Description

This luminous memoir combines the hardscrabble setting of Appalachia with the spiritual wisdom of Shunryu Suzukis Zen Mind Beginners Mind

Appalachian Zen describes a journey we all take one that Buddhism calls seeking our true home Edgy lyrical and lovingly rendered this book recounts how a kid from a Pennsylvania milltown trailer park grew upsurrounded by backwoods farms and amid grief violence and passionate yearningto become something improbable a Buddhist minister teaching Zen Author Steve Kanji Ruhl takes listeners on an adventure of discovery roving far from the Appalachian Mountains of central Pennsylvania on a footloose Zen pilgrimage to Japan and beyond

Featuring vivid firsthand accounts of spiritual seeking and teaching in Japanese temples as well as forays to Tokyo and Hiroshima the alleys of Kyoto Amish cornfields near the Susquehanna and a monastery in the Catskills Appalachian Zen includes rapt nature passages and cultural references ranging from Proust to punk rock Throughout the book Ruhl engages Buddhist themes of awakening and the death of the self by confronting the lives and deaths including two by suicide of his loved ones This provocative memoir tells how it feels to practice Zen and to move toward a life of hardwon forgiveness healing and freedom