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 The Book Of Awakening: CONARI IMPRINT, RED WHEEL/WEISER, BOSTON, MA, MAY 2000 A year’s supply of inspiration everyday and the perfect gift for yourself and your friends. Selected as one of Oprah’s Ultimate Favorite Things A FINALIST FOR THE 2000 BOOKS FOR A BETTER LIFE AWARD CITED BY SPIRITUALITY AND HEALTH MAGAZINE AS ONE OF THE BEST SPIRITUAL BOOKS OF 2000 BOOK DESCRIPTION This is a spiritual daybook woven from my own story, the stories of others’ struggles with their humanness, and truths from the great wisdom traditions. A series of daily reflections, it serves as a guidebook for a journey with the soul. Each entry is accompanied with a practice that helps us face the call to awaken the mind and the heart. I was drawn to this form because as a poet, I was longing for a manner of expression that could be as useful as a spoon, and as a cancer survivor, daybooks have become inner food. In truth, over the last twenty-five years, the daybook has been answering a collective need and has become a spiritual sonnet of our age, a sturdy container for small doses of what matters. This book is meant to be of use, to be a companion, a soul friend. It is, indeed, a book of awakenings. To write this I’ve had to live it. It’s given me a chance to gather and share the quiet teachers I’ve met throughout my life. The journey of unearthing and shaping these entries has helped me bring my inner and outer life more closely together. It has helped me know and use my heart. It has made me more whole. I hope it can be such a tool for you. EXCERPTS The Precious Human BirthOf all the things that exist, There is a Buddhist precept that asks us to be mindful of how rare it is to find ourselves in human form on earth. It is really a beautiful view of life that offers us the chance to feel enormous appreciation for the fact that we are here as individual spirits filled with consciousness, drinking water and chopping wood. It asks us to look about at the ant and antelope, at the worm and the butterfly, at the dog and the castrated bull, at the hawk and the wild lonely tiger, at the hundred year old oak and the thousand year old patch of ocean. It asks us to understand that no other life form has the consciousness of being that we are privilege to. It asks us to recognize that, of all the endless species of plant and animal and mineral that make up the earth, a very small portion of life has the wakefulness of spirit that we call being human. That I can rise from some depth of awareness to express this to you and that you can receive me in this instant is part of our precious human birth. You could have been an ant. I could have been an ant-eater. You could have been rain. I could have been a lick of salt. But we were blessed—in this time, in this place—to be human beings, alive in rare ways we often take for granted. All of this to say, this precious human birth is unrepeatable. So what will you do today, knowing that you are one of the rarest forms of life to ever walk the earth? How will you carry yourself? What will you do with your hands? What will you ask and of whom? Tomorrow you could die and become an ant, and someone will be setting traps for you. But today you are precious and rare and awake. It ushers us into grateful living. It makes hesitation useless. Grateful and awake, ask what you need to know now. Say what you feel now. Love what you love now.
All Fall Down Lead us from the unreal to the real. It was a snowy night and Robert was recalling the time two springs ago when he was determined to paint the family room. Up early, he was out the door, to the hardware store gathering the gallons of red, the wooden mixing sticks, the drop cloths, and the one-time brushes that always harden, no matter what you soak them in. He mixed the paint outside and waddled to the door with a gallon in each hand, the drop cloth under his arm, and a wide brush in his mouth. He began to chuckle in telling what happened, “I teetered there for minutes, trying to open the door, not wanting to put anything down. I was so stubborn. I had the door almost open when I lost my grip, stumbled backwards, and wound up on the ground, red gallons all over me.” At this point, he laughed at himself, as he has done many times, and we watched the snow fall in silence. I thought of his little story the whole way home. Amazingly, we all do this, whether with groceries or paint or with the stories we feel determined to share. We do this with our love, with our sense of truth, even with our pain. It’s such a simple thing, but in a moment of ego we refuse to put down what we carry in order to open the door. Time and time again, we are offered the chance to truly learn this: we cannot hold on to things and enter. We must put down what we carry, open the door, and then take up only what we need to bring inside. It is a basic human sequence: gather, prepare, put down, enter. But failing as we do, we always have that second chance: to learn how to fall, get up, and laugh.
REVIEWS “We were so inspired by Mark Nepo's The Book of Awakening that we gave it an award as one of the
Best Spiritual Books of 2000.” THE BOOK OF AWAKENING: by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality & Health Magazine (April 2005, p.76) Read the review in Spirituality & Health Magazine online. Mark Nepo is a poet and philosopher, a life-long teacher, and a program officer for the Fetzer Institute in Kalamazoo, Michigan, a nonprofit foundation devoted to wholeness of mind, body, and spirit. He is a cancer survivor who is convinced that daybooks should be seen as "a spiritual sonnet of our age, a sturdy container for small doses of what matters." Nepo is well read and able to lyrically tap into the wisdom of the world's religions as well as the depths of contemporary psychology. Jack Kornfield, a Buddhist, has stated, "Enlightenment is intimacy with all things." Nepo agrees and this daybook is filled with his appreciation for tears, the art of shedding, friendship, the broken heart, pain, patience, and all the connections that link us together with each other. I was impressed with the author's ethical insights. Here are a few examples: "The greedy one gathered all the cherries, while the simple one tasted all the cherries in one." Greed is self-destructive because of its excess; equally disconcerting is our narcissism: "I tried so hard to please that I never realized no one is watching." Nepo's journey toward healing contains this confession: "Hesitation, more than anything, has been the invisible hitch that has kept me from joy." Let this spiritual daybook become a sonnet for you; it will speak directly to your heart about the beauty, the bounty, and the blessings of life. “Mark Nepo is one of the finest spiritual guides of our time and The
Book of Awakening is one of the finest fruits of his spirit. His poetic gift
shows through on every page, and his own courageous journey from near-death
to new life breathes truth into every word he writes. This book is a gift
of love. Open the gift—and open yourself to it—and you, like
I, will be filled with gratitude and graced with renewal.” “Mark Nepo is an astonishing poet and teacher. He generously comforts
us while guiding us toward the deep, quiet river of wisdom that saturates
each and every day of our lives. Mark is a loving, devoted companion who
helps us feel and see and listen to a breathtaking beauty that is alive and
vibrant, deeper than language. He gently and patiently leads us beside still
waters; wherever we follow him, we discover we have been blessed.” “Mark Nepo has written a beautiful book about life, informed by the
shadows of death. I've been blessed and humbled by reading his words.” “Mark Nepo's work is as gentle and reliable as the tides, and as courageous
as anyone I've known in looking deeply into the mysteries of the self.” “Each of us is the repository of an inexhaustible wisdom, which each of us nonetheless
regularly forgets. Over and over we require reminding of the many paths toward
our own true home in our bodies, in our loves and friendships, and in this
earth we share with others. The Book of Awakening is filled with a reminding
wisdom both gathered from others and harvested from Mark Nepo’s own life.
Each entry in this capacious and tender daybook widens both the eyes and the heart.” “In The Book of Awakening, poet and philosopher Mark Nepo gives us the
chance to re-examine our lives and find a depth, significance, and beauty that
we may not have noticed before. A year's supply of wise and shining thoughts
to be taken, one a day, like vitamins for the soul.” “A true treasure chest of practices, reflections, and poetry to remember
the splendor, beauty, and magnitude of the human spirit.” |
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Sit outside, if possible, or near a window, and note the other life forms around you.
