Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up

This engaging contemplation of maturity addresses the long neglected topic of what it means to grow up, and provides a hands–on guide for skilfully navigating the demands of our adult lives.

Growing up happens whether we like it or not, but maturity must be cultivated. Challenged to consider his own sense of maturity while mentoring a group of teenage boys, Fischer began to investigate our preconceptions about what it means to be "an adult" and shows how crucial true maturity is to leading an engaged, fulfilled life. Taking Our Places details the marks of a mature person and shows how these attributes can help alleviate our suffering and enrich our relationships. Discussing such qualities as awareness, responsibility, humour, acceptance, and humility, Fischer brings a fresh and at times surprising new perspective that can turn old ideas on their heads and reinvigorate our understanding of what it means to be mature.

Norman Fischer is a Zen priest, teacher, poet, former abbot of San Francisco Zen Center, and founder of The Everyday Zen Foundation, an organization created to broaden the reach of engaged Buddhist practice. Fischer leads retreats and workshops across the country and in Canada and Mexico. He is the author of Opening to You: Zen-Inspired Translations of the Psalms, and has published several books of poetry. In addition to giving Zen lectures and retreats, he leads Jewish meditation classes and is also actively involved in interfaith dialogue.