Ambivalent Zen

Lawrence Shainberg recounts his lifelong pursuit of enlightenment in this memoir, a record of high hopes, letdowns, and absurd episodes that trail his quest. His father first handed him Zen at fifteen, and Shainberg became an on-and-off follower of a teaching that promises liberation, confronts the self, and tries to turn craving into a state beyond craving. His first attempt to bring Buddhist discipline to his own mind collapses on the basketball court, where he was a devoted player.

Years later, working as a novelist and journalist, he finds his writing both fed and stalled by the same restless urges. Each glimpse of clarity gives way to its reverse, and he keeps relearning that Zen amounts to fully accepting that everything passes.

His search leads him through the writings of Alan Watts, J. Krishnamurti, and D. T. Suzuki, then into psychoanalysis, karate, and the demanding discipline of zazen, or seated meditation. He meets several self-declared Zen masters along the way, and in the Arab quarter of Jerusalem he finds a Japanese teacher who appears to embody what he has been searching for. That teacher's Zen is down to earth, free of romance, and stripped of mystique.