The Zen Path Through Depression (Plus)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061725463 ISBN 13: 9780061725463

Publisher: HarperOne, 2009

A Compassionate and Spiritual Approach to Rediscovering Joy

Using easy-to-follow techniques and practical advice, Philip Martin shows you how to ease depression through the spiritual practice of Zen. His lessons, full of gentle guidance and sensitivity, are a product of his experiences in using Zen practices and wisdom to alleviate his own depression.

Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of depression and recommends a meditation or reflection. With these tools, coping with depression becomes a way to mend the spirit while enriching the soul.

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.