‘Paradise in Plain Sight’ - Karen Maezen Miller

When Zen teacher Karen Maezen Miller and her family land in a house with a hundred-year-old Japanese garden, she uses the paradise in her backyard to glean the living wisdom of our natural world. Through her eyes, rocks convey faith, ponds preach stillness, flowers give love, and leaves express the effortless ease of letting go. Her new book, Paradise in Plain Sight, will welcome readers into the garden for Zen lessons in fearlessness, forgiveness, presence, acceptance, and contentment. Miller gathers inspiration from the ground beneath her feet to remind us that paradise is always here and now.

These days there is considerable discussion around the question, “What should Buddhism look like in the twenty-first century?” With neuroscience and technology at our disposal, the thinking goes, we should devise a practice that is more accessible than just old-style sitting, using means that are more relevant to modern life. I understand that people like things new and improved, tricked out, version 2.0, but this debate always confuses me. In my practice, there is no old way, there is no new way, there is just the Way. What is more modern than this moment? What is more accessible than breathing? What is more relevant than you? If you judge anything on the basis of how it looks, you will misjudge.The beauty of a pond is that it is muddy.This is my inexhaustible desire: that you will find a guide who is both patient and daring, unafraid to let you struggle, drift, and finally settle into the tempest of your own deep shit. One who will keep you quiet company as you go deep and dig until you look up and see that you are not sinking, you are not hopeless, your cause is not lost. There is no fix and no problem, no hurry and no wait. You are sitting upside up in the echoless calm of a vast, clear ocean, no wind or waves, and you are breathing, breathing, breathing.