Customer Reviews

The Shaolin Way: 10 Modern Secrets of Survival from a Shaolin Grandmaster

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As a child of family therapists and ordained ministers I could understand a lot of the illustrations Steve DeMasco uses in this book. It is one of the first books I have found that continuously tells the reader that you are the solution to your problems no matter what your circumstances and illustrates effectively ways to either create a new cycle or help someone delve deeper into themselves.

Well balanced in the use of Shaolin principles while still maintaining the religeous identity of the reader. (Steve DeMasco is Catholic & a Grand Master.)

Easy/light reading with heavy overtones. I believe everyone will find something pertinent to how they live their lives in this book.

I liked the unique approach this author took. I've read a lot about eastern philosophy, and it's exciting to see someone apply it to western life. It's impossible to live exactly like a monk in America, but that doesn't mean all their teachings should be abandoned. This book helped me maintain some inner peace while inspiring my mind for my constant self-reconstruction.

Very good book, very interesting if you like martial arts.

I started this book hopeful for some interesting insights and it started well but by the last 25% it trailed off for me. You really have to work to find the Shaolin insights. My hat goes off the Author and what he has achieved and overcome in life and that is a great story. The connection to Shaolin seemed lost to me.

Shaolin is a Buddhist sect, yet Steve DeMasco barely mentions the word, so how can this be a book about the Shaolin way? Steve gives more time to the fighting forms then he does to the religious practice, yet still, even this is relagated as a small afterthought to the back of the book in a very short appendix. Anyone can call themselves Shaolin, but that will not make them one. There is no Shaolin in this book and I doubt that Steve belongs to any actual Shaolin. So what is this book really all about? Steve DeMasco. He should have called it The Autobiography of Steve DeMasco.

There are millions of self-help books with lots of wise advice. Those kind of books are a dime a dozen. Anyone can give wonderful advice, but advice means nothing by itself. So if you tell a chronic smoker to stop smoking by using a patch, what good have you done? If you tell an obese person that Atkin's diet works, what good have you done? If you tell a sad person to learn to enjoy suffering and you will never be unhappy, what good have you done? If you tell a victim of abuse to forget about him/her, they are no good for you, what good have you done? They all know that what they are doing is harmful and they all know what it takes to loose weight or quit smoking or find happiness or avoid danger but extremely few know what it takes to find the discipline or motivation to do something about it and stay with it to the end. How many books tell you how to do that? There are an extreme few, but the Shaolin Way is not one of those exceptions.

Steve gives lots of cute sayings and wise words, and there is nothing wrong with that, but anyone can do that. The Shaolin have a system to teach self-discipline and inner peace, yet Steve never even hints at how you can find these same things for yourself, or how the Shaolin do teach those kind of things, or how tell when you have those things instead of something false. There must be something special about Buddhism if it can teach you those things -- but what is it? Steve does not say. Steve glorifies some wise sayings (i.e. -- "no one wants to be an a-hole") and while this offers some insight into understanding other humans, what good is understanding other humans when what you really need to understand is how to accept or tolerate them? What good has Steve done by telling us all this? None. It is just words on a piece of paper.

On 8/10/2005 I purchased the digital download e-book in Adobe Reader format for $12.89.
I needed to update my adobe Reader in order to view this PDF file on my desktop. I purchased this e-book to read on my Sony Clie PDA. Customarily I use Adobe Reader for Palm (version 3.0) which allows me to transfer PDF files to my PDA.
This particular E-book has some security settings that does not allow this to transfer.
Every time I try to transfer this file to my PDA I get this statement, "This document has not been encrypted using standard security handler and therefore could not be opened."
I contacted Adobe Customer Service, which only had the response that the author may have instituted some type of security setting.
All that Amzon.com customer service said was that they were sorry to hear I experienced difficulty with Adobe Reader that it sounded as if the problem is with Adobe, and to (quote/unquote) "Please note that Amazon.com does not manufacture this software and the amount of technical support we can provide is limited."
ALL IN ALL, DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK IN DIGITAL FORMAT IF YOU WISH TO READ IT AWAY FROM YOUR DESKTOP.