Instinct for Freedom: Finding Liberation through Living

by Alan Clements

Alan Clements was the first American to become a Buddhist monk in Burma, where he lived for the good part of a decade. Since leaving the monastery, he has become a spiritual maverick, working for global human rights and teaching his contemporary understanding of liberation to audiences around the world.
After twenty years of leading retreats, Clements presents his first book of spiritual Instinct for Freedom a compelling blend of adventurous autobiography and provocative inquiry. Here he presents what he calls World Dharma - an approach to spiritual development that mirrors the narrative of his visionary life. He gives voice to an essential spirituality that can be common to all people - an engaged mysticism based in one precious human freedom, the liberation from fear, ignorance, and dogma and the elevation of dignity, conscience, and beauty.

Genres: Nonfiction

224 pages, Hardcover

First published August 12, 2002

Reviews

[Mason · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a vipassana meditator, this book hit home in some powerful ways. Beyond that, Alan's story is very relatable while being completely outside of the normal range of experience of my group of friends. I highly recommend it. One quick plug -- his descriptions of the deep states of meditation he achieved while in the monastery for years are on the level of Aldous Huxley's descriptions of psychedelic states of mind in Doors of Perception. Worth checking out if only for those!

[Emeric Damian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this one floating around Hyde Park Book store. If reading a book in a day and half tells you anything than this is a good read. It's an interesting mix between the struggle for political freedom and the struggle for individual freedom, with the former often pulling people into solitary confinement, days and years of rock hammering work, which leads to cellular isolation, where each and every part of your being screams out for mercy, for grace, and the form with which it is delivered, in this book, is through compassion for those who are doing the oppressing. Here you have a semi forced search for freedom, but then for Clements, he suffers from a different but similar type of bondage, bondage brought on by our own mind. In his desperation to free himself from suffering, he discovers, or is lead to Burma, where he begins his journey into Buddhism and civil unrest.

Clements aligns these struggles in a way that forces you to recognize your own complicity in the smothering and discovering of freedom for you, for me, for the world.

In the end it's a call to another of being in the world. I'll let you discover that for yourself.

[Sooz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found some of the anecdotes in this book very interesting and page-turning, however by the middle of the book I found his style of writing vague and that he was repeating himself a lot. By the end of the book I wasn't even entirely sure of what the book was about. Maybe it's a book you need to read a few times to understand, but I was pretty uninterested to finish it because of the lack of clarity in his writing.

[Esther-maria Lindner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really really enjoyed this book, and it maintains in my favourite book section in the bookshelf. Alan Clements writes so eloquently and his story and wisdom is deeply inspiring and moving. It reminds us that the art of spirituality is not sitting secluded and meditate but how we then integrate that wisdom into real life.

[Ian]

One man's journey to enlightenment. Essential message: living life is best way to reach enlightenment for most people.

[Bob Gilmour · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about Freedom ... not the ability to sit on a beach any time you want ... but the recognition that you have that ability.