Zen Path Through Depression, The - Softcover

Martin, Philip

3.84

332 ratings by Goodreads

9780060654467: Zen Path Through Depression, The

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060654465 ISBN 13: 9780060654467

Publisher: HarperOne, 2000

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Drawing on his own struggle, Philip Martin reveals another path people can travel to get through depression – one that not only eases the pain, but mends the spirit. Extremely accessible to people with little or no Zen experience as well as to longtime students of Buddhism,The Zen Path Through Depression shows how the insights and exercises of Zen offer relief for those suffering from depression.This groundbreaking guide shows how to cope and heal, and even how to see the experience as an opportunity for spiritual growth and learning. Leading readers step-by-step through a recovery process that uses walking meditation and other meditative ways of enhancing awareness, koans, and other Zen teachings, Martin offers true help and spiritual guidance on the path to healing and contentment.

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Review:

Since depression sometimes responds well to drugs, it's natural to think that, without medicinal intervention, we're helpless in the face of it. Like John Tarrant's groundbreaking Light Inside the Dark, Philip Martin's The Zen Path Through Depression offers a powerful alternative. A psychiatric social worker having recovered from depression himself, Martin is a sympathetic voice, urging the reader not to escape from depression or fight against it but to face it and work through it. He says that the mindfulness exercises appended to each short section of his book are optional, but they seem essential. It's true that the book could stand alone with its one- and two-page sections devoted to trenchant explorations of fear, death, sufficiency, choice. But the exercises bring you through the quagmire of depression and back into life. They are true experiences that untie knots impervious to thought alone. Instead of thinking your thoughts, you watch them, and where they can take you finally is back into joyful living. --Brian Bruya

About the Author:

Philip Martin has practiced Buddhism for more than thirty years. He has worked as a social worker and case manager for twenty-five years, and is also a workshop leader. He lives in Red Wing, Minnesota.

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