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Being Zen: Bringing Meditation to Life
We can use whatever life presents, Ezra Bayda teaches, to strengthen our spiritual practice including the turmoil of daily life. What we need is the willingness to just be with our experiences whether they are painful or pleasing opening ourselves to the reality of our lives without trying to fix or change anything. But doing this requires that we confront our most deeply rooted fears and assumptions in order to gradually become free of the constrictions and suffering they create. Then we can awaken to the loving-kindness that is at the heart of our being.
While many books aspire to bring meditation into everyday experience, "Being Zen "gives us practical ways to actually do it, introducing techniques that enable the reader to foster qualities essential to continued spiritual awakening. Topics include how to cultivate:
"Perseverance" staying with anger, fear, and other distressing emotions.
"Stillness" abiding with chaotic experiences without becoming overwhelmed.
"Clarity" seeing through the conditioned beliefs and fears that "run" us.
"Direct" "experience" encountering the physical reality of the present moment even when that moment is exactly where we don't want to be. Like Pema Chodron, the best-selling author of "When Things Fall Apart, "Ezra Bayda writes with clear, heartfelt simplicity, using his own life stories to illustrate the teachings in an immediate and accessible way that will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers."
While many books aspire to bring meditation into everyday experience, "Being Zen "gives us practical ways to actually do it, introducing techniques that enable the reader to foster qualities essential to continued spiritual awakening. Topics include how to cultivate:
"Perseverance" staying with anger, fear, and other distressing emotions.
"Stillness" abiding with chaotic experiences without becoming overwhelmed.
"Clarity" seeing through the conditioned beliefs and fears that "run" us.
"Direct" "experience" encountering the physical reality of the present moment even when that moment is exactly where we don't want to be. Like Pema Chodron, the best-selling author of "When Things Fall Apart, "Ezra Bayda writes with clear, heartfelt simplicity, using his own life stories to illustrate the teachings in an immediate and accessible way that will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers."
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
December 23, 2008
This is my bible. My own copy has been to prison with my brother and back, and I've actually bought5 copies of this to give to people because it's so good. If every other book adds spice to your life, this book is a cool drink of water.
January 17, 2010
"Our difficulties are not obstacles to the path; they are the path itself. They are opportunities to awaken. Can we learn what it means to welcome an unwanted situation, with its sense of groundlessness, as a wake-up call? Can we look at it as a signal that there is something here to be learned? Can we allow it to penetrate our hearts? By learning to do this, we are taking the first basic step toward learning what it means to be open to life as it is..."
I liked the way this author presented Zen Buddhism more practically and less philosophically. It is less about enlightenment as a path to salvation and more about the practice of meditation to have an open heart and and be able to flow with life. I am a sometimes meditator, but I believe in the word practice applied to anything spiritual. If you practice opening your heart, you will have an open heart. If you practice seeing the good in everyone you meet, you will meet good people. I really liked his loving-kindness meditation, which you direct toward yourself first, then to people close to you, and then to the whole world.
May I dwell in the open heart.
May I attend to whatever clouds the heart.
May I be awake in this moment, just as it is.
May the awakened heart be extended to all beings.
I liked the way this author presented Zen Buddhism more practically and less philosophically. It is less about enlightenment as a path to salvation and more about the practice of meditation to have an open heart and and be able to flow with life. I am a sometimes meditator, but I believe in the word practice applied to anything spiritual. If you practice opening your heart, you will have an open heart. If you practice seeing the good in everyone you meet, you will meet good people. I really liked his loving-kindness meditation, which you direct toward yourself first, then to people close to you, and then to the whole world.
May I dwell in the open heart.
May I attend to whatever clouds the heart.
May I be awake in this moment, just as it is.
May the awakened heart be extended to all beings.
August 14, 2009
Ezra Bayda is a dharma heir of Charlotte Joko Beck, who was the first Buddhist author I read. I'm working my way through our Buddhist bookshelf, and this is the current one.
August 14
Bayda has the best discussion of lovingkindness meditation I've come across. I've always had a sort of resistant feeling about the practice because it seemed too prone to self-delusion and reminded me of affirmations. He just blasts right past that limitation. He has also, for the first time, given me a glimmer of what's meant by saying our true nature, underneath all the nonsense, is a loving connectedness with everyone.
My daughter-in-law tells me that in Continuum movement practice they work a lot with the "heartspace," and Bayda also talks a lot (and coherently) about that.
