Good Life: A Zen Precepts Retreat with Cheri Huber [Paperback]

Sara Jenkins (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1997

Good Life presents the Buddhist precepts as signposts on the path to discovering human beings' inherent goodness. It offers concrete ways of transforming real-life difficulties into freedom.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Spiritual/Psychology/Zen Buddhism

If you are looking for the answers to life's problems, you will not find them in this (or any) book. Yet every "answer" is right here, as close as your heart, your breathing, your touch, your sense of who you are.

Instead of a map showing how to avoid life's difficulties so you can head straight for life's treasures, this book offers a process that can serve as a compass to let you know when you are on (or off) course. Here is a Zen perspective on the Buddhist precepts, the heart of a 2,500-year-old spiritual practice. This path has no answers and no end. The path itself is a way of being in the world, in which the only requirement is a questioning mind, and the only result is the very treasure that all of us, everywhere and always, have longed for.

"What the Buddha was getting at with the precepts...is that we are unlikely to allow ourselves to be happy if we ignore these aspects of life." From the Introduction by Zen teacher Cheri Huber

About the Author

Sara Jenkins worked as an art historian, director of an oral history project, and managing editor of a medical research journal before plunging simultaneously into freelance life and Zen Buddhism fourteen years ago. Since then she has occupied many points along the editorial spectrum, including copy editor, illustrations editor, nonfiction author's editor, book producer, and writer. She lives in Lake Junaluska, North Carolina. Cheri Huber is the author of 19 books, including There Is Nothing Wrong with You, When You're Falling, Dive,and Time-Out for Parents. She founded the Mountain View Zen Center in Mountain View, California, and the Zen Monastery Practice Center in Murphys, California, and teaches in both communities. She travels widely and often, leading workshops and retreats around the United States and abroad, most recently in Costa Rica and Italy. She founded Living Compassion in 2003, a nonprofit group comprised of There Is Nothing Wrong With You Retreats (based on the book); Global Community for Peace: The Assisi Peace Project; The Africa Vulnerable Children Project; and Open Air Talk Radio, her weekly call-in radio show originating from Stanford University. She lives in Murphys, California.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 136 pages
• Publisher: Keep It Simple Books (September 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0963078429
• ISBN-13: 978-0963078421
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,263,394 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Precepts as self-expression, not as rules, November 7, 2001

By 

Algernon D'Ammassa (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Good Life: A Zen Precepts Retreat with Cheri Huber (Paperback)

Editor Sara Jenkins compiles questions, answers, comments, and confrontations between Zen teacher Cheri Huber and some of her students during a retreat focusing on the first ten Buddhist precepts.

The way precepts are used in Zen practice has been likened to runway lights: they are there for you to use when the path isn't clear. Cheri Huber, who trained in the Soto tradition and has a very distinctive, insightful style, takes this even further: the precepts are not rules at all, they are doorways onto your personal practice, to identifying the deepest beliefs about existence which we defend, and an opportunity for genuine self-expression as we let this go (as opposed to defending my persona, as my conditioning has taught me).

A wonderful quality of the book is the willingness to present the students' struggles and frustration with respect for the process of the retreat. Cheri Huber refuses to pretend that she has answers: "Without any authority...maybe we can simply explore what's here."

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "10,000 against us, minus one.", July 12, 2001

By 

G. Merritt (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Good Life: A Zen Precepts Retreat with Cheri Huber (Paperback)

This 135-page book contains transcribed dharma talks from a Zen retreat devoted to the Buddhist precepts. In her Preface to the book, editor Sara Jenkins writes that the precepts are not rules. Rather, "they are more like signposts on the path that leads away from suffering and toward our own goodness" (p. 10). Zen teacher, Cheri Huber, explains that the precepts are "about opening to life. They address areas in which people tend to be closed down; we have a lot of childhood conditioning locked in us around stealing, sex, dishonesty, intoxication, judgment, greed, religion" (pp. 11-12).

The talks here are a loving reminder that, although we may live in grown-up bodies, that doesn't mean we know anything (p. 41). This book, like the other engaging Huber books I've read, is about "finding our true nature, our original or authentic self, which has been covered over with conditioning" (p. 83). It is about learning to live "in compassionate awareness all the time" (p. 108) through practice, whether you are a Buddhist or not. In her precept teachings, Huber speaks from the heart with wisdom and clarity. "The best we can do," she tells us, "is to keep bringing our attention back to the present, to our hearts, to what is right here in this moment" (p. 15).

Huber approaches the precepts more as a source of spiritual inspiration than as a code of ethics with which to punish ourselves: "there is no separate self" (not killing); "there is not scarcity of resources" (not stealing); "there is no scarcity of love" (not lusting); "there is no need to hide the truth" (not lying); "there is no need to hide from the truth" (not clouding awareness with intoxicants); "there are no victims or perpetrators" (not blaming or criticizing); "there are no winners or losers" (not competing or coveting); "there is nothing in my life that is not part of my spiritual training" (not denying spiritual responsibility); "there are no mistakes" (not to be angry); and "there is nothing in anyone else's life that is not appropriate to their spiritual training" (not assuming spiritual superiority). Huber encourages us to follow these precepts "as a way of looking after our own spiritual well being" (p. 89). This book will appeal to anyone interested in Zen practice.

G. Merritt