Customer Reviews

Upside Down Zen: the Art of Accepting All Offers

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

 

 

In Susan Murphy's wonderful book, Upside-Down Zen, we meet a Buddhist teacher who meets us right where we are: in the heart of the mystery of our unrepeatable, challenging, beautiful, wrenching and singular lives. With eloquent clarity, the author, who is also a gifted film-maker and fiction writer, meditates with us on the riddles of intimacy--how to be a self and how to completely surrender that sense of a self to the life in which we are imbedded, out of which we are born and into which we die. This is a book about love in all its myriad forms, a loving offer by a teacher who spares us nothing, and so is unsparingly generous with her gift.

Susan, oh, Susan. I have been keeping company with Yun men's "One Teaching, Upside Down" and here comes your book. Scary! This book is remarkable for it's clarity and insistence that zen is not some far off asian inscrutable "thing", but apparent in our breathing, our doing, our waking , our sleeping, our everyday life. That our true home has always been here has rarely been expressed in more direct language. From the fundamentals and way we begin to come to zen practice, to the more experienced expression of zen practice, this is simply a wonderful read. I can hear Susan's voice in every page. Thank you , Susan.