Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 208 pages
• Published by: HarperOne May 4, 2004
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0060587199
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0060587192
• Book Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Weighs: 6.4 ounces

From Publishers Weekly
"We usually take maturity for granted-one of life's givens," says Fischer, a former abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center. Many people equate biological age with spiritual maturity, a fundamental mistake. In this warm and simple book, Fischer draws from his experience as a spiritual mentor to four teenage boys and his well-honed dharma knowledge to impart nuggets of wisdom about "truly growing up." While the book draws most heavily upon Buddhist examples-particularly the guru-disciple relationships that are a staple of the Zen tradition-it is wide-reaching in its approach, and would be accessible to people from other faith traditions or no faith tradition. There are Jewish talmudic stories and Christian examples, as well as relevant illustrations from popular culture and Fischer's own life. Fischer explores several values and activities that contribute to spiritual maturity, including listening, persistence, connection, meditation, vowing, and right conduct. Overall, he says, these values help people cultivate responsibility-the ability to respond appropriately in changing situations. While there's nothing that is earth-shattering in all this, the book has a freshness forged out of its stubborn insistence that spiritual maturity is something to consciously strive for. As Fischer writes, "The journey to adulthood can be lackluster if we only drift, but it can be profoundly valuable if we completely say yes to it and are willing to travel on wholeheartedly."
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Review
A refreshing book! For anyone who has struggled with their practice amid the complexities, frustrations, and ambiguities of real life. -- Charlotte Joko Beck, author of Everyday Zen

Taking Our Places is wise, compassionate, poetic, and deeply moving. Growing up (at any age) at its best. -- Joseph Goldstein, author of One Dharma --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up (Hardcover) In this book Norman Fischer and four young boys undertake a joint journey of discovery what it means to mature, to take our places. They discuss qualities of grown-ups they like "responsible without being boring, experienced without being closed-minded, self-accepting without being shut off to change and improvement, loving without being corny, and strong without being brittle." It is a wonderful incentive to look at our grown-upness :-) Responsibility. Experience. Self-acceptance. Love. Strength. They are some of the pavers on this path of truly growing up. I very much like the image of growing up as a path. This book shows that Zen is not an esoteric art. It shows that Zen is about our lives, yours and mine, that your live is yours and mine is mine. Yours and mine but interdependent like two waves rising out of the same ocean. It is about love and compassion, about lowering that carefully constructed wall, being open to the experience of the moment. Being alive in this very moment.