Customer Reviews

Zen 24/7: All Zen, All the Time

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

 

 

A perfect little book about zen written in such a simple way as to teach you without teaching and he makes everyday objects vessels of Zen. It changes the way you look at these things. Sudo takes things that appear in our day such as "bed" "car" "tv" and devotes one or two pages to them, showing for example how watching tv is zen...great little illustrations by Bo Hok Cline in the Japanese style of the objects on each page as well. Sudo could write a zen encyclopedia, devoting a paragraph to every object around us, that would be cool :)

On first examination this book seems a little light weight and a bit pithy.

Nevertheless,over the next few days I found myself thinking about some of the things mentioned, like Zen Commute. I started to reflect on what was the underlying force that was driving evrything everywhere. Where are we all going and what is driving us?

There is some profound insight here if you are willing to put in the thought.

If you just read without thinking it would appear very light weight. But isn't that Zen in itself, the very simple things around you can lead to the greatest insight if you can find a way in.

A beautiful waste of time.

...This book is more than a little bit "fluffy." Perhaps a problem with stating basic profound truths that they are all pretty obvious; "Things are what they are." Depending on your perspective, that's either deep or shallow.

Still, Zen 24/7 provides perspectives on zen in our daily lives, and can serve as a good reminder to pay attention and think of the possibilities for spiritual awakening in everyday life.

This is a good book to flip through. You can read the segments in any order, and they are nice to fill up spare moments of waiting. But if you read too many of them in a row, they all start to seem the same.

I'd say this is a good book for a zen afternoon snack, but for a complete zen meal, check out Janwillem van de Wetering, Thich Nhat Hanh, Maurine Stuart, or Geri Larkin.

This book opened with a touching preface. It's cute, humorous, short, sweet, and easy to read. Yet, it contains potential to evoke profound thoughts. I was deeply moved by it, to the extent that my moment-to-moment experience of reality showed signs of transformation in the following days. I highly recommend it as a book to read just for fun, or as a down-to-earth and sweet introduction into this elusive concept called Zen.

I love this book. So much so, my third copy has about had it. I pack it around and read it so much the covers wind up falling off followed shortly by pages. I keep all my copies because Ive made notes and thoughts in them but I would love to have this as an audiobook read by the author. I would put it on my Ipod in an instant.

This is one of those timeless books that has valuable information that is simple and unfortunately we need to be reminded of everyday. I got this book when I was totally stressed out and to this very day when I get stressed I think back to certain sayings in the book and then life goes back to flowing. A must read.

If you want light reading about the subject of Zen, this will satisfy you. The book consists of little one-page "snippets" of how Zen fits into everyday experience. It was a little too light-hearted for me. If you want an intellectual experience, try D.T. Suzuki, Eugen Herrigel or Charlotte Joko Beck. I liked what this book was trying to do, just not the way the author did it. He wants the reader to see how Zen fits into everyday experience without making it seem unfathomable or impossible to comprehend. The author makes a great effort to bridge the gap which all Zen books face: Reading books about Zen won't make you Zen. It is like reading books about how to swim. You can read all the books there are in the world about swimming, but you will still not know how to swim. You have to get in the water for that! Philip Toshio Sudo tries to show the reader how to become Zen by looking at everyday objects with their Zen glasses on. He tries to introduce the subject with humor and avoids frightening the reader with deep intellectual treatment. Unfortunately he went too far. The book comes off as a Zen joke-book instead of a serious discussion of the subject.