Douglas J. Penick

A fascinating read. Perhaps the best adjective to describe it would be one the author himself would use, "polyphonic", and indeed there is a essay exploring the emphasis in Western music on many different instruments, seemingly disjoint when considered in isolation, coming together to form a unified effect.

I think Penick here aims at the reader's subconscious, that mythical place where his intended reader has sustained a fear of death. The hook is the climate crisis, but this book is not an environmentalist tract and spends little time dwelling on the topic. Really, it isn't relevant to the content whether the world is truly facing ecological collapse - again, it's the fear and desperation which this book addresses, which gives it a timeless quality. It's not a self-help book either, and cannot be construed as such except for when it summarizes Buddhist teachings. Rather, the reader is faced with images of decay and death, both of mind and body at the level of the individual and of civilizations, and stories are told of how certain individuals, many Buddhist and some obscure to the literary record but absolutely fascinating, faced such universal experiences. Interspersed are short poems, dream images, and descriptions of hallucinatory experiences of the author as he himself becomes elderly. The writing itself is aesthetic and gripping. I look forward to re-reading this book to contemplate more slowly the intention behind the inclusion of the many passages forming this polyphonic composition.… (meer)

Part Buddhist commonplace book, part dream journal, part introduction to Buddhism, part history, The Age of Waiting is a collection of works by Douglas J. Penick, many of which appear to be from articles he's written in Tricycle, the western Buddhist magazine. The chapters are interesting and varied. My favorites were the more concrete ones, where Penick writes brief biographies of a few Buddhist leaders who were effectively killed by the old Soviet Regime. The history of Buddhism in the USSR is one I know nothing about, and the life of Tsydenov and Dandaron were fascinating to me. The theme of the book is about death and illness. The author talks about his own experience with cancer, friends and acquaintances who have been through illness and death, and what Buddhism has to say about all of that.

Some portions were thought provoking. Some felt koan-like in a rough way, as in I couldn't figure out the point, but that's a challenge that typifies a philosophy that emphasizes that understanding or enlightenment is a process more difficult than being able to make the correct logical connections I guess.

My one real gripe with the book is its hook, which is the climate crisis. We start with an acknowledgement of the anxiety and fear that people feel over a changing environment that they don't have much control over, and then move on to issues of personal tragedy, individual health, or in the case of our Soviet martyrs, practice in the midst of oppression. But in some sense this seems to suggest that the climate crisis, which is bound to cause great suffering among many millions of people, is a thing to be endured or absorbed, and not prevented or fought. There is a place in Buddhism for fighting for a better world. In the constant struggle to release all sentient beings from the delusions of samsara it's best to create an environment where they're not distracted by constant crisis. It's only the most dedicated that can practice in a gulag. A a source of personal education I liked this book, but it ultimately did nothing to alleviate or guide me in terms of how to participate in the sort of collective action that might make a dent in our current looming climate crisis. It is much better advertised as a good book for personal meditation of illness, death, or the transience of all things that Buddhists often teach about.… (meer)