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Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide | 
| Author: Barry Magid
Publisher: Wisdom Publications
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy New: $9.99
You Save: $6.96 (41%)
New (24) Used (4) from $9.43
Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 8368
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 175
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.5
ISBN: 0861715535
Dewey Decimal Number: 294.3444
EAN: 9780861715534
ASIN: 0861715535
Publication Date: March 17, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new book. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling books online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20080521212553T
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Product Description
This new book from Zen teacher, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and critical favorite Barry Magid inspires us — in wryly gentle prose — to outgrow the impossible pursuit of happiness, and instead make peace with the perfection of the way things are. Including ourselves! Magid invites readers to consider the notion that our certainty that we are broken may be turning our “pursuit of happiness” into a source of yet more suffering. He takes an unusual look at our “secret practices” (what we’re REALLY doing, when we say “practicing”) and “curative fantasies,” wherein we have ideals of what spiritual practices will “do” for us, “cure” us. In doing so, he helps us look squarely at such pitfalls of spiritual practice so that we can avoid them. Along the way, Magid lays out a rich roadmap of a new “psychological-minded Zen,” which may be among the most important spiritual developments of the present-day.
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| Customer Reviews:
Clear message to look at the shadows in your head May 5, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is an exceptional practice-related book. Barry Magid clearly articulates his thoughts that our emotions and their underpinnings are not separate, or to be discarded, in our practice. He makes very clear the point that pursuits to be other than we are, even when these pursuits fit an ideal Zen or personal image, lead us away from the reality of who/how we are now. However, he is able to incorporate the purpose of action in a useful way. Certainly, other books revolve around the topic of `be here, now, regardless of what comes up,' but none I've read comes close to making this topic more alive than Magid's book.
Although I don't think my teacher has to be my analyst (he does not necessarily advocate this) or that I necessarily need an analyst at all (if he doesn't advocate this, it is because he does not know me), I am left with the impression that North Americans are more psychologically weighted down than the rest of the world. Maybe we should be given our projection of anger, guilt, violence, etc. around the world, but I am not quite convinced of this idea. I don't know if he believes this or if it is more the Ordinary Mind School's incorporation of psychology in seeking the best `Zen fit' for those of us in the states.
If Charolette Joko Beck's teachings struck a chord with you, so will this book. No doubt this is one of those books you can read and re-read and benefit at each sitting. This is one of the best practice books I have read.
ordinary and impressive April 4, 2008
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
In the 15 or so years that I've been interested in Buddhism, I couldn't begin to tell you how many books I've read on the subject. I've come to believe that they all basically say the same thing, but that doesn't mean that some aren't better than others. Truth be told: there are plenty of books by Buddhist teachers that are a complete mess--not to mention a waste of time. Fortunately, this isn't one of them.
There's something about Charlotte Joko Beck, who is Magid's teacher, that is quite refreshing to me. I have found Joko Beck's two books, and the books of another of her students, Ezra Bayda, very useful. She has a non-sense style and an emphasis on the fact that Zen is not a means of escape (which is all I have ever really wanted from spiritual practice). Barry Magid takes this same theme and runs with it--presenting it with a new clarity and insight.
Magid, a psychoanalyst and Zen teacher, presents a bull****-free version of practice that emphasizes real life experience--not the aspiration to a higher state of consciousness. Much of what we come to spritual practice to find is imaginary, according to Magid---and I think this is something we can't hear enough: coming to practice might ultimately be transformative, but it won't change the "ordinariness" of our lives. I can think of no better book to guide us to this simple, yet quite profound truth.
Ending the Pursuit of Happiness is a fabulous, direct, inspired, articulate, accessible work. For those interested in Buddhism, and Zen in particular, I can't recommend it highly enough.
The Great Way March 31, 2008
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
Hsin-hsin Ming famously wrote, "the Great Way is not difficult for those not attached to preferences." All too often this has been interpreted in American Zen as requiring an emotional neutering with the student supposedly developing the ability to be unaffected by external events. Dr. Magid's great contribution to practice, and that of the Ordinary Mind School generally, is to point out that demands for particular emotional states are no different than demands for specific external conditions, and the Great Way is attached to neither. Or more particularly, through proper Zen practice the individual slowly and at times painfully develops the capacity to hold both external events and internal emotional states without being fully caught by either. Dr. Magid bravely goes against the current barrage of books promising happiness ever after and shows how suffering is inherent in that very pursuit. He does not promise happiness so this book will never be sold at the grocery store check-out counter. Rather he shows the path available to all of us to open to the joy of the very life we have. No candy here. All meat.
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