In this book Kornfield outlines a radical and positive approach to mental well-being.
by Jack Kornfield
Trained as a monk in Thailand, Burma and India, Kornfield experienced firsthand the life-changing power of Buddhist teachings: the emphasis on nobility and sacredness of the human spirit, the fine-grained analysis of emotion and thought, the precise techniques for healing, training and transforming the mind and heart.
In this book, he presents a compelling challenge to the medical orientation of Western psychology and psychiatry and to the materialism, cynicism and despair of Western culture.
Using Western and Buddhist psychology to illuminate one another, and drawing on his own experience as a counselor with a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, as well as on the vivid, down-to-earth wisdom of his primary Asian teachers, Kornfield outlines a radical and positive approach to mental well-being.
Filled with personal stories and precise practical guidance for personal change, the book is an extraordinary journey from the roots of consciousness to the highest expression of human possibility. Ideal for meditators and mental health professionals, Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike, here is a vision of radiant human dignity, and the joy that you can seek for yourself and others. Within you are unlimited capacities for love, happiness and for communion with life — and a practical path for realizing it in our own lives.
$20 — Bantam Dell Publishing Group, a division of Random House, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.
Reprinted from AzNetNews, Volume 28, Number 4, August/September 2009.
April 15, 2012
Book review