Beyond the Breath

November 11, 2002
Glickman is nothing if not practical, as his credentials suggest. The editor and publisher of Green Living, an environmental journal, and author of The Mindful Money Guide
argues that sensation-based vipassana meditation as taught by revered Indian master S.N. Goenka is the most effective meditation method. Twenty years of meditation appear to have brought Glickman useful clarity: his meditation instructions will help beginners, his unpacking of the idea of Buddhist detachment is insightful and his correlation of new brain research results with ancient Buddhist wisdom is fresh and persuasive. When he moves beyond meditation and the insights of the four noble truths about reality, however, he overreaches. He discusses ethics, karma, nirvana as a nod to the whole complex way of seeing and being that Buddhism offers, yet here seems to be much more un-Buddhistically theoretical. His connections can be hard to grasp: Darwin's consonance with Buddhism is an intriguing idea that is under-explained, and the topic of addiction to pleasure is similarly underdeveloped. The biggest disappointment in the book, though, is the editing. Someone should have corrected the misspelling of Henepola Gunaratana's name in the bibliography as well as a dozen other distracting mistakes in text ("snacked very discretely," "severals times," "compliment and reinforce"). The book's strength is Glickman's nitty-gritty appreciation of the somatic experience of reality. The Buddha knew that suffering hurt. Glickman does well to emphasize the "mindbody" as the vehicle we humans have to drive to nirvana. (Nov. 15)Editor's note:Reviewers don't usually criticize typographical errors, etc., because these are almost always cleaned up in the finished book. But all of the mistakes mentioned in the review are in the finished book.