Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

BRENDA SHOSHANNA, Ph.D., is the relationships expert on iVillage.com. A psychologist and psychotherapist in practice for more than twenty-five years, she has been a Zen practitioner for twenty-eight years. Dr. Brenda has taught both Zen and psychology classes at Marymount College, the Zen Studies Society, and the New Seminary, and she has given workshops at New York's Learning Annex and elsewhere. She has made television appearances on ABC and NBC, and has been featured in Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle, and the Daily News.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

Discover a simple and powerful way to make your life more peaceful and more fulfilling every day. This book makes the mysteries?and miracles?of Zen accessible to everyone.

Known as "Dr. Brenda," the relationships expert on the iVillage.com Web site, Brenda Shoshanna has studied and practiced Zen meditation for almost three decades. In this gentle but practical guide, she introduces you to the Zen approach, allowing you to experience your fundamental strength and beauty?your Buddha nature?while showing you how to calm the "monkey mind" that keeps you restless and craving. In Zen Miracles, Dr. Shoshanna shows you step-by-step how to open yourself to appreciating the great gifts and miracles you receive daily.

In this book, you?ll learn the importance of mindfulness?and the essence of letting go. You?ll see how the false ego can distort and constrict your thoughts, causing emotional pain and confusion. You may be surprised to find out how smoothly Zen practice can coexist with, and even strengthen, your spirituality or religious faith. Focusing on practical ways to integrate Zen practice with family, work, relationships, and everyday life, Zen Miracles includes exercises that you can perform wherever you are.

Put this book into practice and see stress, confusion, loneliness, and anger dissolve right before your eyes. Achieve a calmness, compassion, and clarity you have never known. Discover Zen Miracles and find the joy of peace and contentment that lies waiting, ready to blossom, in every aspect of your life.

"If you are looking for a way to have happiness and still live in this world, you have come to the right book. Rarely do eloquent prose, gems of quotes, simple wisdom, and practical exercises come in one book: Zen Miracles offers all of these and more. Whatever your spiritual orientation, this is a book you will refer to for years to come."?Lee Jampolsky, Ph.D., author of Healing Together, Healing the Addictive Mind, and The Art of Trust

Aus dem Klappentext

Discover a simple and powerful way to make your life more peaceful and more fulfilling every day. This book makes the mysteries?and miracles?of Zen accessible to everyone.

Known as "Dr. Brenda," the relationships expert on the iVillage.com Web site, Brenda Shoshanna has studied and practiced Zen meditation for almost three decades. In this gentle but practical guide, she introduces you to the Zen approach, allowing you to experience your fundamental strength and beauty?your Buddha nature?while showing you how to calm the "monkey mind" that keeps you restless and craving. In Zen Miracles, Dr. Shoshanna shows you step-by-step how to open yourself to appreciating the great gifts and miracles you receive daily.

In this book, you?ll learn the importance of mindfulness?and the essence of letting go. You?ll see how the false ego can distort and constrict your thoughts, causing emotional pain and confusion. You may be surprised to find out how smoothly Zen practice can coexist with, and even strengthen, your spirituality or religious faith. Focusing on practical ways to integrate Zen practice with family, work, relationships, and everyday life, Zen Miracles includes exercises that you can perform wherever you are.

Put this book into practice and see stress, confusion, loneliness, and anger dissolve right before your eyes. Achieve a calmness, compassion, and clarity you have never known. Discover Zen Miracles and find the joy of peace and contentment that lies waiting, ready to blossom, in every aspect of your life.

"If you are looking for a way to have happiness and still live in this world, you have come to the right book. Rarely do eloquent prose, gems of quotes, simple wisdom, and practical exercises come in one book: Zen Miracles offers all of these and more. Whatever your spiritual orientation, this is a book you will refer to for years to come."?Lee Jampolsky, Ph.D., author of Healing Together, Healing the Addictive Mind, and The Art of Trust

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Zen Miracles
Finding Preface in an Insane World
By Brenda Shoshanna

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Copyright © 2002 Brenda Shoshanna, Ph.D..
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-471-41481-6

Chapter One

What Is Zen?

ZEN MIRACLE 1

You can laugh when you laugh
and cry when you cry.

An ancient Zen story tells that centuries ago, a physician, faced daily with death and suffering, sought out the guidance of a famous Zen Master who was living quietly in an inaccessible mountain hut. The physician climbed the mountain, searched for the hut, and, after many days, found him raking leaves at the side of his tiny house. The teacher did not look up when the student arrived, but kept raking slowly.

"I have come to understand the essence of Zen," the physician proclaimed. The Zen Master looked up for a moment. "Go home and be kind to your patients," the Master replied. "That is Zen."

