Zen Mind Jewish Mind

ASpirituality & PracticeBest Spiritual Book of 2025A great way to deepen your spiritual life is to take a deep dive into a tradition other than your ownespecially if you have a competent guide, and Rabbi Rami is an extraordinary guide. Not into Zen? Not a Jew? Not a problem. Anyone on any path will benefit enormously from this profoundly illuminating book. Philip Goldberg, author of American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation, How Indian Spirituality Changed the WestWith reference to Shunryu Suzuki Roshis classic Zen Mind, Beginners Mind, Rami Shapiro begins with beginners mind as empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities. It is the kind of mind which can see things as they are, which step by step and in a flash can realize the original nature of everything. Then, Rami ponders beginners mind in the child of the Passover Haggadah who knows not how to ask. The parents of this child are told to open (patach) the child to the art of questioning. Asking questions is key to Jewish mind.The questioning perennial beginner is central to both Zen and Jewish, Rami demonstrates: a daring, iconoclastic, often humorous mind devoted to shattering the words, texts, isms, and ideologies on which expert mindclosed to inquirydepends.Zen Mind / Jewish Mind is not a scholarly study of anything, let alone Zen or Judaism, and despite all the footnotes, the book rests solely on Shapiros fifty-plus years of playing in the garden of Judaism, Zen, and advaita/nonduality. Chapters include Dharma Eye, Gods I (1), Koan and Midrash (4), and The Yoga of Conversation (7).