New Books in Spiritual Practice and Mindfulness

Being human, much of our energy goes into resisting the basic mess of life, but messy it is nonetheless. The trick (as psychoanalysts know) is to embrace it all anyway. “Trauma is an indivisible part of human existence. It takes many forms but spares no one,” so writes psychiatrist and practicing Buddhist Dr. Mark Epstein. Epstein illustrates this truth by offering a psychoanalytic reading of the life of the Buddha in his latest work, The Trauma of Everyday Life (Penguin Press, 2013). It’s a brilliant psychobiographical single-case study. Think Erik Erikson’s Ghandi’s TruthorYoung Man Luther. A little known detail of the Buddha’s biography is that his mother died when he was just seven days old. The book investigates the nature and repercussions of this early loss as a foundation of the Buddha’s life and salvation. Epstein writes that “primitive agony” (ala Winnicott) lay in the Buddha’s implicit memory coloring his experience in ways he could feel but never know. The unmetabolized grief plays out into Buddha’s young adulthood as he abandons his wife and own young child in renunciation of his cushy and privileged life. The ghosts and psychic ancestors that haunt the Buddha as well as his separation-individuation drama are familiar to modern day clinicians. Epstein describes a Buddha in the throes of repetition compulsion as well as enacting practices of starvation and self-harm—dissociative defenses that serve to ward off potential fragmentation. Epstein writes that the rhythm of this early trauma and the defenses the Buddha employed run through Buddhism like a “great underground river.” Buddha’s salvation comes about via the discovery of mindfulness which ultimately infuse his life and spiritual teaching. Within the meditative practice of mindfulness, a holding environment is created in which unknown and unexamined aspects of the past can be experienced for the first time in the here and now. Like the psychoanalytic encounter, therein lies its transformative power. In his detailed depictions of the Buddha as a human subject in formation and borrowing from Winnicott’s metapsychology, Epstein draws the parallel to the psychoanalytic space. Ultimately the book asks whether trauma itself can be transformational. According to Epstein, yes. Life itself is already broken and since we can’t control the essential traumas of life (whether they be big “T” or little) we must transform our relationship to them to go on being. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

In this brilliantly conceived and beautifully written book, Kathleen Dowling Singh illuminates the profound psychological and spiritual transformations experiences by the dying as the natural process of death reconnects them with the source of their being. Examining the end of life in the light of current psychological understanding, religious wisdom, and compassionate medical science, The Grace of Dying offers a fresh, deeply comforting message of hope and courage as we contemplate the meaning of our mortality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

“You can measure the depth of people’s awakening by how they serve others.” This quotation by Kobo Daishi, the ninth-century Japanese Buddhist monk, is only one of many observations that fill this small volume with words of wisdom and compassion. In her book Inspiring Generosity (Wisdom Publications, 2014), philanthropy expert Barbara Bonner explores the stories of fourteen individuals and how they were inspired to start their personal journey to give and to dedicate their lives to the act of generosity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

Surrender is a difficult concept for many people in Western societies, where everything seems to evolve around the desire for control, predictability and power. In our age of anxiety, certainty and control has become the number one tool to help us take charge of our lives so we can pursue the elusive goal of being happy. In her book The Ecstasy of Surrender: 12 Surprising Ways Letting Go Can Empower Your Life (Harmony Books, 2014), psychiatrist and author Judith Orloff points to all the ways we can let go of our need for control and be successful in the process, in our relationships and our environment. She paints a compelling picture of harmony and friendship while being able to keep destructively negative influences in check. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

Erich Fromm, one of the most widely known psychoanalysts of the previous century, was involved in the exploration of spirituality throughout his life. His landmark book The Art of Loving, which sold more than six million copies worldwide, is seen as a popular handbook on how to relate to others and how to overcome the narcissism ingrained in every human being. In his book The Lives of Erich Fromm: Love’s Prophet (Columbia University Press, 2013), Harvard professor Lawrence J. Friedman explores the life of this towering figure of psychoanalytic thought, and his position in the humanistic movement, which he belonged to. He gives an overview of the religious thought Fromm was inspired by, from Judaism to the Old Testament to Buddhist philosophy. Fromm’s credo was that true spirituality is expressed in how we relate to others, and how to bring joy and peace to the global community. His plea that love will be the vehicle to realize one’s true purpose was the central message of his view on spirituality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

