The Work of This Moment

by Toni Packer

In this compelling collection of talks, essays, interviews, and letters, Toni Packer presents a radically simple and original approach to spiritual growth free from religious authority, doctrine, symbolism, and ceremony. A former Zen teacher and student of Krishnamurti's work, Toni Packer goes beyond traditional religion and explores with the reader the root of human attachments and the source of suffering, opening the way to compassion.

Genres: Spirituality, Zen, Nonfiction, Buddhism, Philosophy

136 pages, Paperback

First published March 28, 1988

Reviews

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I met the great Toni Packer in the spring of 1986 - a full 35 years ago this month - I was elated. I was disappointed in a way, too, that she lived and worked in the Rochester, New York, area - too far away with my busy career to make a weekend trip there and back.

Already I was slated to travel to the Netherlands that summer on business and my dance card was filling. So it was, then, that I realized with regret that my one opportunity to study Buddhism under a fully realized teacher was not to be.

When Toni meditated, it wasn’t just with her mind. It was with her entire BODY-MIND. Just breathing was everyday satori in her wonderful megaworld. And what a Vast and Compassionate MegaWorld it was, too! “The world in a grain of sand...”

The weekend of our study session had started auspiciously enough, too. I had met my old Latin teacher, Mr. Church, who was passing by as I took a smoke break out near the verandah and was concurrently feeding the parking meter. It was almost 25 years since he had taught me high school Latin.

(Philip Church was so great - he had even translated White Christmas into Latin for us teens:
Somnio candidum nivem
In magna carta inscribo...
Christmasy, huh?)

The session was being held at my friend Robert’s place in southeastern centre town. The south end of the city centre was starting to attract a burgeoning Gay Community, and though Robert was of that persuasion I had not known Mr. Church was as well.

It is an architecturally pleasing part of town, with many of its 19th century manors now converted into restaurants and apartments, and it was the area where I had met my wife ten years earlier. Living then in bleakly modern apartment complexes, our old stomping ground was starting now to wear a more human face.

I went back inside Robert’s house, my head light with nicotine. I had just met privately upstairs with Toni, minutes earlier to this. She had corrected my posture and deepened my breathing technique. And now Recharged, I prepared to take my leave as I had grocery shopping and lawn cutting to do at home.

I told her I would return that evening with some home-cooked food to add to Robert’s potluck menu for a larger audience.

You may already know this, but the point of Zen meditation is to open up hidden areas of your brain you may have forgotten about, irretrievably lost, or never been aware of. Some of these areas may be hiding on purpose. so by meditating - watch out! - you may be “heaping live coals upon your head.”

Beware.

Personally, I had to do it. My brain had absorbed far too much trauma when I was hospitalized 16 years before. I had to unravel it all.

Toni originally studied at Roshi Kapleau’s Zen centre - you know, the one he talks about in The Three Pillars of Zen. Toni was his heir apparent, but wanted to explore the inner reaches of the mind in smaller, more informal groups. So she worked in that looser way till her death.

She was a lone voice for choiceless awareness, and sought no honours.

But returning that evening to Robert’s house with my wife’s dessert in a Tupperware container to share with the group, the crowd was larger, more curious and much more impersonal. And as dishes were cleared away, Toni began to speak in her tentative, heuristic manner. The group fell silent.

Then - a sudden cry...

It was a baby in his mother’s arms at the back of the room, and he was wailing furiously.

The audience tittered politely, but people were taken aback.

Would Toni lose her thread?

But Toni just chuckled - a full, throaty chuckle.

Not even this interruption could shake her peaceful joy:

For her peace was part and parcel of her warm and radiant personality.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I want to pull myself out of a Krishnamurti phase, I usually shift to Packer. She's deeply influenced by K., but writes in a more direct and simple manner that is always appealing. It's great to have these little books that bear reading again and again.
And again.

[Jason Comely · Rating 5 out of 5]

With choice questions Toni manages to go beyond doctrine, traditions and concepts to the root of anger, fear, attachment. After reading this illuminating book, Zen Buddhist rituals and koans seem antithetical to liberation of the mind, or at least a hindrance.

So glad I found this book.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

love the simplicity of toni packer's message that all the work we need to do can be found in each moment...

[Lucka Strmisková · Rating 3 out of 5]

O Toni Packerové jsem nikdy předtím neslyšela a bohužel ani po přečtení knihy o ní nic moc nevím. Stejně jako se knize nepodařilo neznalému čtenáři Toni představit, tak stejně tak jsem v ní nenašla skutečné vysvětlení, proč opustila budhismus a v čem je její cesta lepší. Závěrečné odpovědi čtenářům se do celkového pojetí knihy nehodí a vypadají, že jsou na konec přidány jen kvůli předepsanému počtu stránek.

[Šárka Pjenkava · Rating 2 out of 5]

...to byl omyl.