Book Review

By Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

Wonderland
The Zen of Alice
Daniel Doen Silberberg
Parallax Press 10/09 Paperback $12.95
ISBN: 9781888375954

Daniel Doen Silberberg is a trained psychologist and musician who has been studying Buddhism for 30 years and leads an international Zen community. In this creative and enlightening work, he uses Lewis Carroll's classic Alice in Wonderland as a spur to seeing ourselves more clearly and to discovering our oneness with everything. Like Alice, we are challenged to give up our ideas about how everything should be. Zen teaches the path of acceptance: the practice of liking what we get. And Silberberg wisely reminds us that we would all do so much better if we realized "the point of everybody else's life is not to make me happy."

In the face of change and impermanence and suffering, the author calls us to devotion (the word means "one with") to our life and to our death. The path of Zen teaches us to practice over again and again. What for? To come home to our true selves: "It's about finding the most pleasurable, peaceful, beautiful, honorable, and altruistic way you can live your life and then committing to it."

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by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat