A Sense of Something Greater

August 27, 2018
Kaye, abbot of Kannon Do Zen Meditation Center in Mountain View, Calif., and journalist Bouza provide teachings for integrating the spiritual and ordinary dimensions of life in this guide to Zen for the overworked. Kaye’s teachings emphasize slowing down, letting go of the desire to control, accepting change, and cultivating a nonjudgmental attention to life as it presents itself. His teachings are accompanied by Bouza’s interviews with Silicon Valley executives, engineers, therapists, and teachers who incorporate Zen meditation practices into their daily lives. The interviews offer current and useful perspectives on how Zen practice can be applied to everyday work-life balance problems, focusing primarily on how to practice being content, centered, and connected while also confronted with things—desires, possessions, deadlines—that run the risk of corrupting one’s personal balance. Kaye and Bouza’s book is ambitious in scope and wavers frustratingly among three different identities—an investigation of the relationship between work and spiritual life, a portrait of the Zen movement in California, and a book of Zen teachings. However, by situating these insightful teachings and interviews in the world of Silicon Valley, they offer a useful and compassionate spiritual salve for those in stressed work environments.