Untrain Your Parrot

May 28, 2007
This debut book by San Diego Zen teacher Hamilton boasts a quirky, appropriately Zen-ish title and a foreword from, surprisingly, the late civil rights activist Rosa Parks, with whom the author worked during Parks's later life. It offers plenty of meditation exercises with easy-to-follow directions. It thoroughly translates what can be the culturally foreign characteristics of Japanese Zen into contemporary American parlance and life situations. All these things commend the book to a beginner, but it's too often unclear and could have used more work. The diction is occasionally foggy (“both tinged with some degree of narcissistic attachment to a truncated self”). Attempts to simplify aspire to easy-to-remember lists, but these come out idiosyncratically obscure (“BBSTSBB is a palindrome composed of the first letters of seven words that beckon our awareness”). It is interesting that the center of a person's chest includes the acupuncture point Conception Vessel 17, but there is such a thing as too much information, particularly for beginners. Hamilton is very likely a good Zen teacher, funny and imaginative, but that doesn't automatically translate onto the page.

July 1, 2007
Serious Zen taught in a friendly and accessible manner with special exercises, jokes, and more; from a San Diego-based teacher of Zen with 30 years' experience.

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