Stumbling Toward Enlightenment

Rating:
Summary: A gem.
Review: "Accessible Zen" is how the author describes her book about embarking on a spiritual path. With chapters like "The Invaluable Lessons of Miserable Days" and "The Art Of Cultivating Sympathetic Joy" you cannot help but stumble upon a gem or two of truth. This book will help you become wiser and make you feel human along the way. You've gotta fall before you fly, but fly you can. Stumbling Toward Enlightenment will help you on with your wings.

Rating:
Summary: Enlightment made enlightening
Review: A funny, warm and disarmingly honest book. "Stumbling toward enlightment" makes stumbling seem OK and enlightment not quite so far away.

I really enjoyed this book. I'd love to read more by the same author, but suspect she may have said it all already. Definetely a book to keep and reread.

Rating:
Summary: Great book for professional Superwomen
Review: I am a practicing Buddhist and Unitarian Universalist minister and when I first read Geri Larkin's book I was immediately moved to read it again from cover to cover. Imagine someone writing about Zen practice with a sense of humour and gentle wit? Imagine seeing ourselves all with 'bad hair days' and still able to laugh and see it as part of the healing that brings so many of us to spiritual practice. I have recommended this book to many friends and colleagues and I know many of them have bought it. People in their 20's have been especially moved by Geri's down-to-earth style because they seek honesty, integrity and gentleness - this book has all three and so much more.

Rating:
Summary: Great book for professional Superwomen
Review: I completely enjoyed this book - several times. Any fiesty woman can completely identify with Ms. Larkin's perspective on life, love, loss, and coming to realize that there are better things to do with your life and your family's life than work 70+ hours a week for a corporation. This is not a guide to Buddhism for a school report - it is a guide to getting real and knowing you're not alone in feeling like being Superwoman isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's also a good guide to getting out from under the mountain of false corporate gods and retaining your sense of humor a la Buddhism.

I laughed, I cried, I gleaned a lot of great information.

Rating:
Summary: VERY HUMAN BOOK
Review: It is great to read about a Westerner who is indeed "stumbling toward enlightenment" like we all are.....this book is warm, funny, and compassionate....plus goes places that others seem not to go (like "If All You Can Think About is Sex."). It is very supportive and uplifting, and makes you feel that she is in the trenches alongside you.

Rating:
Summary: Inspirational Guide to Spiritual Practice
Review: Larkin's stumbling is a helpful, down to earth book about the pitfalls and joys associated with Zen practice. Filled with stories from her monastic days as well as her days a lay practitioner, this book is an excellent guide and an enjoyable read. I recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: "If I can do it, so can you."
Review: No pre-fabricated philosophy here. No set of rules to follow. Like good discussions with old friends, what "Stumbling Toward Enlightenment" offers is an unpretentious look at what has worked -- and what hasn't -- for Zen teacher Parang Geri Larkin, informed throughout by an apparent wish that all beings everywhere might stop and smile a little more often.

Forgetting for a moment Larkin's obviously huge heart, insatiable curiosity, warmth, kindness, and compassion, what makes "Stumbling" such a wonderful book is that Larkin asks no one to clean a kitchen she herself isn't willing to clean a thousand times.