Ending Stress: A Practical Guide to Nondual Meditation” (Jonathan Harrison)
Bottom-of-the-Barrel Buddhism
[My 1-star Amazon review of “Ending Stress: A Practical Guide to Nondual Meditation” by Jonathan Harrison.]
I have devoted the past forty years of my life to studying, practicing and teaching Buddhist meditation (Vipassana, Zen, and Tibetan), and it pains me to read books like this one. Of the fifty or so Buddhist texts I have reviewed at Amazon, this one ranks among the worst. It is combination of dumbed-down Dharma drivel, New Age psycho-babble, and epistemological nonsense.
The author has read all the right stuff – Ramana Maharshi, Jean Klein, J. Krishnamurti, Namkhai Norbu, Longchen Rabjam, et al -- and yet has managed to produce nothing more than a piece of pathetic pabulum. The author either didn’t grok the masters he read, or else shamelessly created this superficial text to market it to the clueless masses and attract ignorant students.
The first thing the author needs to learn is how to think rationally and logically. He’s been infected with what I call the “Madhyamika Virus,” which Buddhists catch from reading Nagarjuna and Madhamika Buddhism, which is a perversion of what Gautama Buddha taught. If you are seriously interested in seeing how fogged-out, how far from reality, this author is, get a copy of this book, and compare it to Avi Sion’s “Buddhist Illogic,” a $1.99 Kindle book. After you read Sion, you will laugh at the nonsense in Harrison’s book.
What kind of nonsense are we talking about? Nagarjuna-inspired pop-Zen nonsense. Here are some examples, which I’ll deconstruct:
“Know that nothing exists apart from mind. Realize that mind itself is devoid”of reality.
First off, the computer or book in front of you exists apart from your mind, because if you have no thoughts, or if you fall over and die, the computer and book continue to exist sans your mind. Moreover, if nothing exists apart from your mind, and your mind is devoid of reality, that means absolutely nothing is real.
“Your thoughts do not refer to reality.”
The author has informed us that the mind itself is not real and that the objects the mind refers to are also unreal. In other words, everything is unreal, and yet the author, who possesses an unreal mind and an unreal body in an unreal world pretends to be able to point us to reality.
“To be real, things must exist regardless of what you think.”
This directly contradicts what the author says elsewhere. The text is teeming with such contradictions. There can be no contradictions in reality, but because the author has in effect evicted himself from reality, he is full of contradictions, which make this text a joke.
“The only thing to learn is that there is nothing to learn.”
If there is nothing to learn, don’t waste your time or money on this book, which pretends to teach you something.
“The aim of meditation is to discover that meditation is superfluous.”
If meditation is superfluous, then there is no reason to do it and no reason for you to read this book or any other book on the subject.
“Although things change all the time, there is no need or indeed possibility for you to change anything, merely to grasp deeply how thing really work.”
In other words, the author says there is no need to change anything (which would include the baby’s diapers); moreover, you are powerless to change anything (meaning tough luck for baby).
“The only possible thing you can do is what you are doing.”
That’s why I’m writing this review. It’s the only possible thing I can do.
“The idea that you and other people are separate autonomous beings is an example of a thought. In reality, you cannot find separate autonomous beings. For example, if you and I are in a conversation, you have an effect on me. This affects the effect I have on you and so on. There is no beginning, no end, and no controller of this interaction.”
I don’t know about you, but I can find billions of separate beings, and this reality has nothing to with my thoughts. But my thoughts, properly, inform me that separation is reality, and so do my senses, apart from my thoughts. If you don’t have a thought in your mind, and you physically bump into somebody and get hurt, you feel the separation. Animals don’t have thoughts but they experience separation.
“There is no real separation. All separation and boundaries are arbitrary."
Try telling that to the wall when it refuses to let you walk through it.
Here is my challenge to the author and the other teachers of non-separation nonsense. Put your money where your mouth is and give me unlimited access to your credit cards. So far, not a single one of these hypocrites has done so.
Know that the samples I presented here are just the tip of the iceberg of the poppycock that permeates this text. Because this review is already too long, I cannot devote space to thoroughly deconstructing the meditation nonsense, but I’ll make a few summary statements. The book is meditation ultra-light, bereft of any depth or reality. There is nothing esoteric, nothing spiritual (pertaining to Spirit, Skakti, or the Sambhogakaya), and nothing about the “teeth” of real spiritual life, meaning the crisis, disturbance, and struggle it engenders. And there is nothing here that isn’t presented better and more completely elsewhere.
In summary, this book is bad on every level, and demonstrates just how low Buddhism can sink. In fact, I’ve creatively coined a new term for this level of Buddhadharma – Bottom-of-the-Barrel Buddhism.
