Product Details
Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide

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

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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.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #32760 in Books
  • Published on: 2008-03-17
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 175 pages

Editorial Reviews

Review
"This is an exceptional work, majestic in its scope and clarity. Barry Magid presents a mature vision and he does it with utmost care and intelligence. I really loved this book."
— Mark Epstein, M.D., author of Thoughts without a Thinker and Psychotherapy without the Self

Customer Reviews

Well written and modern4
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.

Great Personal Insights4
Very good personal descriptions of his experience and the essence of Zen, not the sitting, but the meaning. Rondavous with Advita thinking in the end.

Arrival Tranquility5
Magid writes clearly and helps the seeker acknowledge his own hidden agenda.
Must read for serious seekers.