![The Rainman's Third Cure: An Irregular Education](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.9.4)
![The Rainman's Third Cure: An Irregular Education](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.9.4)
Hardcover
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Overview
And he said, 'Just jump right in.'
The one was Texas Medicine
And the other was railroad gin.
And like a fool I mixed them
And they strangled up my mind
Now people just get uglier
And I have no sense of time."
––Bob Dylan, "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again"
The guiding metaphor in Peter Coyote's new spiritual biography is drawn from a line in an early Bob Dylan song. For Coyote, the twin forces Dylan identifies as Texas Medicine and Railroad Gin – represent the competing forces of the transcendental, inclusive, and ecstatic world of love with the competitive, status–seeking world of wealth and power. The Rainman's Third Cure is the tale of a young man caught between these apparently antipodal options and the journey that leads him from the privileged halls of power to Greenwich Village jazz bars, to jail, to the White House, lessons from a man who literally held the power of life and death over others, to government service and international success on stage and screen.
Expanding his frame beyond the wild ride through the 1960's counterculture that occupied so much of his lauded debut memoir, Sleeping Where I Fall, Coyote provides readers intimate portraits of mentors that shaped him—a violent, intimidating father, a be–bop Bass player who teaches him that life can be improvised, a Mafia consiglieri, who demonstrates to him that men can be bought and manipulated, an ex game–warden who initates him into the laws of nature, a gay dancer in Martha Graham's company who introduces him to Mexico and marijuanas, beat poet Gary Snyder, who introduces him to Zen practice, and finally famed fashion designer Nino Cerruti who made the high–stakes world of haute monde Europe available to him.
What begins as a peripatetic flirtation with Zen deepens into a life–long avocation, ordination as a priest, and finally the road to Transmission–––acknowledgement from his teacher that he is ready to be an independent teacher. Through Zen, Coyote discovers a third option that offers an alternative to both the worlds of Love and Power's correlatives of status seeking and material wealth. Zen was his portal, but what he discovers on the inside is actually available to all humans. In this energetic, reflective and intelligent memoir, The Rainman's Third Cure is the way out of the box. The way that works.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781619024960 |
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Publisher: | Catapult |
Publication date: | 04/14/2015 |
Pages: | 288 |
Product dimensions: | 6.20(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d) |
About the Author
![About The Author](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.9.4)
Read an Excerpt
"Even after a year of regular za-zen, I was completely unprepared for the rigor and determination required by a sesshin. By lunch of the second day, my body was trembling and shaking and tears were spilling over the edges of my eyes. “I can’t do this,” I thought. “I have to get out of here.” Internal narratives chronicling previous failures and self-betrayals were lit like neon signs in my psyche and I began exploring possible excuses that might allow me to flee; anything that would offer me the opportunity to rise from this odious cushion, and move naturally again.
Unfortunately for my craven and indulgent self, I was pinioned in place by pride. There were a number of zen students in the sesshin that I had previously dismissed as fools, certain that my development exceeded theirs by a generous margin. I knew I could never maintain my sense of superiority if I crawled out of the zendo on the second day, so luckily, my ego goaded me to stay put.
Miraculously, around the middle of the third day, my body began to calm down a bit. Though still shaking, I could begin to investigate the pain in my knees more attentively and noticed how that investigation actually changed the quality of the pain. I still shook and twitched, but a certain amount of the emotional charge that shaking carried diminished as well.
On the last day’s break period, walking up the dusty road in a high, chilled wind, I had the distinct feeling that the entire center of my body had disappeared and was now transparent. I could feel the wind whistling through it. I felt feather-light and momentarily problem-free; as if the back of my head were missing and the space behind my eyes opened out onto the universe. Before me, the world was extraordinarily vivid and alive, shimmering intensely. I had not taken a drug and yet I was truly “high.” I thought, “I’m gonna check this out further.” Forty years on, I’m still checking."