Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide

Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide
by Barry Magid

Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide
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Book Summary Information

Author: Barry Magid
Edition: Paperback
Published: 2008-03-17
ISBN: 0861715535
Number of pages: 175
Publisher: Wisdom Publications

Book Reviews of Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide

Book Review: Well written and modern
Summary: 4 Stars

I read this after having read "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" and "Everyday Zen". Those two books are collections of Dharma talks given at a zendo while this book is a consistent book in it's entirety.

I found it very well written and reasoned. It doesn't fall back on "new age" type analogies that so much as some Zen books. It brings Zen into the modern western world while still recounting some of the tales and koans of early Buddhism. It also references Socrate's and more recent western philosophers. Magid is a practicing psycho-analyst and I found his comparisons of therapy and zen illuminating but I also found this book a good exploration of Zen by itself. Having said that I may have not found it so useful if I had not read other material about Zen and meditated at a couple of Zendos before reading it.

Summary of Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide

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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