiest to read - it's not a new-age spirituality book, filled with feel-good methods and processes which are intended to make the "person" better. If this, or anything else written by Jean Klein, is read with no attachment to attaining something or getting somewhere, this simple silent presence of being may be noticed as your natural and already-present state.

I suppose I have to admit to a certain amount of bias for the Advaita teachings, but this bias has come at the expence of much effort to translate what many teachers have to to say given their cultural background. This book presents Advaita in wonderfully warm and simple language. Jean Klein provides one of the most aticulate presentations of these teachings available and yet almost completely free from the use of Hindu and Sanskrit terms or popular "insider" language. My feeling is that this reflects his own realization.

The really wonderful thing about this book is that it is seemingly "new" each time you pick it up. A line or paragraph that touched you in one manner at one time will inspire a completely new experience on a second or third read at a later date. Jump in anywhere and you haven't missed anything; it's non-sequential, just like the present moment. Every sentence carries the charge of the entire teaching. Highly recommended.

Seekers after the truth will catch their breaths on the very first pages of Ease of Being. Jean Klen so succinctly captures the perfume of our true nature that we are stopped, at least momentarily, from our usual identifications and made to rest as the expansiveness, the eternal present that we, in fact, are.

"There's no person to answer personal questions. I listen to your question and I listen to the answer. The answer comes out of silence."

The essence of non-duality is Jean Klein. The same Absolute that speaks through Nisargadatta and Ramana speaks beautifully through Jean Klein. His writings are perhaps more suited for the Western tuned mind. His words cut sharply and deeply and actually push one toward the non-dual. Others can talk the talk but there is no mistaking the words of a truly realized master.
This is one of four JK books I've read to date and while they are all different they are all basically about the same thing. I noticed with some authors that the later in life they wrote the book the more enlightened it seemed to me. I felt his book "I Am" more deeply than the other three so far.
It's a shame that he, like the fabulous Paul Brunton, is not more widely known.

If you are inclined to read about non dualism, here is a world master. Jean Klein was an erudite and refined man and it shows in his writing. Kind of like the classical music radio station of non dualism and no Pop or Rock here. In my opinion, one needs to "feel" your way through the book and not get caught in the conceptualization.