August 14
Bayda has the best discussion of lovingkindness meditation I've come across. I've always had a sort of resistant feeling about the practice because it seemed too prone to self-delusion and reminded me of affirmations. He just blasts right past that limitation. He has also, for the first time, given me a glimmer of what's meant by saying our true nature, underneath all the nonsense, is a loving connectedness with everyone.
My daughter-in-law tells me that in Continuum movement practice they work a lot with the "heartspace," and Bayda also talks a lot (and coherently) about that.
April 10, 2016
Flappy-winged bird over familiar ground casts novel shadows.
Which is to say, in Bayda's first book, he hasn't quite figured out his voice, he covers material that has been covered many times over, and yet manages to bring some insights.
The book is primarily based around Zen practice--that is, sitting meditation, what to expect, and what to do. As his teacher says in a foreword, telling people to "just let go" is like telling an exhausted drowning person to "just swim." Bayda tries to break down the process into very small steps, and that is useful. (Zen Mind, Beginner Mind, right?)
His training is in the Ordinary Mind school of Zen, which resists philosophy and theorizing, and prioritizes experience. Here, he is grafting on an obvious interest in Tibetan forms of Buddhism, though he doesn't acknowledge it very much. He does cite Pema Chödrön a couple of times, which is one obvious clue. He talks about "loving-kindness," which is another. And he often slips into the voice of Trungpa Chogyam, which is the final, and a bit unsettling. The language of the book never quite gels, giving it a nubbly, somewhat unpleasant texture.
Bayda's big point is that there really is no such thing as Nirvana--though he never uses that word straight up. Rather, he says there will be no moment of breakthrough, no epiphanic Enlightenment (16). There is only the practice, the continuing work. We will always have work.
And so those who do sitting meditation can rely on using three techniques over and over--there's no getting around them (39-44). The first is being in the body--the experience. (He breaks this into three parts, too: concentrating on the breath, on the postural feeling of the body, and on the environment). He emphasizes that this is an experiential event, not a thinking one: meaning that awareness is on the body and the environment, but not on the thoughts. The second method is labeling and experiencing. Here, the practitioner does not the thoughts (and feelings). They allow themselves to feel the thought, the emotion, as they simultaneously label it. The third he calls, clunkily, "opening into the heart of experience," which means imagining dense emotions into the chest and experiencing them, until such time it is possible to precisely break them down and label them. (But not analyze them--this mode of Zen is very much against thinking. It's experience all the way down.)
This process is supposed to create a space between the person and their thoughts: they are just thoughts, and need not be accepted as true (13). He argues--not persuasively, though it rang true to me--that most of our life is a performance, acting out conditioned responses without any thought. The goal of practice is not to shave off those conditioned responses, like barnacles off a ship--that's impossible--but to become aware of them, so that they do not have so much power over us (48). So that there is a space between the experience and the reaction. Although this is relatively standard Zen, I thought it came from an interesting enough angle that it made some of the concepts clearer to me. (In truth, he equivocates a bit on this point, sometimes emphasizing that it is impossible to get rid of these conditioned responses, other times (51) talking about dismantling the self.)
He then takes these various concepts and applies them in particular situations--dealing with anger, with fear, with pain and suffering. (Like many drawn to the meditative practices, he has experienced chronic disease.) With distress. With addiction. With work--employment--situations. His comments on fear were the most interesting to me, because it has become something of a pop-psychology cliché that we should continually do something that scares us to "grow," He makes the point that continually seeking out situations that make us afraid merely conditions us to deal with those particular situations, but not with the notion of fear: indeed, it's a method of escaping having to deal with fear itself. This is one of the situations where it is clearest that our own difficulties are the path: we have enough, we do not have to go out and seek new problems.
In discussing distress, he breaks the practice into four, but I do not see why the categories would not work for any of the situations he describes. The four steps are: becoming aware that the emotion we are feeling is the path of practice (pain is the path, distress is the path, etc.,); becoming curious about the feeling--asking "What Is It?" then not introspecting but describing it and experiencing it; awakening humor, by which he means gaining an ironic distance from it; and bringing in loving-kindness, by which he means not feeling shame.
The final section of the book is the one most inflected with Tibetan styles of Buddhism, at least in the Trungpa Chogyam line. He discusses hard and soft kinds of practice--hard being disciplined and continuing to do the practice even when we do not want to, soft being the loving kindness we bring to ourselves. He discusses letting things be, rather than doing. (He sees fixing problems as often a way of avoiding the motional work that their presence implies.) He offers some loving kindness meditations, and then reflects on how he has used his practice to help him while volunteering at a hospice.
