Synopsis:

EXPLORES and presents simply and creatively the practical and the theoretical, the mundane and the sacred of Buddhism.

— Michael Wenger, Dean of Buddhist Studies, San Francisco Zen Center

 

 

THIS book will bring a smile to us all. We see that it is reaching out to so many people - to bring the understanding, solidity, and compassion so very needed in our society.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

AT last! The Complete Idiot's Guide... makes Buddhism as accessible as Volkswagen repair. (Or is it the other way around?) It's so easy even a woman can do it. Not only that. Even a MAN! Thanks to Gary Gach's wide-ranging knowledge and long experience as a Buddhist practitioner, his book is full of delightful quotes and anecdotes. He brings Buddhism alive in the "hear and now," including, for example, an excellent chapter on socially engaged Buddhism, letting us know of the many ways in which contemporary Buddhist practice is integrally connected with work for social and environmental justice. The book is inviting for a newcomer to Buddhism, and great fun for a long-time practitioner as well, as it reminds us of the multiple forms of contemporary Buddhist practice.

~ Susan Moon, author The Life and Letters of Tofu Roshi
and editor, with Lenore Friedman, Being Bodies: Buddhist
Women on the Paradox of Embodiment

 

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THIS book is not for idiots. It tells us what smart people want and need to know about Buddhist wisdom, history, theory, and its practice today. Gary Gach has done a fine job here, in lending a helping hand to lift ourselves toward the spiritual goal of awakened enlightenment.

~ Lama Surya Das,

author of Awakening the Buddha Within
and founder of the Dzogchen Center

 

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GARY Gach is like that teacher you always wanted — easygoing, full of information, able to communicate in humorous and meaningful ways, and a little bit wacky. So he's the perfect author for The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Buddhism. In this trademark easy-to-read format, Gach introduces us to a very human Buddha, along with the rules for living that make a Buddhist a Buddhist. In addition to the various kinds of meditation, he shows us how to meditate at meals and be aware of the interconnections in life. We learn about popular branches of Buddhism, like Zen and Tibetan, with an emphasis on practicing here and now. There is the theoretical: emptiness, nothingness, impermanence, as well as a very strong dose of the practical: Buddha at work, Buddhist films, environmental concerns, Buddhist celebrations, etc. Gach brings it all together with a light touch and an enthusiasm that makes you want to get up and do something Buddhist.

~ Brian Bruya, Reviewer, Amazon.com; translator of Zen Speaks: Shout of Nothingness; The Tao Speaks: Lao Tzu's Whisper of Wisdom; The Dao of Zhuangzi: The Harmony of Nature; Confucius Speaks: Words to Live By; Sunzi Speaks: The Art of War; Wisdom of the Zen Masters: The Quest for Enlightenment; all illustrated by Tsai Chich Chung

 

 

WITH great integrity and critical insight, Gary Gach immeasurably enhyances authentic interfaith understanding and fellowship. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Buddhism is an exquisitely organized and comprehensive introduction to Buddhism that honors the intellect, illumines the spirit, and enobles the human sojourn.

— Reverend Dorsey Blake,

Pastor, The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples

GARY is a clear voice articulating the history, culture, and universal appeal of the Dharma. This is a book foreveryone: those who know a lot about Buddhism; those who little; and thoseprecious few who are blessed with knowing nothing at all.

—Rabbi Rami Shapiro, The Wisdom of Solomon; Proverbs; Minyan

 

 

 

THE best of its kind.

— Chevy Chase, actor

but hardly a complete idiot ...

Book Excerpt:

Mind Mirror:
Buddha at the Movies

Looking back, the most popular art form the twentieth century bequeathed to posterity was � movies! Nothing goes around the world like a ticket to the movies. This holds for TV, too, also speaking the universal language of cinema but on a much reduced scale. As mystic movie maven and filmmaker Stephen Simon says, "Movies are the most electrifying communications medium ever devised and the natural conduit for inspiring ourselves to look into the eternal issues of who we are and why we are here." So, of course, this has its Buddhist lights, and we can break that down two ways: film itself as Buddhist, and Buddhist films.

Now Playing: Film as Buddhist

Whatever's playing, I always enjoy the hush that settles in when the lights dim before the show. The sheer act of gathering together with fellow villagers for some storytelling around a campfire (the flickering lights and shadows on a movie screen) has primal roots, deep within the sacred. And film can, in and of itself, provide an apt model for our mundane consciousness; conscious of something but what? Illusion, quite often. Plato once described the unexamined life in terms akin to sitting in a theater never aware of the projection booth where the images come from; instead, we take what we're seeing for reality. So it is, the Buddha shows, with the projections of our own minds, which we take as the reality of our experience.

There's a visual metaphor in Buddha's motto: "Come and see!" Vipassana: clear seeing into the nature of things. Burmese vipassana master Sayadaw U Pandita notes that when we watch a movie, the process can be like insight meditation. Each has four phases:

1. Appearance of object
2. Directing of attention
3. Close observation
4. Understanding

 

In insight meditation, 1) we focus attention on our belly, say, which leads to 2) appearance of rising and falling of the abdomen, followed by 3) noting the process and our feelings, then 4) discovering special characteristics and how they actually behave, not how we think they do.

Watching a movie, 1) we focus attention on the screen, which leads to 2) appearance of characters and scenes, followed by 3) making out what's happening by observing carefully, then 4) discovering the plot and appreciating the movie.

 

Cinema provides another metaphor: for reality's Eternal Now. I remember once sitting behind a five-year-old and an adult at a matinee, and every ten minutes or so the kid would ask the adult, "What's happening now?" and the adult would answer, "Now they're getting to know each other." Or "Now they're going to get married." Or "Now they're on their honeymoon." If you think about it, every moment in a movie is (like life) always about "now." Continuous present tense. (Even flashbacks.) And this Film Now can be elastic, instead of like clock time: 10 minutes compressed into 3, or 3 stretched out into 10 (very reminiscent of quite a few sitting meditations I've had). Indeed, the more familiar we become with the eternal nowness of time, the more we sense its elasticity.

Our minds are elastic in the same way. A good analogy is space. As with time, movies are always breaking the ancient Aristotelian Unity of Time and Place (everything unfolding in linear "real time," 1-2-3). A film opens space out like a jigsaw puzzle, constantly changing locations and points of views. So, as audiences, when we're film's space-without-particular-locality, we're also experiencing the limitless possibility of emptiness, and of our own mind. Felt everywhere but nowhere to be seen.

Fiction films are usually a neatly patterned karma tale. For an interesting meditation sometime, buy a ticket to a movie you otherwise don't care about and walk in on the middle (at a multiplex this is easy to do). Then stay for the beginning up until you walked in. You'll see how everything that happened in the second half was a result of the characters' actions in the first half. (You can also try this at home, fast-forwarding into the middle, starting from there, then returning to the beginning.) See karma, study dharma.

Here's another meditation. Watch actors in groups of two or more, when they're not saying or doing anything, and see if they're (compassionately) making the other actors look good, and providing skillful means to play off of — or just thinking about how they look and what they're going to say next.

Movies can nourish our own compassion, as well. Typically, we hope it all turns out ok, and so identify beyond our self (which is what compassion means, feeling with), identifying with the other characters. Without such compassion, we'd be aware we're sitting in our chairs the entire time. And this is a secret part of the fun of watching movies: sitting there in our jeans and T-shirt, and at the same time being superstars, 33-feet tall, and sliding back and forth between the two realms. ("Great kiss! Please pass the popcorn.")

If we stop to think about this further, we see that when we're engrossed in a movie our ability to exchange our self with others* reveals the basic insubstantiality of self. It's conditonal on the factors of the story. This is how a great actor such as Laurence Olivier could say, late in life, acting didn't teach him to "get in touch with himself" but, rather, it taught him how he'd no idea who he was, really, having realized his heart's potential for being so many different people. Drama teaches that, given the circumstances, we could change who we thought we were in a second. Like they say, there but for fortune go you or I.

Any permanent, substantial identity is a fiction. In ancient Greek theater, the actors wore big masks called persona. Thus what is a real person? In the Zen-influenced dance-theater called Noh, wooden masks even change expressions as the wearer shows them in different angles and shades of lighting.


But film can never duplicate what I see when I settle on my cushion and look into my own mind screen. This is particularly true in insight meditation, when visualization is personalized. And it's a key feature in Tibetan Buddhism, where visualization empowers us to realize our unity with sacred energies by identifying with pictorial images of deities embodying them and then recognizing their intrinsic emptiness (returning to the empty movie screen). And the cosmic implications of Pure Land devotions reveals realms that are inconceivable. Cinema's painting with light pales besides the recognition that we are bodies of light, interbeaming and intergleaming on the luminous mandala of Indra's infinite net of light.

 

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Author Comment:

The first book to explore all four schools of practice, in depth. Highly sructured as these books are, it comprises two books in one: Living B uddhism (the first three sections: Buddha, Dharma Sangha) and Buddhist Living (the second half: Buddhism and work, food, family, arts, society, etc). Please try it and see. I hope it brings a smile.

Topics/Categories:

Buddha, Comparative Religion, Eastern, Eastern Philosophy, New Age, Reference, Spirituality, Texbook

Genre:

Eastern Religions, General Religion - Spirituality - Doubt

Type of Work:

Book

Publishers:

Penguin/Alpha Books

Purchase From:

BookSense

Original Publish Date:

11/11/2004

ISBNs:

1592572774

Formats:

Paperback