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 explicitation 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.
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Top reviews from other countries
Steven Underdown
Very helpful. Practical. Wise.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 15, 2014Mme Catherine Joly
Un livre qui m'a immensément aidée
Reviewed in France on May 1, 2013