In these times, when more and more people are looking for spiritual truth and engage in practices like meditation, it’s hard to know what to expect from attaining a lofty goal like Enlightenment. What does Enlightenment look like? What happens when we attain it? What does it mean in terms of our relationships? Our families? Our jobs? In his book Enlightenment Ain’t What It’s Cracked Up To Be (Changemakers Books, 2011), spiritual teacher and religious scholar Robert K. C. Forman explores the illusions we buy into when we enter and walk the spiritual path. “People so want a life that is easy, effortless, satisfying. And the promise [of enlightenment] itself becomes part of the problem. Because now you have a strong wish for that kind of perfection”, he says in our interview. “And that gets in the way of recognizing the transformations that are actually taking place. The drive for a perfect marriage gets in the way of a good enough marriage. The drive for having a perfect life gets in the way of what we do have.” Enlightenment is not about attaining some perfect state of mind, but to be honest to oneself and others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

Our moral lives are shot-through with concerns and even anxieties about the past. Only a lucky few, if anyone at all, can escape nagging and persistent regrets about actions and decisions in our past. But sometimes those very decisions that we now regret are the causal or conceptual antecedents of subsequent outcomes that we now affirm. That is, when we look back on our lives, we often find certain features of our past lamentable, even though without those features something of value in our present would not be. How is this mixture of regret and affirmation to be understood? In his new book, The View from Here: On Affirmation, Attachment, and the Limits of Regret (Oxford University Press, 2013), R. Jay Wallace explores the complicated dynamic surrounding regret and affirmation. He develops a view that reconciles the apparent contradiction between regretting something that was a necessary antecedent to some attachment that one must now affirm. But in laying out this reconciliation, Wallace uncovers a pervasive and disconcerting truth about the human condition, namely that we must affirm aspects of our lives that are undeniably the products of highly objectionable features of the past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

“Paula Huston wrote literary fiction for more than twenty years before shifting her focus to spirituality. She is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Daughters of Song (Random House, 1995), which the Baltimore Sun called “far and away the best book yet” about life in the classical piano world at Peabody Conservatory. Nominated for the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco’s Gold Medal for Best First Novel, it was also chosen by the Christian Science Monitor for its first “Novelist’s Debut” review and selected by the Music Book Society and Performing Arts Book Club. Her short stories have appeared in numerous literary quarterlies, including American Short Fiction, North American Review, Missouri Review, Massachusetts Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Story, MSS, and Image, and were twice selected for the Best American Short Stories list.” I had the pleasure of interviewing Huston for over an hour about her new book A Season of Mystery: 10 Spiritual Practices for Embracing a Happier Second Half of Life (Loyola Press, 2012). We discussed the importance of purpose vs. the never-ending search for happiness, the importance of spiritual practices for deepening into the second half of life, and what monastics have to teach us about living a fulfilling life. Huston’s words are filled with gratitude and hope. You’ll fund Huston’s honesty and humility to be very touching and very inspiring. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

Americanists have long employed a trope of regionalism to better understand American religions, beliefs, and practices. As many of us know, either by academic study or, more often, personal experience, the United States feels different in New England as compared to the Midwest, the West Coast, or the Deep South. Regional variations on culture play an important role in shaping our identities and informing our religious practices. Scholars of American Buddhism, however, have been slow to recognize the importance of this trope in how they study Buddhism in the United States. In his new book, Dixie Dharma: Inside a Buddhist Temple in the American South (University of North Carolina Press, 2012), Jeff Wilson approaches his subject with just this sort of regional gaze. How is Buddhism fundamentally different in the American South as opposed to the West Coast where the majority of ethnographic surveys to date have been done? How do Buddhist negotiate their minority religious status in an overwhelmingly Evangelical Christian culture? How does the physical environment affect their practices? How do they engage with the South’s specific racial history? The focus of his work is one particular community, the Ekoji Buddhist Sangha in Richmond, Virginia. Housed under one roof are five different Buddhist communities who must, first out of necessity and later out of friendship, share space and practice together. Apart from his use of regionalism as a methodological tool, it is this ethnographic survey that makes Wilson’s book truly engaging. Dixie Dharma is the first book to focus on Buddhism as practiced in the American South, making it an important contribution to an emerging field of study. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness

Parenting books touting new philosophies are widely available. Raelynn Maloney’s book, Waking Up: A Parent’s Guide to Mindful Awareness and Connection (Companion Press, 2011) is not that kind of book. Rather, her message to parents is simple. Using mindfulness is not meant to replace existing parenting philosophies. It is meant to augment what parents are currently doing. Dr. Maloney first encourages and helps parents understand problematic behavior before guiding them through daily activities that are meant to increase moment-to-moment awareness of parent-child interactions. This awareness is meant to help parents be in the moment with their children, rather than 10 steps ahead of the moment. How does being in the moment with your child help you as a parent? Dr. Maloney walks the audience through the importance of mindfulness and how it can be used to improve your relationship with your child, thus tackling problematic child behavior in a different way than most other books on parenting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness