Customer Reviews

Sailing Home: Using Homer's Odyssey to Navigate Life's Perils and Pitfalls

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4 star:		(3)
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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I just finished this book at a critical time when I was involved with major life decisions. It was helpful to me to gain understanding of what I was going through and feeling, as I travel. This book weaves new meaning into the story of Odysseus. I love how Fischer uses the Odyssey as a way to explain a new way of working with life's "twists and turns" through awareness of life, and integrates his years of zen practice into understanding deeper levels of this ancient human story. The Odyssey, Fischer says, is about coming home, for people who "have encountered twists and turns of pain and suffering, and so are ready to come home." Fisher has a delightful way of explaining how a Odysseus, a human, is at the mercy of the sea and life, and at the mercy of his own human failings, yet he goes on. He states "To respect the sea is to trust that we can welcome life's immense and unknowable currents rather than resist them. .. " This book is for seekers of all faiths, yet makes the practice and principles of zen accessible to the average person through this story. The book is broken into Parts: Setting Forth (waiting, grief, body practice, etc) and Disaster (working with disaster, pleasure and time; death, desire, the siren's call and impossible choices); and Return (revealing yourself, love's risk, and forgivenss) particularly good for those practicing meditation and particularly zen practice, but I would recommend this book to non meditators who are interested in a different way to view life's hard times, and to gain a new perspective of faith, practice on living truly, and finding love and compassion for ourselves and others by not resisting life's offerings.

Norman Fischer has written a "classic" commentary on The Odyssey. What I mean by "classic" is that it is one of first rank as Norman Fischer makes Odysseus' journey of almost a generation ours. With heartfelt prose, Mr. Fischer shares his experience as someone deeply immersed in his Buddhist tradition to find his way home. Not preachy, through the travails of Oddysseus, Mr. Fischer offers a way to show the readers how to reconsider what it means to live a good life, to ask the right questions and give due care to those we love. I wished the book went on and on after I finished it. In graceful ways, Mr. Fischer shows us how to separate the wheat from the chaff in our lives. I wish him many more books to write which are as conversational and as learned as this book.

I found this book to be one of the most enjoyable and life changing moments in my life. I was so engaged and intrigued by the premise and the easy way Norman Fischer was able to convey his profound understanding of the human condition. The honesty and integrity of his experiences are so wonderfully shared through the trials and tribulations from Homer's Odyssey as the ground for our personal work. It is a book that you just want to savor every word. Besides, at the end of each chapter are wonderful guided meditations.

Norm Fischer is a heartful, compassionate teacher with a great gift for expressing his and our human beingness...I've been carrying Sailing Home around with me for several weeks, cherishing the gift of his awareness and experience as a person...a person who has immersed himself in the practice of meditation, Buddhist, Judaic, Christian teachings and life itself. He is a very intelligent person who can bring even Homer's Odyssey down home in a valuable meaningful way using metaphor so that even I am understanding it. I am grateful that this book came my way.

Blessings for your journey home. Joan Fenold

I definetely recommend this book. He uses examples from Zen Buddhism, Greek mythology, Judaism, and Christianity to emphasize the kind of struggles many have to face in life and how to deal with those struggles. So he's really a very open-minded person.

Sailing Home is a beautifully written, elegant and eye-opening guide to navigating "life's perils and pitfalls". Norman Fischer provides a wise, kind, and candid interpretation of Odysseus's journey home. While this journey, as written by Homer, is laden with masculine sensibility and challenges, Fischer's guidance, infused with Buddhist wisdom and practice, makes the journey accessible to all. (Ah -- but to hear this story from Penelope's perspective!) With unflinching acceptance for the human condition, Fischer's Sailing Home allows the reader to appreciate the restless, circuitous, courageous, and perilous journey we all must make to find our way home to ourselves.

Norman Fischer uses Homer's Odyssey to offer reflections on how to live, how to meditate, how to forgive, how to die, and how to be. Although he writes from the perspective of Zen Buddhism, he also weaves in Jewish and Christian perspectives. One need not be Buddhist -- nor a scholar of Homer -- to appreciate and benefit from the insights into living and dying that Fischer offers. Moreover, his prose is straightforward and lucid, generously seasoned with stories, verses, and quotations from both sages and everyday folks. To read this book is to be entertained, educated, and uplifted.

Homer's Odyssey is a classic, and for a reason. It's message is eternal and individual. We are all Odysseus as we sail home toward the metaphorical Ithaca. Norman Fischer, the wise and brilliant Zen master, employs the rich mythology of The Odyssey as an aid to help us maneuver through the perils and pitfalls of our voyage home. Each chapter is filled with insightful anecdotes and wisdom from each of the major religions - Buddhism, Juadic,as well as Christian - which give us instruction on our own mysterious journey back home. As the "man of twists and turns", Odysseus and his wanderings are so very relevant to our own heroic journey. And Fischer is a wonderful and compassionate companion throughout this book as he deftly relates that, "The mystery (and pain!) of our lives is that we are where we need to be, but we don't know it." Yet he invites us to experience the odyssey of our unique paths when we set sail to learn the lessons of our own homeward bound spirital journey called "life."

I find this book to be an absolute jewel of wisdom. Norman Fischer never disappoints, and in this book he is perhaps at his finest. In simplifying the story of the Odyssey and comparing it to our own spiritual journey, he has made it meaningful to me for the first time in my life. In high school, I thought it was a boring GUY book about battles and monsters. Fischer deftly untangles the threads of this convoluted story to reveal the human struggles that are common to us all. The way we sometimes fall asleep when we most need to be awake to what is happening in our lives. The way pride, or lust, or greed, can lure us away from our true journey, sometimes for years at a time. The reassuring message that in spite of all our travails, we ARE going home, we are always going home. The warning that even "going home" is still going to be fraught with much struggle before we finally find peace.

Every chapter ends with a brief meditation suggestion. It has been a very useful way to incorporate the teachings of that chapter and to explore how its truths might be manifest in my own life.

This is one of the best "guide" books I have ever read for the spiritual journey. I plan to read this book again and again.

In "Taking Our Places," Fischer writes in an anecdotal format--he is trying to get to know a small group of male teen-agers, about accepting
responsibility as a step in becoming and adult human being, capable of compassion for others. This means giving up the blaming self, the one that says mom or dad is at fault for your problems. It also means you stop identifying with someone you reject and about forgiving yourself, e.g. becoming independent and alone.

In "Sailing Home," Norman Fischer uses a Greek author's story about "trying to make it home again" as a springboard and parallel for achieving the same result with his beautiful teachings. Home is where the heart is, and where you grow up, and accept your mortality, and help others.

Everything Fischer writes is incredibly understandable. He is not Zen preachy and I find his writing even more compelling than that of Pema Chodron, a real surprise to me.