Although the book is divided into thematic sections, it never quite gels as a cohesive work, nor doe sit really build on itself. (One could read the last section without the previous two, and understand most everything.) It's a series of thoughts, almost one-offs, which may be partly explained by his own antipathy toward theory and philosophy--which he admits early on. I share these antipathies, too, and prefer the empirical to the theoretical, but he has so turned his back on it that the book does not feel organized.
So, read it if you want, especially if you haven't read anything on Zen before. But if you have, well, it's fine--an easy and quick read--but it takes fresh eyes to find the insights among the familiar lands.
Which is to say, in Bayda's first book, he hasn't quite figured out his voice, he covers material that has been covered many times over, and yet manages to bring some insights.
The book is primarily based around Zen practice--that is, sitting meditation, what to expect, and what to do. As his teacher says in a foreword, telling people to "just let go" is like telling an exhausted drowning person to "just swim." Bayda tries to break down the process into very small steps, and that is useful. (Zen Mind, Beginner Mind, right?)
His training is in the Ordinary Mind school of Zen, which resists philosophy and theorizing, and prioritizes experience. Here, he is grafting on an obvious interest in Tibetan forms of Buddhism, though he doesn't acknowledge it very much. He does cite Pema Chödrön a couple of times, which is one obvious clue. He talks about "loving-kindness," which is another. And he often slips into the voice of Trungpa Chogyam, which is the final, and a bit unsettling. The language of the book never quite gels, giving it a nubbly, somewhat unpleasant texture.
Bayda's big point is that there really is no such thing as Nirvana--though he never uses that word straight up. Rather, he says there will be no moment of breakthrough, no epiphanic Enlightenment (16). There is only the practice, the continuing work. We will always have work.
And so those who do sitting meditation can rely on using three techniques over and over--there's no getting around them (39-44). The first is being in the body--the experience. (He breaks this into three parts, too: concentrating on the breath, on the postural feeling of the body, and on the environment). He emphasizes that this is an experiential event, not a thinking one: meaning that awareness is on the body and the environment, but not on the thoughts. The second method is labeling and experiencing. Here, the practitioner does not the thoughts (and feelings). They allow themselves to feel the thought, the emotion, as they simultaneously label it. The third he calls, clunkily, "opening into the heart of experience," which means imagining dense emotions into the chest and experiencing them, until such time it is possible to precisely break them down and label them. (But not analyze them--this mode of Zen is very much against thinking. It's experience all the way down.)
This process is supposed to create a space between the person and their thoughts: they are just thoughts, and need not be accepted as true (13). He argues--not persuasively, though it rang true to me--that most of our life is a performance, acting out conditioned responses without any thought. The goal of practice is not to shave off those conditioned responses, like barnacles off a ship--that's impossible--but to become aware of them, so that they do not have so much power over us (48). So that there is a space between the experience and the reaction. Although this is relatively standard Zen, I thought it came from an interesting enough angle that it made some of the concepts clearer to me. (In truth, he equivocates a bit on this point, sometimes emphasizing that it is impossible to get rid of these conditioned responses, other times (51) talking about dismantling the self.)
He then takes these various concepts and applies them in particular situations--dealing with anger, with fear, with pain and suffering. (Like many drawn to the meditative practices, he has experienced chronic disease.) With distress. With addiction. With work--employment--situations. His comments on fear were the most interesting to me, because it has become something of a pop-psychology cliché that we should continually do something that scares us to "grow," He makes the point that continually seeking out situations that make us afraid merely conditions us to deal with those particular situations, but not with the notion of fear: indeed, it's a method of escaping having to deal with fear itself. This is one of the situations where it is clearest that our own difficulties are the path: we have enough, we do not have to go out and seek new problems.
In discussing distress, he breaks the practice into four, but I do not see why the categories would not work for any of the situations he describes. The four steps are: becoming aware that the emotion we are feeling is the path of practice (pain is the path, distress is the path, etc.,); becoming curious about the feeling--asking "What Is It?" then not introspecting but describing it and experiencing it; awakening humor, by which he means gaining an ironic distance from it; and bringing in loving-kindness, by which he means not feeling shame.
