... This is a situation that everyone knows well, which dedicates itself over years of practice. Quite a few jump off completely. For but who want to stay here and experience a period of disorientation, this book is a great help. Jack Kornfield is deeply immersed in Buddhism. His way, which already led him in the Seventies in monk's robe to Asia, took a dramatic turn when he returned to civilization in America. He describes in the preface the absurd situation, as he went into the robes in search of his sister in a beauty salon - the meeting of the shaven in saffron robes with ladies in bathrobes with Cream-masks and cucumber slices on the face. All situations in life can be funny, but all are also an expression of our own perception. The environments are also stages on his way of becoming conscious. This leads him to the result on relations on the path of the heart. Without sparing himself, he describes his shortcomings, leaves the reader forgive himself until he has recognized himself, offers him practical help and spiritual exercises that can be useful in this way. The world as a field of experience for consciousness and compassion becomes a single great temple. It does not need exotic rituals, behind which we entrench ourselves; but the path to enlightenment needs us as sentient beings and the attention to experience the work of the mind awake. It seems to be worthwhile to read the book in the original; the German translation, so I heard, to strongly reduce it.
