Customer Reviews

Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the 15 or so years that I've been interested in Buddhism, I couldn't begin to tell you how many books I've read on the subject. I've come to believe that they all basically say the same thing, but that doesn't mean that some aren't better than others. Truth be told: there are plenty of books by Buddhist teachers that are a complete mess--not to mention a waste of time. Fortunately, this isn't one of them.

There's something about Charlotte Joko Beck, who is Magid's teacher, that is quite refreshing to me. I have found Joko Beck's two books, and the books of another of her students, Ezra Bayda, very useful. She has a non-sense style and an emphasis on the fact that Zen is not a means of escape (which is all I have ever really wanted from spiritual practice). Barry Magid takes this same theme and runs with it--presenting it with a new clarity and insight.

Magid, a psychoanalyst and Zen teacher, presents a bull****-free version of practice that emphasizes real life experience--not the aspiration to a higher state of consciousness. Much of what we come to spritual practice to find is imaginary, according to Magid---and I think this is something we can't hear enough: coming to practice might ultimately be transformative, but it won't change the "ordinariness" of our lives. I can think of no better book to guide us to this simple, yet quite profound truth.

Ending the Pursuit of Happiness is a fabulous, direct, inspired, articulate, accessible work. For those interested in Buddhism, and Zen in particular, I can't recommend it highly enough.

Hsin-hsin Ming famously wrote, "the Great Way is not difficult for those not attached to preferences." All too often this has been interpreted in American Zen as requiring an emotional neutering with the student supposedly developing the ability to be unaffected by external events. Dr. Magid's great contribution to practice, and that of the Ordinary Mind School generally, is to point out that demands for particular emotional states are no different than demands for specific external conditions, and the Great Way is attached to neither. Or more particularly, through proper Zen practice the individual slowly and at times painfully develops the capacity to hold both external events and internal emotional states without being fully caught by either. Dr. Magid bravely goes against the current barrage of books promising happiness ever after and shows how suffering is inherent in that very pursuit. He does not promise happiness so this book will never be sold at the grocery store check-out counter. Rather he shows the path available to all of us to open to the joy of the very life we have. No candy here. All meat.

This is an exceptional practice-related book. Barry Magid clearly articulates his thoughts that our emotions and their underpinnings are not separate, or to be discarded, in our practice. He makes very clear the point that pursuits to be other than we are, even when these pursuits fit an ideal Zen or personal image, lead us away from the reality of who/how we are now. However, he is able to incorporate the purpose of action in a useful way. Certainly, other books revolve around the topic of `be here, now, regardless of what comes up,' but none I've read comes close to making this topic more alive than Magid's book.

Although I don't think my teacher has to be my analyst (he does not necessarily advocate this) or that I necessarily need an analyst at all (if he doesn't advocate this, it is because he does not know me), I am left with the impression that North Americans are more psychologically weighted down than the rest of the world. Maybe we should be given our projection of anger, guilt, violence, etc. around the world, but I am not quite convinced of this idea. I don't know if he believes this or if it is more the Ordinary Mind School's incorporation of psychology in seeking the best `Zen fit' for those of us in the states.

If Charolette Joko Beck's teachings struck a chord with you, so will this book. No doubt this is one of those books you can read and re-read and benefit at each sitting. This is one of the best practice books I have read.

I read this after having read "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" and "Everyday Zen". Those two books are collections of Dharma talks given at a zendo while this book is a consistent book in it's entirety.

I found it very well written and reasoned. It doesn't fall back on "new age" type analogies that so much as some Zen books. It brings Zen into the modern western world while still recounting some of the tales and koans of early Buddhism. It also references Socrate's and more recent western philosophers. Magid is a practicing psycho-analyst and I found his comparisons of therapy and zen illuminating but I also found this book a good exploration of Zen by itself. Having said that I may have not found it so useful if I had not read other material about Zen and meditated at a couple of Zendos before reading it.

This book has some wonderfully clear analyses of what happens in Buddhist and particularly Zen practice. I've read numerous books on practice over the years and to my mind this covers some areas I haven't seen covered like this before: on the play of the ordinary and the special in our lives and practice, understanding how so many teachers abuse their positions, how Zen is evolving in the West.

Apart from his psychoanalytic background, Magid brings in his knowledge of Western philosophers and this gives parts of the book an intellectual flavor which may not appeal to everyone.

Given that much of the book is clear and grounded with fresh perspectives, it was a surprise to see Magid sum up the First Noble Truth as "Life is Suffering". This is an unfortunate mistake, particularly for a book published in 2008. Many Buddhist teachers in recent years have been trying to counter the myth that this is what the Buddha said. It is simply not found in the (Theravada) suttas. One big mistake like that casts a bit of a shadow on the book but because some of the other material is so good, it still gets four stars from me.

I wouldn't recommend it to students new to meditation (I've taught Buddhist meditation for over a decade) but it would be on my recommended list of books for people who've been practicing a few years.