The final section of the book is the one most inflected with Tibetan styles of Buddhism, at least in the Trungpa Chogyam line. He discusses hard and soft kinds of practice--hard being disciplined and continuing to do the practice even when we do not want to, soft being the loving kindness we bring to ourselves. He discusses letting things be, rather than doing. (He sees fixing problems as often a way of avoiding the motional work that their presence implies.) He offers some loving kindness meditations, and then reflects on how he has used his practice to help him while volunteering at a hospice.
Although the book is divided into thematic sections, it never quite gels as a cohesive work, nor doe sit really build on itself. (One could read the last section without the previous two, and understand most everything.) It's a series of thoughts, almost one-offs, which may be partly explained by his own antipathy toward theory and philosophy--which he admits early on. I share these antipathies, too, and prefer the empirical to the theoretical, but he has so turned his back on it that the book does not feel organized.
So, read it if you want, especially if you haven't read anything on Zen before. But if you have, well, it's fine--an easy and quick read--but it takes fresh eyes to find the insights among the familiar lands.
October 13, 2023
As a book, this certainly is repetitive and a bit too "spiritual" for my taste.
However, I cannot overstate how much of an essential read this was for me. This is a book I will come back to, over and over again. I feel silly writing this review but there's no good reason, is there?
It's a phenomenal insight for me on my meditation journey on how to approach it in a better way.
Much more essentially however, it is about how to deal with all of one's emotions, thoughts, imagined identities on every day of one's life.
And it has started profoundly changing my life since July. Or no, it hasn't changed my life: it has changed how I *look* at life. At all of my fears, believed thoughts, of how I should be, how life itself should be. All of it.
It will take years to internalize this healthier attitude but I'm determined to stick with it.
However, I cannot overstate how much of an essential read this was for me. This is a book I will come back to, over and over again. I feel silly writing this review but there's no good reason, is there?
It's a phenomenal insight for me on my meditation journey on how to approach it in a better way.
Much more essentially however, it is about how to deal with all of one's emotions, thoughts, imagined identities on every day of one's life.
And it has started profoundly changing my life since July. Or no, it hasn't changed my life: it has changed how I *look* at life. At all of my fears, believed thoughts, of how I should be, how life itself should be. All of it.
It will take years to internalize this healthier attitude but I'm determined to stick with it.
June 3, 2017
I expected to read about concepts of nothingness, suchness, zen parables, and koans, that so often fill the pages in Zen books. Bayda goes into specific and carefully crafted detail on how to deal with: Pain (both physical and mental); Fear; Suffering; Anger; and even death. In this respect, it's more of an excerpt in Psychology, from a Zen Teacher's perspective. The book presupposes that the reader have some understanding of what Zen or Buddhist "practice," is, and what it entails, but is in no way a mandatory prerequisite to getting a lot from this book.
March 19, 2018
The message of this book can be summoned up in the following passage: "Expecting our problems to go away is truly our fundamental problem. We resist facing our life as it is, because facing life as it is means abandoning how we think our life should be."
This book really spoke to me and I found it very helpful. If I had to categorize it, I'd call it Buddhist psychology. The author is a former student of Charlotte Joko Beck. (In fact, she wrote the foreword.) So if you like her writings, you'll certainly enjoy this read.
It was well worth my time.
This book really spoke to me and I found it very helpful. If I had to categorize it, I'd call it Buddhist psychology. The author is a former student of Charlotte Joko Beck. (In fact, she wrote the foreword.) So if you like her writings, you'll certainly enjoy this read.
It was well worth my time.
Read
November 16, 2009I seem to have lost the copy I was reading... hmm...
August 30, 2014
Short, to the point. How to sit with one's fear, pain, discomfort, and realize that life is exactly what it is, and we are exactly who we are.
September 16, 2019
The practice and understanding of Buddhism is one approach I use to comprehend and deal with our human condition. I find it very useful to read books on this subject to keep me focused on the right way to deal with life’s challenges.
This book certainly worked for me, but it didn’t speak to me as I expected it would. It could be the mood I was in, or perhaps how it referenced some of the practical ways of dealing with daily challenges, but I’m glad I read it. It reminded me again and again of where my focus should be and that’s the reason I read these books.
The book offers many examples of daily challenges one might face and the appropriate way to view these emotional conditions. After a while a Buddhist practice becomes a refuge and a partner in life’s trials, and I’m so glad I was introduced to this years ago.
I would highly encourage everyone to take the time and read books like this one.
This book certainly worked for me, but it didn’t speak to me as I expected it would. It could be the mood I was in, or perhaps how it referenced some of the practical ways of dealing with daily challenges, but I’m glad I read it. It reminded me again and again of where my focus should be and that’s the reason I read these books.
