Zen in the Age of Anxiety: Wisdom for Navigating Our Modern Lives

by Tim Burkett, Wanda Isle (Editor)

Overview

Best Spiritual Books of 2018 - Spirituality & Practice

Zen wisdom for identifying the causes of mental and emotional anxiety epidemic in today's world and for finding the path to a peaceful heart in the midst of them—a path that leads directly though the center of the anxiety we're trying to escape.

Wrestling with fear doesn’t have to be a negative experience. This book offers an approach to life that unlocks a new way of thinking and being in the world, one that leads directly through the center of the anxieties we seek to avoid.

Written in the style of an owner’s manual, a guide to being human, Burkett focuses on areas of pain and anxiety as they tend to manifest for modern people: feelings of unworthiness, and issues surrounding sex, money, failure, and even death. Providing wisdom from Zen (channeled through his many experiences as a psychotherapist) and using language and metaphors from popular culture, he takes anxiety and teaches us to turn those fears into the building blocks of a fulfilling life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611804867
Publisher:	Shambhala
Publication date:	06/05/2018
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

TIM BURKETT, PhD, is a psychologist, a Zen Buddhist priest, and the Guiding Teacher of Minnesota Zen Meditation Center. He was a student of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and later of Dainin Katagiri Roshi, in whose lineage he is a dharma heir. He is also the author of Nothing Holy About It.

Table of Contents

Editor's Introduction ix

Part 1 Wounding and Splintering

1 Being Human 3

2 The Trance of Unworthiness 17

3 Sex 35

4 Money 50

5 Failure Is Just an Experience 63

Part 2 Suturing and Healing

6 The Wisdom of Humility 79

7 Suturing What Was Rent Asunder 92

8 Brain Plasticity, Mirror Mind, and Enlightenment 110

9 Transforming Knowledge into Wisdom through Everyday Life 125

10 Living and Dying in a State of Readiness 138

Epilogue: Healing Our World, Together 153

Acknowledgments 157

Credits 159

Index 161

About the Author 171

Editorial Reviews

04/09/2018
Burkett (Nothing Holy About It), a psychologist and teacher at the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, explores how Zen Buddhist principles can help readers lead more fulfilling lives. Focusing on the ways the “movie-making mind” creates suffering, Burkett explains why human beings struggle with anger, anxiety, and fear, and shows how a more accurate understanding of the mind and the practice of meditation can promote well-being. Using an informal, friendly tone, Burkett offers clear explanations and examples to illustrate core Zen ideas. In addition to examining what he calls the “most troublesome areas” of “feelings of unworthiness” (sex, money, and failure), Burkett provides a Zen perspective on such topics as humility, experiences of nature, non-attachment, and non-dualism. He also includes many affectionate memories of his studies in the 1960s with Zen monk Shunryu Suzuki, a seminal figure in the beginnings of Zen practice in North America. While Burkett serves as a wise witness to Suzuki’s legacy, his focus on specific generational experiences (including songs by the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and Pete Townshend) will seem dated to some readers. Compiled from Burkett’s former talks, this light book will appeal to readers who are new to Buddhism. (June)

Publishers Weekly

This is a book imbued with love and wisdom, full of passages of fluid prose, woven in with carefully chosen Zen stories, poetry, and relevant research findings. It includes clear explanations of the power of diligent meditation practice to transform our various human difficulties into clear seeing, equanimity, and ease, followed by practical exercises about how to go about this work. This is a book about the substance and beauty of Zen practice, a book I will happily read and recommend to my own students.”—Jan Chozen Bays, author of Mindful Eating and How to Train a Wild Elephant

“I gained so much from reading Tim’s book, especially about how to hold and handle my own anxieties. Here is an encouraging handbook on how Buddhist values and practices can increase our sense of connectedness and foster inner—and outer—peace. I especially liked Tim’s Nine Keys that can open any of us to healing powers in life events and in ourselves too.”—David Richo, author of The Five Things We Cannot Change and How to Be an Adult in Relationships

“With an artless simplicity born of deeply integrated and compassionate wisdom, Tim Burkett speaks to the beginner’s mind in each one of us.”—Cynthia Bourgeault, author of The Heart of Centering Prayer

“Zen in the Age of Anxiety is a vitally important book for us all. Not only is it wonderfully written, but Tim Burkett, the guiding teacher at the Minneapolis Zendos, speaks eloquently from his deep knowledge of Zen, psychology, and neuroplasticity, which he integrates flawlessly. The work addresses the many dilemmas we encounter both in practice and life itself. Tim Burkett’s kindness and humanity ring out loudly as a result of his years not only teaching but of living fully and being a wonderful human being. This is deeply important, as it is all too easy for practice to become one-sided, skewed, and unwittingly dangerous. The many dimensions in this book help us not fall into easy answers and potholes of all kinds. The book is a real treasure of wisdom, experience, kindness, and inspiration. I could not put it down.”—Brenda Eshin Shoshanna, PhD, author of Zen and the Art of Falling in Love

“Now the guiding teacher at the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center in Minneapolis, Burkett uses his teacher’s advice to frame a thoughtful life manual for modern seekers and meditators—especially those who, like Burkett, lean away from the rigidity of formal religion. For Burkett, the Buddhist precepts are gifts, not rules, that frame a wholesome life. Zen in the Age of Anxiety can help nontraditionalists find their way with those gifts in hand.”—Tricycle: The Buddhist Review 

“Through companionable wisdom and focused practice, Zen in the Age of Anxiety is a guidebook for applying Zen principles to our troubled and harried lives. The book explores the paradox of the centered peace of Zen beliefs in the chaos of modernity. As both a psychologist and a Zen Buddhist priest, Tim Burkett’s vocations pair a broad knowledge of human behavior with the compassion, humor, and openness of Zen.”—Foreword Reviews

“Using an informal, friendly tone, Burkett offers clear explanations and examples to illustrate core Zen ideas. Compiled from Burkett’s former talks, this light book will appeal to readers who are new to Buddhism.”—Publishers Weekly

“Zen in the Age of Anxiety shimmers with insights, epiphanies and good medicine for all that ails us as individuals and as a society.”—Spirituality & Practice

From the Publisher