Frustrated with your inner work? This book could help.

books:


	• After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path Jack Kornfield Bantam, 2001 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 40 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

After the guru trip

Excellent comments on coming down from the guru trip. Particularly helpful for anyone disillusioned with a guru. Well written, good stories and insights. An easy read.

Frustrated with your inner work? This book could help.

I thought this book was excellent because it puts meditation in a practical frame that understands that it is easy to get caught up in life and let your inner work go by the wayside. It is forgiving and encouraging. Easy to read and understand.

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A serious book on a neglected question

A serious book on a neglected question: how do spiritual seekers go on with their everyday lives after having a transcendent mystic experience? Unlike what you might think, they don't exist in a higher, enlightened state from that moment on.

Instead, they have to sink back onto the mundane level and struggle along with their spiritual practice amidst the demands of the outside world - often with no more than a memory of their mystical experience and faith to guide them. Many doubt their experience and feel depressed that they remain relatively unchanged.

I guess Sophy Burnham covered this, too, in Ecstatic Journey. But it's covered more thoroughly and expansively in this book that features many italicized first-person anecdotes from many, many spiritual seekers from Buddhist (mainly) but also Christian and Sufi traditions. It's clearly and gracefully written and conveys a lot of information.

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Pushes the generalizations too far

Let me first say I am a big fan of Jack Kornfield and often recommend his other books and CDs to friends, but I found 'After the Ecstasy..' a little disappointing.

On one level the book reads like a fairly typical account of how someone's world-view changes they grow older. There are less absolutes, more pragmatism and less idealism. We see the similarities across many things (in this case different religions and spiritual paths). On the face of it there is nothing wrong with that, it's almost by definition a more 'mature' view, but i felt like Jack's message has been watered down to the point where his notion of 'enlightenment' is so pluralistic, it encapsulates almost everything - and therefore nothing.

The author interviewed many people of different religions when writing this book and the book described a lot of similarities between them. To me it went almost as far as to imply that all the religions are in their most important aspects equivalent, in the sense that you can mix quotes from Buddha, Jesus, Sufi poets etc in the same chapter because their basic message is the same, prayer and meditation are both means to the same end and so forth. As someone who came from Christian background to Buddhism this viewpoint does not seem very accurate to me, but is typical of 'new age' spirituality that I find a bit of a turn off. It's nice to emphasize similarities, but I am not really sure that what constitutes enlightenment for a Buddhist really has much in common with what a Christian (or say a Muslim) aspires to.

To me it felt like Jack has moved from being a voice of a particular brand of American Buddhism into more of a New age style teacher, where the world's religions are a smorgousboard of ideas to pick and choose your own eclectic beliefs from.

That said, of course there are a lot of interesting and amusing stories in the book, and i'm sure most people will get something out of it, but for me it lacked the focus and clarity of Jack's other books.

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The Whole Catastrophe

Jack Kornfield was trained as a clinical psychologist as well as a Buddhist monk. He is needless to say, a wise man. 'After the Ecstasy, the Laundry' is filled with invitations to embrace what Zorba referred to as "the whole catastrophe." Life. The book is filled with fables, anecdotes, teaching stories, and various other vehicles woven together in a spiritual tapestry culminating in the final chapter entitled 'The Laughter Of The Wise.' This chapter begins with a quote by Long Chen Pa:

Since everything is none other
than exactly as it is
one may well just break out in laughter

Jack Kornfield is a master storyteller. This beautifully written book gently helps us along that earthy and spiritual path that we travel before, during, and after both the ecstasy and the laundry. Read it.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

?Enlightenment does exist,? internationally renowned author and meditation master Jack Kornfield assures us. ?Unbounded freedom and joy, oneness with the divine ... these experiences are more common than you know, and not far away.?

But even after achieving such realization ? after the ecstasy ? we are faced with the day-to-day task of translating that freedom into our imperfect lives. We are faced with the laundry.

Drawing on the experiences and insights of leaders and practitioners within the Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and Sufi traditions, this book offers a uniquely intimate and honest understanding of how the modern spiritual journey unfolds ? and how we can prepare our hearts for awakening.

Through moving personal stories and traditional tales, we learn how the enlightened heart navigates the real world of family relationships, emotional pain, earning a living, sickness, loss, and death.

Filled with ?the laughter of the wise,? alive with compassion, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry is a gift to anyone who is seeking peace, wholeness, and inner happiness. It is sure to take its place next to A Path with Heart as a spiritual classic for our time.

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