Zen Heart: Simple Advice for Living with Mindfulness and Compassion [Hardcover]

Ezra Bayda (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 8, 2008

There's a secret to spiritual practice, and it's surprisingly simple: learn to be present with attention. Do that, and the whole world becomes your teacher, you wake up to the sacredness of every aspect of existence, and compassion for others arises without even thinking about it. It's indeed just that simple, says Zen teacher Ezra Bayda, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's easy—especially when being present brings us up against the painful parts of life. Bayda provides a wealth of practical advice for making difficult experiences a valued part of the path and for making mindulness a daily habit. He breaks practice down into three phases:

   •  The Me Phase, in which we uncover our most basic and tightly-clung-to beliefs about ourselves, observe our emotions, and become intimate with our fears
   •  Being Awareness, in which we cultivate a larger sense of what life is, transforming our limited experience into a more spacious sense of being
   •  Being Kindness, in which we learn to connect with the love that is our true nature, and learn to live from that place of kindness and compassion


To learn more about the author, Ezra Bayda, go to www.zencentersandiego.org.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Bayda writes with exceptional clarity and simplicity about the awakened life. His style is as plain spoken as Pema Chödrön's. He deserves membership in the ranks of respected meditation teacher-authors."—Publishers Weekly

"This book is like a personal retreat. I'd like to read it once a year. It has the best of the Zen spirit—not indulging but experiencing every ounce of life, good and bad. You will have to read closely, because the lessons are more difficult than they appear. At the same time it is a beautifully simple reflection on what it means to be, rather than to try to be. I'm certain of its wisdom because it is not there to be grasped and celebrated. The wisdom is all in the spaces, the pauses, and the wonderment."—Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul and A Life at Work 

"A clear and comprehensive guide to life transformation. Readers will find down-to-earth advice and effective practices for going beyond basic fears and conditioning to live a more awakened and openhearted life."—Dennis Genpo Merzel, Roshi, author of Big Mind, Big Heart: Finding Your Way

About the Author

Ezra Bayda teaches at Zen Center San Diego. He is also the author of Being Zen, At Home in the Muddy Water, Saying Yes to Life (Even the Hard Parts), and Zen Heart.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Shambhala; First Edition edition (July 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590305434
• ISBN-13: 978-1590305430
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.8 x 8.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #893,960 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ezra Bayda was born in 1944 in Atlantic City, New jersey. He graduated from Rutgers University with a degree in philosophy, and after working for a while as a teacher and a computer programmer, became a carpenter and builder, an occupation he worked at for thirty years. His favorite activities include boogie boarding in the ocean, playing basketball and playing the conga drum.
He began practicing Zen meditation in 1970, receiving permission to teach in 1995. He now lives, writes and teaches at Zen Center San Diego with his wife and fellow teacher, Elizabeth Hamilton. He also leads a meditation group in Santa Rosa, Ca., and has been a hospice volunteer for over ten years. He is the author of five books, including his most recent, Beyond Happiness (Shambhala, 2010). For more information, go to www.zencentersandiego.org.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Future Classic, September 10, 2008

By 

Joseph Siemion (Seoul, Korea) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Zen Heart: Simple Advice for Living with Mindfulness and Compassion (Hardcover)

What a pleasant surprise! A dharma book that's insightful, well-written, practical, and inspiring. When I picked up Zen Heart: Living with Mindfulness and Compassion, I wasn't expecting much. I'd read Ezra Bayda's other two books, so I pretty much knew what he had to say.

I was wrong. Ezra has much to say, most of it insightful and useful in the midst of our everyday lives. The book maps out the spiritual life in a new way and offers a plethora of practice ideas, pointers, and analysis. I feel like someone's handed me a treasure of useful tips that I can use for a lifetime or more. This is a book to come back to again in one or five or twenty years.

He breaks up the path into three stages: the Me-Phase, Being Awareness, and Being Kindness. Briefly, the Me-Phase is about becoming aware of our conditioned patterns of thought and action. Being Awareness is expanding our perspective in the wider container of awareness, the one mind, you could say, which is where Zen is normally concerned. Finally, Being Kindness is connecting with our true compassionate nature. All three are indispensable phases of the path.

