A Monk in the World: Finding the Sacred in Daily Life

The author outlines a spiritual path combining Eastern and Western religious traditions and explains how he has integrated teachings from the world's religions with his own Catholic training.

With his new book, Teasdale (The Mystic Heart), a Catholic lay monk, answers that most pressing of questions for all who look to live in spiritually disciplined ways in the real world: How then shall we live? Teasdale himself was set to live as a sannyasi a renunciate in a Christian ashram in India until his teacher Bede Griffiths, a Benedictine, gently kicked him out, challenging him to be a monk in the world. And so it has been for Teasdale, who teaches and writes in the thick of urban life in Chicago. The author tells of his practical teachers: the homeless of the city, a recent bout with cancer, the need to make a living, the constraints of working within a church he loves but with which he has publicly disagreed. As his examples from life demonstrate, he practices what he preaches about living simply, with compassion and deep respect for the world's religious traditions. The book is on firmest ground when the author recounts his experiences and affectionately describes the persons who have greatly shaped him, from Bede Griffiths to his Uncle John to the Dalai Lama. Concluding chapters are more conceptual than concrete, and suffer from some woolliness. But what Teasdale lacks in precision he makes up for with evident passion and persistence in championing the universal spiritual truths of compassion for sentient beings and mystical higher awareness.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Drawing on the wisdom of the world's great religions, lay monk Teasdale explores such fundamentals as the meaning of friendship, the inherent dignity of work, the nature of suffering, and ways to enact social change. So doing, he offers spiritual guidance to religious seekers who want to effectively and meaningfully balance prayer, work, study, and leisure. Teasdale, who himself lives in the heart of a big American city (Chicago), explains how to cultivate contemplation and integrate monasticism into everyday life in a busy world. The contemplative attitude can be nourished, he suggests, by developing the capacity to see one's surroundings in a new and selfless way, which involves things as simple as taking time to appreciate what one has. At his most heartfelt and optimistic, Teasdale advocates a truly kinder, gentler society, in which compassionate and loving hearts may transform the crass and dehumanizing aspects of capitalism. Mostly, however, he depicts the contemplative person as an agent of social change, a revolutionary in the most expansive, spiritual sense of the word. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Publishers are responding to an increased demand for books that can help people lead more meditative lives, and these inventive essay collections will please progressive Christian and New Age readers alike. In The Soul's Religion, Moore's companion volume to his 1992 best seller, Care of the Soul, brief essays by the famed therapist and former monk offer perspectives on the soul-deepening potential of coping with failed relationships, natural disaster, and the fools and saints around us. Moore uses a variety of spiritual traditions, including Zen, Taoism, and Christianity, to show readers how they can enhance their spiritual development. In Bringing God Home, a Unitarian minister and son of former senator Frank Church has crafted a poetic autobiography in the form of brief meditations. Lay people will savor Church's originality as well as his insights from childhood with a famous father, and English teachers will find inspiration for their classrooms in his thoughts on the pilgrimage literature of John Bunyan, Thomas Wolfe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Teasdale's A Monk in the World gives practical tips for enhancing spirituality and promoting social justice. A Hindu monk with a Catholic upbringing, Teasdale teaches at three colleges in the Chicago area. His gentle reflections are punctuated by reminiscences of personal ordeals as well as poignant character sketches of street people. Teasdale's more ambitious The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World's Religions has been popular, and his new work should be, too. All three books can be added to larger public libraries, but those that can afford just one should consider purchasing Moore's, which will be in demand owing to the author's widespread popularity. Joyce Smothers, Student, Princeton Theological Seminary, NJ
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.