Customer Reviews

This is Always Enough

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Silent Retreat


The nametag
says it all:

"I am
observing
silence"

How true.

This is indeed
what I am -
the observing silence,
and everything
that is observed.


by John Astin


To see fish at the bottom of a pond, the water needs to be both clear and still. So does the observer. John Astin renders his precise observations with the artistry of a Zen master's ink drawing. Simplicity and naturalness characterize both his poems and prose. This book is a work of art that will stop you in your tracks. Will you see the vision of reality pointed to by the words? It would be hard to miss, presented in a way that goes so directly to the heart of the matter. Indeed, why complicate it? Few writers can paint a picture of essential truths so succinctly and with such loving grace. Like a hologram, each poem somehow contains the whole.

There is also a familiarity with the ways life can slip by us, how the moment may elude us. Reading the section "Our Argument with What Is" provides invaluable insights that question our habitual ways of thinking and our unexamined assumptions. The way "All Strategies Eventually Fail" is actually good news! So what if we are going from one unknown to the next unknown? Hasn't it ever been thus, whether we realized it or not?

"There is no escaping the truth of this impermanence, is there? But who would ever want to?"

This beautiful collection of Zen-like poetry by John Astin radiates wisdom and the clarity of the Heart. John's expression could be a trusted resource of daily inspiration that guides you to the simplicity of this moment when "This Is Always Enough." I love this book.

Katie Davis, Author, "Awake Joy"

This book expresses the inexpressible in very few words. It is packed with poetry that speaks directly to the mystery of a love that goes by many names: enlightenment, nonduality, liberation, God, Brahman, the Tao.

This book is about life living itself, and how that unfolds in the body/mind known as "you." The book isn't stuck in any of the conceptual loops one sometimes sees in books of this subject matter. It isn't pushing a lineage or way of pointing. This is what makes it free and fresh.

The book is constantly calling the reader to let go of philosophical conclusions about Oneness or nonduality and to stand where only love is. It isn't trying to get the reader to believe a thing. It is simply pointing very clearly to your timeless, formless beingness which then embraces time and form. "Always being, always becoming." This book is pointing to a full enlightenment. It points to the embrace of emptiness and form. This is where unconditional love is revealed.

Highly recommended

Scott Kiloby

This welcomed collection of clear and poignant pointers to nondual awareness is comprised of both poems and brief prose reflections. The book's title is as elegant as it is apt, given that it readily reflects Astin's central theme that "Truth is present, before the mind ever imagines it has been lost."

As in any poetry collection, some verses are stronger than others. The lesser works appear to be prose merely re-formatted into poetic form. Also, several lyrics contain needless repetition (e.g., "I should see a certain way/I should listen a certain way/I should talk a certain way..." from This Bickering).

But in Awake & Dreaming, for example, song and source are marvelously wedded: "I am awake/and you are awake./We are the same -- /awake and peering through these forms/ that are themselves/the expressions of/this wakefulness."

And here is a jewel of a prose pointer: "In order to search for anything--peace, awareness, God, and
happiness--there must be the belief that what is sought is not already present. Find out if this is true."

Astin, who lives in northern California, pens a one-page Introduction. Alas, he tells us nothing about himself. Still, this book deserves to be savored.

I have this book and the author's other book, "Too Intimate for Words". Both books are brimming with beautiful pointers to the One! You'll return to it again and again!