[My 1-star Amazon review of “Ending Stress: A Practical Guide to Nondual Meditation” by Jonathan Harrison.]
I have devoted the past forty years of my life to studying, practicing and teaching Buddhist meditation (Vipassana, Zen, and Tibetan), and it pains me to read books like this one. Of the fifty or so Buddhist texts I have reviewed at Amazon, this one ranks among the worst. It is combination of dumbed-down Dharma drivel, New Age psycho-babble, and epistemological nonsense.
The author has read all the right stuff – Ramana Maharshi, Jean Klein, J. Krishnamurti, Namkhai Norbu, Longchen Rabjam, et al -- and yet has managed to produce nothing more than a piece of pathetic pabulum. The author either didn’t grok the masters he read, or else shamelessly created this superficial text to market it to the clueless masses and attract ignorant students.
The first thing the author needs to learn is how to think rationally and logically. He’s been infected with what I call the “Madhyamika Virus,” which Buddhists catch from reading Nagarjuna and Madhamika Buddhism, which is a perversion of what Gautama Buddha taught. If you are seriously interested in seeing how fogged-out, how far from reality, this author is, get a copy of this book, and compare it to Avi Sion’s “Buddhist Illogic,” a $1.99 Kindle book. After you read Sion, you will laugh at the nonsense in Harrison’s book.
What kind of nonsense are we talking about? Nagarjuna-inspired pop-Zen nonsense. Here are some examples, which I’ll deconstruct:
“Know that nothing exists apart from mind. Realize that mind itself is devoid”of reality.
First off, the computer or book in front of you exists apart from your mind, because if you have no thoughts, or if you fall over and die, the computer and book continue to exist sans your mind. Moreover, if nothing exists apart from your mind, and your mind is devoid of reality, that means absolutely nothing is real.
“Your thoughts do not refer to reality.”
The author has informed us that the mind itself is not real and that the objects the mind refers to are also unreal. In other words, everything is unreal, and yet the author, who possesses an unreal mind and an unreal body in an unreal world pretends to be able to point us to reality.
“To be real, things must exist regardless of what you think.”
This directly contradicts what the author says elsewhere. The text is teeming with such contradictions. There can be no contradictions in reality, but because the author has in effect evicted himself from reality, he is full of contradictions, which make this text a joke.
“The only thing to learn is that there is nothing to learn.”
If there is nothing to learn, don’t waste your time or money on this book, which pretends to teach you something.
“The aim of meditation is to discover that meditation is superfluous.”
If meditation is superfluous, then there is no reason to do it and no reason for you to read this book or any other book on the subject.
“Although things change all the time, there is no need or indeed possibility for you to change anything, merely to grasp deeply how thing really work.”
In other words, the author says there is no need to change anything (which would include the baby’s diapers); moreover, you are powerless to change anything (meaning tough luck for baby).
“The only possible thing you can do is what you are doing.”
That’s why I’m writing this review. It’s the only possible thing I can do.
“The idea that you and other people are separate autonomous beings is an example of a thought. In reality, you cannot find separate autonomous beings. For example, if you and I are in a conversation, you have an effect on me. This affects the effect I have on you and so on. There is no beginning, no end, and no controller of this interaction.”
I don’t know about you, but I can find billions of separate beings, and this reality has nothing to with my thoughts. But my thoughts, properly, inform me that separation is reality, and so do my senses, apart from my thoughts. If you don’t have a thought in your mind, and you physically bump into somebody and get hurt, you feel the separation. Animals don’t have thoughts but they experience separation.
“There is no real separation. All separation and boundaries are arbitrary."
Try telling that to the wall when it refuses to let you walk through it.
Here is my challenge to the author and the other teachers of non-separation nonsense. Put your money where your mouth is and give me unlimited access to your credit cards. So far, not a single one of these hypocrites has done so.
Know that the samples I presented here are just the tip of the iceberg of the poppycock that permeates this text. Because this review is already too long, I cannot devote space to thoroughly deconstructing the meditation nonsense, but I’ll make a few summary statements. The book is meditation ultra-light, bereft of any depth or reality. There is nothing esoteric, nothing spiritual (pertaining to Spirit, Skakti, or the Sambhogakaya), and nothing about the “teeth” of real spiritual life, meaning the crisis, disturbance, and struggle it engenders. And there is nothing here that isn’t presented better and more completely elsewhere.
In summary, this book is bad on every level, and demonstrates just how low Buddhism can sink. In fact, I’ve creatively coined a new term for this level of Buddhadharma – Bottom-of-the-Barrel Buddhism.