?Ancient Zen story

Finding Your Answers

Most questions have answers. They are addressed to our rational mind. We want information we can get our hands around, answers to quench our insatiable thirst to know and do what's right, to handle the unending complications life presents. We strategize, plan, and gather whatever facts we can find. We search for authorities, assuming someone out there has our answer. This search can become a mania, as we run to teachers, doctors, psychologists, priests, and rabbis in the belief they have the "right way." Wars have been fought and lives have been sacrificed in the effort to protect the right answer or system.

    The answers to Zen questions cannot be found by thinking, talking, or finding a Zen Master or other authority. A Zen Master can only prod, kick, yell, cajole, love, and shove you into realizing that no one else has your truth. To find the answers to your life questions, you must look within. Nothing less will do. Nothing more is needed.

    Zen is about finding and honoring the head on your own shoulders, the heart that's beating right now inside of you. It's about turning the search around, discovering and trusting what's within.

Don't put a head on your own head. What's wrong with the one you have?

?Nyogen Senzaki

Don't Put a Head on Your Own Head

Zen practice is authoritarian and antiauthoritarian at the same time. It is antiauthoritarian in the sense that Zen students are taught how to totally reclaim their lives and their minds. They become able to take back all the scattered power and energy they have given to the thousands of "authorities" they have found or projected in the outside world. After years of practice, a Zen student is finally able to walk on this earth with his own two feet, to live the life given to him. He is able to laugh when he laughs, cry when he cries. He is wholehearted and without deception.

Eat When You're Hungry,
Sleep When You're Tired

Rinzai Gigen was the founder of one of the main schools of Zen. He died in A.D. 866; the date of his birth is unknown. Rinzai Zen is known for its dynamism and uncompromising directness. His teaching was brought to Japan in the thirteenth century.

    Rinzai said, "When I'm hungry, I eat, when I'm tired I sleep. Fools laugh at me. But the wise understand." (Rinzai Roku)

    How many of us can really eat when we're hungry, or sleep when tired? For many it is difficult to even recognize hunger for what it is. When we're hungry we talk, search for love, diet, or gobble down the wrong food. When we're tired we push ourselves to work harder, run, dance, or fall into bed and toss all night with difficult dreams. How many of us can really taste the food we are eating, appreciate it, and digest it? How many of us know sleep that truly refreshes, innocent sleep like that of a little child?

Laura's Story

Laura, a mother in her mid-forties who had always led a life of good health, woke up one day to find herself feeling ill. She initially discounted it for a passing virus, but weeks passed and it remained. Her moods became uncontrollable, and finally her balance was off and her eyes were swollen. After visiting a number of doctors, she was finally diagnosed with a thyroid disorder. Laura was put on medication and was told she may or may not get better. Months passed, but with no improvement. Desperate, she tried acupuncture, herbs, and a host of other alternative remedies, and yet her condition remained unchanged.

    One afternoon a friend offered to teach her Zen meditation. Laura felt she had nothing to lose. She followed the basic instructions, spending about an hour that day with her friend. "It felt good," Laura said, "but not spectacular. Bells didn't go off. I didn't get high." Nevertheless, something drew her back to the meditation cushion, and she decided, from that point on, to spend an hour a day sitting on her own.

    Within six months of steady Zen practice, Laura's eyes became normal, her moods steadied, she became balanced again. Now, when asked about Zen, she says, "I don't know exactly what happened, but it has simply saved my life."

What Is the Illness?

The whole world is medicine What is the illness?

?Ancient Zen saying

What exactly is the illness that Laura was suffering from? Most come to the zendo (the meditation place) to practice because they are suffering with many problems, anxiety, dissatisfaction in life. Something is wrong?missing. No matter what other paths they've chosen, this churning inside goes on and on.

    Buddha described this churning beautifully. When asked who he was, he said, "I'm a doctor who's come to cure the ills of the world. We've all been shot by a poison arrow and I will show you how to pull the arrow out." He never said, "I'm going to pull it out for you." In Zen practice we do not depend on others, but instead learn how to pull our own poison arrows out.

    Most of us spend our time discussing and analyzing the nature of our suffering, figuring out who can help. Here, in Zen practice, we put an end to discussion, and just take the arrow and pull it out. After the arrow is removed, people are often amazed to discover that many of the things they longed for, chased after, and thought they couldn't live without, were the poison itself.

My Eyebrows Are Horizontal ? My
Nose Is Vertical

After years of practice, when Dogen Zenji (a great, ancient teacher of Zen) returned to Japan he was asked what he learned there.

    "I learned that my eyebrows are horizontal and my nose is vertical," he said.

    The questioner looked at him, amazed. "Everyone knows that."

    But the questioner was wrong. How long does it take for...