The book offers many examples of daily challenges one might face and the appropriate way to view these emotional conditions. After a while a Buddhist practice becomes a refuge and a partner in life’s trials, and I’m so glad I was introduced to this years ago.
I would highly encourage everyone to take the time and read books like this one.
February 2, 2022
This is a reread for me. I like this book for the detailed approach and guidance it provides on how to use meditation to clear away that which does not belong and find equanimity. It provides a lot to digest and merits a reread on occasion. Having said that, this is one man's approach to how he used meditation to find equanimity in his life. It is not the only approach, but fits nicely along side other books on meditation and Zen you may have in your collection.
March 26, 2018
I know Zen is impossible to put into words, but ultimately what this book does is only give some taste of Zen, but doesn't get you started or provide a cultural and historical introduction that I feel is necessary to understand this branch of Buddhism. On the plus side, it's an easy, entertaining read.
February 26, 2018
The first meditation book I ever read. It has some excellent beginner practices... however my one issue is that the author tends to spend too much time focusing on illness, since this was a big part of the authors journey, and glossing over many other issues that can arise in meditation...
February 7, 2019
I enjoyed this book, the mindfulness practices shared, and especially the stories at the end of the hospice patients that Ezra visited with. I found this book to be well written. It contained lots of love, considerate advice, and thoughtfulness towards the reader.
July 26, 2018
OMG - Could it get any simpler or more sane (without being wimpy)?
July 16, 2019
Excellent book, one I will reread often.
November 11, 2019
I think maybe i've just read too many of these types of books lately. It didn't really resonate with me.
October 16, 2021
This is a very helpful book for those interested in developing their meditation practice to include warmth to one's self and others.
Read
March 2, 2023Практика обєднання трьох відчуттів (сообразіть на трьох): дихання, дотик, звук - внесла нову нотку в мою медитативну жизнь
June 5, 2023
...Afterward, as I sat in my car in the hospital parking lot, I couldn’t stop the tears. In part I was seeing how much pain we inflict on one another out of self-protection... pp 188
July 22, 2025
Lots of good stuff in this book!
June 12, 2019
ORIGINALLY WRITTEN AND POSTED ON AMAZON IN JULY 2011 ...
If it is true, as the adage goes, that good things often come in small packages, then here we have some tangible evidence in the form of this wonderful first book from Zen teacher Ezra Bayda. A "small package" indeed, at under 150 reduced-size pages, and yet brimming with more useful information and sage advice than many a larger book.
Much of the useful information contained in Being Zen is concentrated in its opening section, "The Basics of Practice". In these chapters, Bayda first helps us to understand how we are all "skating on thin ice" by investing so much energy in attempting to control every aspect of life, and then offers practical suggestions for using meditation practice as a way of learning how to simply be with what is. One of my favorite take-aways from these "how-to-meditate" chapters involves a technique Bayda calls "three-by-three" in which you gradually expand your sensory awareness to include first your breathing, then the air around you, and finally your physical posture - and then you hold these three distinct aspects in a unified awareness for three full inhalation-exhalation cycles. This is a very effective exercise for grounding yourself in the here-and-now of the present moment.
The two sections that follow - "Practicing with Emotional Distress" and "Awakening the Heart of Compassion" - contain a wealth of sage advice. Of particular value for me was the chapter on practicing with anger, a masterful explication of this intensely negative emotion as the natural outcome of our unwillingness to be with things as they are. It would be impossible - and perhaps harmful - to try to distill the process Bayda defines for working with anger in one or two sentences here. Instead, I will simply point out that he makes a profoundly useful distinction between "expressing anger" and "experiencing anger" that, once understood, can completely transform one's approach to dealing effectively with the impulse to anger.
The book closes with several truly moving accounts of Bayda's experiences as a hospice volunteer, by way of demonstrating both the value and the limits of loving-kindness as a meditation practice, and a powerful free-verse poem he wrote on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday entitled, "What Is Our Life About?", which concludes with the words, "Time is fleeting. / Don't hold back. / Appreciate this precious life."
To which I would add, as the conclusion of this review - Appreciate this precious book.
If it is true, as the adage goes, that good things often come in small packages, then here we have some tangible evidence in the form of this wonderful first book from Zen teacher Ezra Bayda. A "small package" indeed, at under 150 reduced-size pages, and yet brimming with more useful information and sage advice than many a larger book.
