About book There Is No God And He Is Always With You: A Search For God In Odd Places (2013)
Buddhism is a practice, an attitude - not a belief or a philosophy. To convey an attitude, and the feelings associated with it (trust, faith, etc.), is harder than mere description. The author did a very good job of beginning to convey some of that attitude, some of those feelings. It's hard, because a lot of what he conveys is not some grand philosophy or insight that lends itself to dynamic, thought--provoking reading. It's the commitment, the patience, the fortitude, the daily practice and attitude that may (or may not) eventually begin to crack open the doors of perception. I think a few quotes from the book do a better job of capturing what it's about than any description I could try to write. "In my opinion it’s entirely wrong to say that Buddhism is a religion without a God. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. To me, Buddhism is a way to approach and understand God without dealing with religion." "Buddhism is not a religion or a philosophy. It’s a practice and an attitude." "Trying to understand the meaning of life in terms of the human brain’s activities is like trying to understand the ocean by going to the seashore and scooping out a bucket of water and then analyzing it. ... Trying to assign a meaning to life is like trying to stuff the whole ocean into a bucket." "Faith ... is commitment." "Buddha believed that we need to deal with the practical questions of how to live in this world now. It is our suffering here and now that matters." [When someone gets hit by a car, you don't wait to help until you know the name of the driver, speed of the car, road conditions, etc. - you just help.] "As a Buddhist, my duty is to try to come to terms with the reality that stares me in the face every single day." "The standard attributes of God given by religious people are that he is wise, good, infinite, sovereign, holy, omniscient, faithful, loving, self-sufficient, self-existent, just, forgiving, immutable, merciful, eternal, gracious, omnipresent, and omnipotent. ... In addition we would have to add an infinite list of other qualities, many of which would be the opposite of the standard attributes." I grabbed up this book because of the title and the fact that when I leafed through it the chapter on Sam Harris caught my eye (his "The Moral Landscape" is one of my favorites). If I had known that this book was primarily about Zen I may have passed it up. My bad- I'm not really into Zen. But I would have hoped that a book about Zen would have at least piqued my interest in it, which this book did not. I didn't find Zen anymore attractive after reading this book than I did before.
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A must read for anyone who has ever struggled with arriving at a contemporary understanding of God!
—Zhenevjeva
This is the best book Brad Warner has written so far!
—Ammie97
