La lezione della serenità

This is a book to be savored--read and reread. Taking off from the event of the Buddha's mother's early death, Mark Epstein expounds on the wisdom of going through the pain of loss instead of defending against it. He gives many examples, both from his own and others' experiences, showing how facing

I assumed this book would be an expansion on this wonderful essay Epstein wrote for the NYT: http://ow.ly/qFOEJ Instead it should be called "Buddha and Winnicott", because that is the content. The Buddhist parts sound like a Focus on the Family preacher trying to squeeze as much extrapolation out of Leggi tutto

My sense of this book is that it's one man's attempt to understand Buddhism and integrate it with his very Western Psychodynamic world view. It was intersting from that standpoint, but didn't resonate with me and didn't feel helpful to my relationship with Buddhism. There were a couple of positive t Leggi tutto

Through exploration of stories of the Buddha, Epstein allows us to recognize, acknowledge, and accept the inherently traumatic nature of our everyday experience. With these stories of the Buddha's journey to enlightenment, he weaves in philosophy, psychoanalysis (e.g., Winnicott, Stolorow), developm Leggi tutto

I read this book on a recommendation. The Buddhism angle took me a bit by surprise and finally after reading a good way into it, I realized that wasn't just an element of the book, but rather the basis of it. I suppose I was conditioned to a Western approach by the title of the book and, well, how a Leggi tutto