Clark StrandRecensioni

Is modern Buddhism relevant to the problems of daily life? Or has Buddhism become too detached, so still and quiet that the Buddha has fallen asleep?

Clark Strand's Waking the Buddha offers an absorbing, perceptive look at the often-misunderstood Soka Gakkai International movement and at how it is redefining not just the practice of Buddhism but religion itself. An eye-opening book, both fascinating and important.-Dinty W. Moore, author of The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Life

A practical guide for anyone searching for the answer to the question: 'How can I incorporate Buddhist principles in all aspects of my life?' If your practice is waking up, this book is for you-Koshin Paley Ellison, Co-Founder, New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care

One of the great challenges that religions face is translating timeless wisdom into timely action for this day and age. No Buddhist tradition has done this as successfully as the SGI, and this book examines the history and future of the movement. A must-read for anyone interested in Buddhism and its transmission.-Varun Soni, Dean of Religious Life, University of Southern California

Clark Strand is a spiritual writer and former Zen Buddhst monk who serves as contributing editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Contents

1 The spark-An idea ahead of its time
A change in the life of one individual
The flame of reform
A thing of lasting beauty
2 The foundation-The creation of the Soka Gakkai
Just one verse of the lotus sutra
Understanding our common humanity
The power of ideas
Opening a way toward the future
Personal transformation through group discussion
3 The development-The discovery of modern Budhism
Religion serving life, not life religion
Glimmers of a gobal movement
A global spiritual shift
Passing the flame of reform
4 The completion-The spread of religious humanism
Waking the Buddha
The culture of mentorship
The oneness of mentor and disciple
Spiritual independence
Even to the fiftieth person
The ultimate declaration
5 The future-A religion for the twenty-first century
The foundation for a happy life
Boomers, Buddhism, and beyond
Facing the challenge ahead
Entering the age of life

My cousin recommended this and I just can't.

Waking the Buddha is an excellent book for many types of people. It is wonderful for those of other religions/spiritualities to help gain an understanding an empathy for those who do not believe/practice what you do. It is also great for those new to Buddhism and those who have been practicing for years as well. It was the second book I read on my journey to converting to SGI Buddhism and played an integral role in my decision to convert. However, it is not evangelical in any way, nor does it read as propaganda. It is simply an awakening to the basic principals and understandings of Nichiren Buddhism and its parallels to other religions. As someone who was raised as a Christian, this book helped me to see that all "religions" have many parallels and are essentially working toward the same cause, they just all have a different way of getting there. This book was easy to read and great for a good basic understanding of Nichiren (SGI) Buddhism.

Let me save you a read: light bulbs=bad and Strand is a nut. This should get less than one star, but I'm being especially kind this year, and no stars means no opinion. I have no idea how this got on my "Want to Read" list. I checked NPR, thinking that's where I heard of this, but I couldn't find it. I thought this might have something to do with modern screens and not enough sleep. Yeah...no. Instead, Strand references a Thomas Wehr study from the 90s that showed that humans revert to "primitive" natures when deprived of artificial light and sleep in two periods during a night (note: neither Wehr, nor Strand discussed whether apes had the same sleeping patterns). But Strand goes off into mystical nonsense and blows it through the roof through this thankfully short book.

I'm not sure as to Wehr's credibility, but Strand diminishes it with

Because he was a scientist and not a shaman, such language was probably as close as Wehr could get to saying outright that we have lost our access to the realm of the ancestors—that we can no longer commune with the dead.

Strand's wife speaks to her ancestors at night, and he speaks to Buddhist icons. But it gets better...

Estrogen and testosterone production bumped upward when early humans brought firelight inside of their caves, convincing their bodies that the days were actually growing longer and that it was time to mate. Human females (who were then most fertile in late summer, when food was plentiful) gradually became capable of reproducing at any time of year.

He doesn't realize the comically narrow mindedness of

Before fire, human beings were one species among many - a persistent thread in the evolutionary tapestry that spread here and there through the big picture - but the weren't the point of that picture. There was no sense that Homo sapiens were the endpoint of evolution. There was no sense that, having created them, the world (or God) was effectively done with its creative work.

Done? Amazing...that evolution is done...having resulted in humans. Back to Wehr, and this stunning revelation

When we [researchers T. S. Wiley and Bent Formby] asked Dr. Thomas Wehr, the head of the department studying seasonal and circadian rhythmicity at the NIH [National Institutes of Health] in Washington, whether he felt the public had a right to know that on less than 9.5 hours of sleep at night—i.e., in the dark—they will (a) never be able to stop eating sugar, smoking, and drinking alcohol and (b) most certainly develop one of the following conditions: diabetes, heart disease, cancer, infertility, mental illness, and/or premature aging, he said, “Well, yes, they do have a right to know. They should be told; but it won’t change anything. Nobody will ever turn off the lights."

Loons tend to flock together it seems. For such a short book, there are far too many WTF? moments:

What is electricity but an exercise in human self-importance? It accomplishes nothing else.
{...}
Turn out the lights—and leave them off—and we will experience a consciousness our minds have never known but our bodies still remember.

And just when you think it can't get any crazier...Strand reveals voices woke him and talked to him. More than once. And ...spoiler alert...that darkness is a woman!!

Waste of neurons. Don't bother. I was going to give it a generous two stars but after going back over my notes, I couldn't. It's bad.

I DNF this one.

I found it difficult to read and to follow. I got to about half and then gave up

I DNF this one.

I found it difficult to read and to follow. I got to about half and then gave up

I DNF this one.

I found it difficult to read and to follow. I got to about half and then gave up

The book's OK and somewhat informative. But I think Clark is a little full of himself.½

Strand, from Atlanta, is an unsuccessful Buddhist monk and successful magazine editor (Tricycle). I admit it, some of the haiku in this book are just seventeen-syllable sentences broken into three lines. But then there are these:

summer afternoon
the coolness of the newspaper
from the grocery bag

A nun writes:

inside our chapel
with beings of wood and stone
seeds from a birch tree

A prisoner writes:

from the jailhouse sink
the water comes out so clear
I feel cool by it

A 14-year-old:

Caterpillar's web —
invisible to passers
caught in its weak trap

A survivor of a bombing raid:

In time of danger
the crab only needs to go
into a drainpipe.

This is a good book for learning to write haiku, the classical rules and why they persist, and the pitfalls. Don't read it in a hurry. It's a good idea to do the exercises that crop up at three points. The last one instructs you *not* to write anything.

A gentle, easy to read guide to getting into a beneficial meditating state without any religious indoctrination. Religion was there but in the background of the author's story. Through the author's experiences, it covers the challenges one encounters trying to meditate in everyday life. It's also easy to re-read if your practice gets off track.