Much of the useful information contained in Being Zen is concentrated in its opening section, "The Basics of Practice". In these chapters, Bayda first helps us to understand how we are all "skating on thin ice" by investing so much energy in attempting to control every aspect of life, and then offers practical suggestions for using meditation practice as a way of learning how to simply be with what is. One of my favorite take-aways from these "how-to-meditate" chapters involves a technique Bayda calls "three-by-three" in which you gradually expand your sensory awareness to include first your breathing, then the air around you, and finally your physical posture - and then you hold these three distinct aspects in a unified awareness for three full inhalation-exhalation cycles. This is a very effective exercise for grounding yourself in the here-and-now of the present moment.
The two sections that follow - "Practicing with Emotional Distress" and "Awakening the Heart of Compassion" - contain a wealth of sage advice. Of particular value for me was the chapter on practicing with anger, a masterful explication of this intensely negative emotion as the natural outcome of our unwillingness to be with things as they are. It would be impossible - and perhaps harmful - to try to distill the process Bayda defines for working with anger in one or two sentences here. Instead, I will simply point out that he makes a profoundly useful distinction between "expressing anger" and "experiencing anger" that, once understood, can completely transform one's approach to dealing effectively with the impulse to anger.
The book closes with several truly moving accounts of Bayda's experiences as a hospice volunteer, by way of demonstrating both the value and the limits of loving-kindness as a meditation practice, and a powerful free-verse poem he wrote on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday entitled, "What Is Our Life About?", which concludes with the words, "Time is fleeting. / Don't hold back. / Appreciate this precious life."
To which I would add, as the conclusion of this review - Appreciate this precious book.
June 8, 2008
I've been meditating at the San Diego Zen Center since January. I get up at 5:30 most mornings - yes, I willingly get up at 5:30am - and walk the 7 minutes to the center. Ezra is one of my teachers there. Often after reading a book I wish I could talk to the author and pick his/her brain. I bought the book and thought "hey, here's my chance." The book is an easy read; very clear. There are lots of basic, usable instructions on meditation. Ezra's writing came across as vulnerable to me as describes his own limitations and struggles. And in the final chapter when he describes his experiences as a hospice volunteer, I bawled my little eyes out.
September 22, 2013
This small book is a bible for beginers and advanced meditators alike. Grounded in fundamentals, hammers the basic message home using day to day examples. Infact other than day to day stuff - call them mundane mind objects-as they arise, what else is there? . Sitting with whatever that comes is the practice. The book helps you with this work while turning wriggling and twisting but still sitting! Also see "Saying yes ti life" and "At home in muddy waters" . These masquerades as Zen books but really they are about just life. Great small books!
November 27, 2010
It took me a while to get into this book, but as continued to read more and more, it started to click. I am not sure I personally liked the way the author presented some of the information, but the information itself was very inspiring. The sections on identifying/labeling your thoughts and asking the question, "What is this" were very powerful.
Overall, It was a pretty good book and offers some interesting ways to look at difficult situations.
Overall, It was a pretty good book and offers some interesting ways to look at difficult situations.
February 6, 2017
This was a deeply moving book - one to which I'll often return. It's particularly useful for anyone new to meditation or seeking some guidance. In the last chapter, Bayda writes of his experiences as a hospice volunteer and the connections he made and such an ability to connect is evident in the way he communicates his ideas. I found the chapters, 'three aspects of sitting' and 'loving kindness meditation' very clear and helpful
March 25, 2008
A friend recommended this book to me over a year ago, and I just got a chance to pick it up now. Bayda is a deceptively simple writer, but there is a lot of wisdom in his words about how to live, and how to use meditation as a tool for awakening compassion and better understanding.
I plan to read all of his books.
I plan to read all of his books.
March 6, 2016
While I am not a practitioner of Buddhism, I found this book to be very enlightening and many of the lessons to be applicable just in every day life, thoughts and behaviors. Bayda presents a different way of thinking about your own behaviors, reactions, thoughts, and I hope to utilize these lessons to become a better person.
June 2, 2016
Spectacular, explained some things in in a fresh way that I couldn't seem to quite wrap my head around before. And those things that cannot be explained were illuminated in such a way as to help bolster my practice. I actually bought a second copy of this book to gift to another. I highly recommend this book for anyone who would like to deepen their practice.
January 21, 2013
Good book! Ezra Bayda shares many stories to help the reader know how to deal with many situations in life. He is compassionate and funny. This book is incredibly useful. I've given it to many people as a gift.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews