Appalachian Zen

Featuring vivid firsthand accounts of spiritual seeking in Japanese temples, in forays to Tokyo and Hiroshima, in alleys of Kyoto, in Amish cornfields near the Susquehanna or a monastery in the Catskills, it also includes robust historical sketches, rapt nature passages, and cultural references from Proust to punk rock. Appalachian Zen describes a journey we all take, one that Buddhism calls “seeking our true home.” It engages the Buddhist theme of death of the self by confronting suicides of a close friend and a beloved sister**.** And, throughout, it engages the Buddhist theme of awakening – in my training with a jovial Zen master in the remote Japanese town of Kanegasaki, in rigors of Zen drumming and swordsmanship, and finally in my unlikely path to Harvard Divinity School and my vocation as an innovative Buddhist adviser at Yale University. Topical and pertinent, Appalachian Zen also provides an intimate account of class issues in America, examining what it means to inhabit two contrary worlds -- growing up in rural, conservative, working-class America as a native of the heartland, and becoming an adult who, as the first person in his family’s seven generations of farmers and factory workers to graduate from college, embraces Buddhism and thrives in elite, politically progressive Ivy League institutions. Ranging from the Vietnam era to the Trump years, it offers a unique chronicle of recent American experience. Appalachian Zen will engage fans of the bestselling graphic memoir Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, and the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical and forthcoming movie derived from it, by offering a sharply contrasting view of Fun Home’s main characters – Bechdel’s parents – who were my high school teachers and valued mentors in Mill Hall, PA. Most important, Appalachian Zen limns the progress toward triumphant joy and healing offered in Zen’s lessons of forgiveness and freedom. It inspires people to see Zen freshly. Appalachian Zen will appeal to readers who love sprightly, evocative, spiritual memoirs about unfamiliar places, people, and spiritual practices, crafted in sensuous prose and with acute observation and candor**.** Like Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, it will take readers into new understandings of how Buddhism not only can enhance our lives, but radically transform them.