Customer Reviews

Zen Heart: Simple Advice for Living with Mindfulness and Compassion

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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.

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.

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.

This delightful book by a San Diego-based teacher of Zen meditation emphasizes an important aspect of life that is not restricted to spiritual development. It is that we all need to be better at being present, but more than that, being present with attention. The idea is that if we fully embrace all the experiences that we encounter - even the painful ones - with clarity and objectivity, then they all become opportunities for learning and for growth. Although the concept is easy to understand, it is not necessarily easy to achieve. But as with so many things, regular practice helps enormously.

I am sure that the author is quite correct when he says that our natural drive to avoid pain can lead us to either deny or try to fix unpleasant experiences, rather than try to reside in the experience without attaching thoughts, emotions and judgments to them. Any experienced health care provider will have seen many people who have either stuffed unpleasant experiences or attempted to suppress them with medications, alcohol or other displacement activities. This is not a call for some kind of masochistic rumination on the hurts in our lives, but instead a practical way to uncouple them from the physical and emotional baggage that they can create if not dealt with. As an example he suggests that learning to "stay with" experiences and asking the simple question, "What is this?" can be transformative. Apart from the author's experience, there is now a body of empirical research to show that he is quite correct.

The book is well written, practical and insightful. It provides us with precise tools for dealing with daily life through mindfulness, and it includes terrific chapters on how to uncover some deeply held beliefs of which we might not even be aware. For example feelings of unworthiness, that may lead to blame, anger, shame and even depression. He shows how we can become more aware of some of the things that drive us, and how we can transform fear and anger.

As he says, "When we have emotional distress, we are usually caught in our own self-imposed prison wall of anger, fear and confusion, but when our self-imposed prison walls come down, all that remains is the connectedness that we are." I would add that Ezra has given us an important set of tools for helping us to unlock our Innate Freedom.

Although this book is written by a Zen teacher, there are a great many things in the book that will be of great value to people who follow any faith, or none at all.

Highly recommended.

Richard G. Petty, MD, author of Healing, Meaning and Purpose: The Magical Power of the Emerging Laws of Life

I thought this was a real nice book giving a relatively non-complex way to

approach life if you are interested in the non-duality theory. It gives you ways to attempt to go beyond the I/me approach to life and looking more into being awareness and being kindness while cautioning that one never really completely removes the I/me conditioning that is part of our lives.

Originally, I got this book at my local library but liked it so much that I decided to buy my own copy. I plan to use it as a guide to thinking more clearly during those many times when I get all wrapped up in the I/me conditioning. The book is not complex and was easy to read for a relative novice like me.

Once in a while a book comes a long that really speaks to me, that I find incredibly helpful. Zen Heart is just such a book. Most Zen books tend to confuse me, but this one is so lucid I can relate to it and put the practices to work in my life. This book really speaks to me in a big way. The author not only clearly identify problems we come across in practice and applying them to life, but he gives simple, clear instruction on how to work with those problems, how to increase our awareness and loving kindness by taking life on moment by moment. I'm getting a lot out of this book and will reread it in the future.

Ezra reframes Zen practice using a clear and concise writing style. Strunk & White would most certainly endorse this brilliant author. Ezra is also one of the most accessible Zen priests that I have met. And he has been my teacher for the last five years. Ezra speaks as clearly as he writes and his heart-felt wisdom has guided me through the ebbs and flows of my daily life and personal challenges. Zen Heart is a great book for beginners and advanced practitioners alike.

This was the first book by Ezra Bayda that I read. I have also read "Being Zen," and have just ordered another of his books. I appreciate Bayda's combination of zen discipline and precision and his application of zen principles to every-day, every-hour living and decision making. One of the basic points in "Zen Heart" is that one cannot spiritually bypass the emotional and psychological growth that the practice of the Buddhadharma requires, and still make progress in meditation practice. He gently challenges his readers to take responsibility for the sidesteps we take around growth: our blaming behaviors, judgment, anger, laziness, and asks us to awaken in all areas of our lives without splitting off into meditation. An excellent guide to living the Dharma!

I actually read this book last year after borrowing it from a friend. I memorized some of the prayers or meditations from it and realized I wanted to re-read it, deciding recently to purchase my own copy. The author explains his practice in a way that anyone can understand and relate to. It's not specifically Zen Buddhism, but more a cornucopia of Buddhism styles. What I remember most is using it to practice being more present and face life head-on. It has life lessons for everyone. I also appreciate that he breaks it into the three phases in order to help those of us who may have tried to jump the gun so to speak. We can always go back. The author also has videos online on topic such as impermanence.

Zen Heart by Ezra Bayda is the most comprehensive book on practice that I have come across. By giving an in depth explanation on how to work with what gets in the away of living an awake heart based life, "the me phase", how to develop and expand awareness, "the being awareness phase", and finally go beyond our usual conditioned based existence and enter into the heart, the "being kindness phase", Ezra has created a manual that covers all of the essential aspects of a complete spiritual practice. I have known and been a student of Ezra's for the past 15 years. I have seen the all-inclusive nature of his personal practice repeatedly over this time period. I have continually found his teachings to penetrate through the habitual self centered sleep of a conditioned based existence. In Zen Heart, Ezra clearly captures the essence of who he is and what he has to offer as a gifted Zen teacher. I believe that if a sincere student spends time with this book and applies the teachings it will be a jewel in facilitating the process of going from an "I-as-a-Me" based existence into an "I-as-Awareness" one.