In each phase, Ezra offers practical tips and advice to help us gain more understanding and awareness and urges us to remember that the point of all this is not to change ourselves, but rather to become aware of the manifold ways we cut ourselves off from this life. It's not as simple as just "being here now" as Eckhart Tolle might maintain. The ego is tricky, and a lot of the work to be done is psychological in nature.

This is where this book excels -- in giving us tools with which we can clue into the ego's antics, our own particular conditioning. In one chapter he provides three crucial questions to bring us out our own heads and into our bodies: Can I welcome this as my path? What is my most believed thought right now? What is this? He details the ways we can use these questions and why they're of value.

His primary teaching, if I can sum it up in a nutshell (I can't), is to reside in the physical experience of this moment, right now, as it is. Much of our suffering comes from being up in our heads where we spin our me-stories and create more tension and suffering for ourselves and others. The more we can be with life as it is, the more clear our lives will be, and we'll be able to connect to our true heart-mind, that which is known as "our true nature."

There wasn't a chapter I didn't like. In each chapter I felt like I gained something, a new insight, a new way to notice my conditioning, and inspiration. There's a great meditation in the book too. It's a structured way to do shikan-taza, which is a kind of nondual awareness meditation popular in Zen and Dzogchen but very difficult to do. I found his instructions helpful and wondered: why didn't I think of that? The appendices are also excellent, detailing basic meditation instructions, essential reminders (think "slogans" of the Seven Point Mind Training), and Three Vows.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simple... and exceptional., September 30, 2008

By 

Dustin G. Rhodes (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Zen Heart: Simple Advice for Living with Mindfulness and Compassion (Hardcover)

Ah... If I'd only read the introduction to Zen Heart so many years ago---before I got trapped in all of these ideas about what spiritual practice and/or Buddhism, specifically, would "do" for me. I could have saved myself a lot of heartache and disappointment.

I believe Ezra Bayda is among the most talented writers in the Buddhist canon. Bayda is especially good at no nonsense prose that gets right to the point. He is highly readable and informative---no small feat. Indeed, I think Bayda makes the rich teachings of Zen and the Buddha more alive, accessible and compelling than any contemporary author.

Zen Heart, to me, is Bayda's most fully realized and comprehensive effort--better than At Home in the Muddy Water. But it's still short and (bitter)sweet; after all, if you're coming to Zen in hopes that everything is life will be happily-ever-after, Bayda dispels that notion right on page 1. But I find that refreshing.

It's very easy to get lost in practice in spite of our best efforts or a great teacher. I find that, on the occasion, reading a book like helps me get unstuck; it's also a way of holding up a mirror and seeing one's self in the most unflattering (but ultimately helpful) way possible.

Bayda is often compared to Pema Chodron--Buddhism's rock star nun in Nova Scotia. But it's Bayda's work that I find more useful, more developed, more inspiring. This is a book, without question, that I would recommend to everyone--whatever your spiritual or religious persuasion.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ZEN HEART - GREAT INSPIRATION AND SUPPORT, July 24, 2008

By 

anna hughes (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Zen Heart: Simple Advice for Living with Mindfulness and Compassion (Hardcover)

Zen Heart is a great inspiration and support. As a longtime meditator,I used to think it was enough to be calm and clear. I made the common mistake of assuming that the "me stuff" (what Ezra Bayda describes as the first phase of spiritual practice) was reserved for therapy. But his description of how the me-stuff is encompassed by spiritual practice makes it obvious that it's a practical and necessary way of seeing through the ego, which has always been part of Zen. What I particularly like about Zen Heart is that it makes the teachings of Zen, which have often been obscure and confusing, extremely clear and also practical. This is especially true in how he addresses working with anger, fear and relationships, where our very difficulties are seen as part of the path of awakening, rather than as obstacles or defects.

Further, the way he describes what he calls the second and third phases of practice -- the spaciousness of Being-Awareness and the awakened heart of Being-Kindness - has helped me understand more deeply what the Dalai Lama means when he says that the most important thing is basic human kindness.

I regard Ezra as my teacher, both through his books, and the materials where his voice can be heard.