This is a gem of a book, but it is brutally frank and honest. There are no sugar-coated solutions to the difficulty of being alive, no place to hide, no true refuge. Thus, this is definitely the best Zen book I've ever read. His experience as a psychoanalyst was fascinating, too, and gave me a new appreciation of this much maligned profession.

But the sad fact is that the author busts our illusions and delusions. He ferrets out our "secret practice" which is always goal-oriented, usually towards some comforting end or safe harbor at the end. I find that this existential truth is a little too hard to bear and it frightens, annoys and saddens me.

But the climax of the book is when the author says that the gentle kiss of moment by moment attention is the one thing that alleviate this (my paraphrase.) This is what we can do, what we can count on, what will comfort us. I think the secret practice is the desire to be comforted once and for all time, usually way down at the end of the road, usually heaven. I know I certain harbor this secret dream and illusion. But heaven is right here, right now. Even Christ said as much, but we all keep chasing after the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. How about that for a great metaphor?!?!? Forget the beautiful rainbow in the sky! I want to find that d*mn pot of gold, which will endure forever. The rainbow is ephemeral, I want solid gold. Wow, the human condition is a tricky one. Occasionally I just have to turn away from all this and eat potato chips and watch "I Love Lucy." The intensity of the truth is just too much to bear!

But thank you to the author!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you.

To my mind, this book should be on every motel night stand...that's where it is in my home. In Ending the Pursuit of Happiness, Barry Magid writes about our struggle to "happiness," with great simplicity, wisdom and empathy. Somewhere in the middle of the book I finally felt my feet touch ground..."you mean I don't have to be happy all the time, who knew?!" I am so grateful to the friend who shared it with me. I now own two copies...one for myself and one for MY friends.

Trying to follow a path in Buddhism has been hard for me. I've somehow felt at odds with the programs, though I have learned a lot from them. I've been practicing at a Bay Area meditation center, and some of the helpful things I have learned include: watching self-talk and not buying into it; having more spaciousness around inner and outer events, in general; doing practices to cultivate compassion for self and other, and other positive mind-states; choosing actions that will bring a sense of peace/happiness rather than pain; and ideas around meditating to heal the effects of trauma on the pre-frontal cortex (the integrating region of the brain, providing our highest potentialities as humans). Some of the work is in the cognitive psychology vein, and it has helped me a lot. My life is more balanced, I'm in less emotional pain, and I have more ego strength and intention.

Evenso, I have continued to search far and wide for teachers that I feel are an ideological match for my own passions and deepest sense of things. As a family scapegoat and someone who has played scapegoat in work scenarios and in a Buddhist community, I think I've lived very close to the world of "shadow" (in the Jungian sense), and to my dreams and other non-ego experience. Magid's book speaks to shadows of Buddhist practice so well.

In the spiritual communities I have participated in, people are working to be kind and generous, which is a great intention. But I also feel that things are getting pushed down in the process. And that people don't talk about shadowy things. In my experience, people can be very uncomfortable with their own shadows in spiritual communities, and not sure what to do with them. I have felt "shadowy" in relation to these people, as they use projection to find some ease around this. Another approach to their discomfort is a proclivity to teach and practice as though one could purge shadow. The community where I remember that sense of things most was the community where I got scapegoated. And I have spoken with fellow practitioners, when we were sharing deep aspects of our practices, where they would confide about aspects of themselves that were the most difficult to deal with, and I tried to tell them that they might accept that part of themselves, and one repeated response has been that, no, they heard that they could finally heal/purge that part once and for all.

I don't see teachers in my neck of the woods who are addressing these issues as their main emphasis, like Magid does, and like Pema Chodron does. I don't feel comfortable unless a teacher is able to centrally include this. I need a teacher who is as much of a depth psychologist as they are a Buddhist. I would hope depth psychology would deeply inform the transformation of Buddhism in its Western setting. Another path to cultivating compassion is, after all, to, over years, accept our wholeness more and more, to include our vulnerabilities, wounds, limits, flaws, anger, unsalient aspects, conflict, tension. It seems to me that this would more surely make an awakened individual, who has wisdom, tolerance and compassion.

Magid's book speaks to my own longings and names what has been stirring and at odds in me and maps a path of practice that leads us to our wholeness. It deeply informs my language about my own practice and provides a framework for sitting, such a good language and framework that I am reluctant to consider others at this time. Magid's book is the needle in a haystack that I have been looking for.

Excellent down-to-earth approach to Zen practice. Magid blends Buddhist wisdom with modern intelligence and psychoanalytic insights to reveal the heart of the Dharma. As the title suggests, Magid reminds us that Buddha nature isn't a potential/capacity for Awakening, or some mystical third eye experience, but rather who and what we are. The hard part isn't actualizing this, but accepting it. Embracing the moment with all of its imperfections. Magid honors Charlotte Joko Beck, his teacher, and the entire Ordinary Mind school with this book. I highly recommend it!

Magid writes clearly and helps the seeker acknowledge his own hidden agenda.
Must read for serious seekers.