After the Ecstacy, the Laundry - Softcover

Jack Kornfield

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0712606580 ISBN 13: 9780712606585

Publisher: Random House, 2000

Synopsis

Clinical psychologist and Buddhist monk, Jack Kornfield uses intimate first-person accounts to show what it is actually like to experience awakening, unbounded freedom and joy, a sense of union with the divine. He alsooffers compelling stories of people's efforts to translate that freedom into their daily life.

About this title

Review

Jack Kornfield, one of America's most beloved teachers of meditation, assures us that enlightenment does occur on the spiritual path but warns that it is not the end of the road. Bringing his thoughts to a personal level, Kornfield looks up many of the notable spiritual teachers of our times (Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Sufi, etc.) and presents extended quotations of their trials and epiphanies. These anecdotes are woven together with fables and ruminations from Kornfield's own decades-long experience as a practitioner and teacher, creating an image of the spiritual life as challenging, multidimensional, rewarding, and, yes, mundane. In the old days in China, Zen monks were encouraged to travel for instruction under a variety of masters. Here, Kornfield introduces us to today's masters, but off their podiums, as equals. Genuine experiences of awakening, despair, fault, serious transgression, and simple childlike joy all appear as bridges on the way to the divine. After the Ecstasy, the Laundry is not just another inspirational bestseller, it is a lasting record of concrete insights forged from the fires of dedicated practice. --Brian Bruya

Book Description

When does enlightenment come? At the end of the spiritual journey? Or the beginning?

On After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, Jack Kornfield -- author of the modern classic on American Buddhism, A Path with Heart -- brings into focus the truth about satori, the awakened state of consciousness, and enlightenment practices today. Perfect enlightenment appears in many texts, Kornfield begins. But how is it viewed among Western teachers and practitioners? To find out, Kornfield talked to more than one hundred Zen masters, rabbis, nuns, lamas, monks, and senior meditation students from all walks of life. The result is this extraordinary look at the hard work we all must do -- the laundry -- on matter how often we experience ecstatic states of consciousness through meditation and other disciplines.

Sweeping in its scope, and warmly told by one of American Buddhism's most trusted voices, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry is both a work of deep inspiration and daily instruction that cuts through the confusionabout what,enlightenment really is, who it comes to, and how it continues to inform and guide our spiritual lives. An original audio adaptation of Jack Kornfield's newest book, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0712606580
• ISBN 13: 9780712606585
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304