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Nothing Special: Living Zen
 
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Nothing Special: Living Zen (Paperback)

by Charlotte Joko Beck (Author), Steve Smith (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
RRP: £9.99
Price: £6.71 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Frequently Bought Together

Nothing Special: Living Zen + Everyday Zen: Love and Work + Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
Price For All Three: £19.70

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  • This item: Nothing Special: Living Zen by Charlotte Joko Beck

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Product details

  • Paperback: 177 pages
  • Publisher: HarperSanFrancisco; New edition edition (23 Jan 1995)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0062511173
  • ISBN-13: 978-0062511171
  • Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13.4 x 1.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 83,891 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description

This work shows how to make living itself a spiritual practice and how to discover that the extraordinary is really "nothing special".

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Nothing Special: Living Zen
65% buy the item featured on this page:
Nothing Special: Living Zen 4.1 out of 5 stars (11)
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13% buy
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Customer Reviews

11 Reviews
5 star:
 (8)
4 star:    (0)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
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 (2)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.1 out of 5 stars (11 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
121 of 122 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Can change your life, 14 Feb 2001
By Alistair G. Appleton - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Following on from "Everyday Zen", this book is another collection of Charlotte Joko Beck's dharma talks to her students in San Diego. Joko - as she's known - is a little granny look-alike, in her sixties I guess, and once an ordinary white American housewife and mother - now an extremely powerful Zen teacher. Having read lots of Zen and Buddhist literature, I keep on coming back to Joko's common sense wisdom. She has little time for doctrine, lazy religious belief, and her teaching has more to do with critical pyschology than classical Buddhism. But in this sense it is perhaps closer to the Buddha's original, revolutionary sceptical teaching. In essence, Joko exhorts us to sit meditatively with the reality of our life. Don't live in fantasy - fear or desire - she says, live in the hard, beautiful realness of life with all it's pain and confusion. She speaks really eloquently about the way in which our egos - habitual patterns of thought, learnt ad hoc throughout our lives and elevated to the status of concrete reality - how this illusionary sense of ego is the very thing that is keeping us unhappy and half dead. This book is just as confrontational as Everyday Zen, but perhaps a little more accessible. There are some very simple but powerful images that can really unlock a lot of clogged up life. Read it and meditate. It will change your life. It has mine.
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80 of 81 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Only what is real, 25 Mar 2003
What amazes me about Zen teachings in general is their uncompromising hold on what is real and what is not. This is not to say that they reject the unnexplainable and mysterious, but their stance that things such as apparitions or prophecies are both as unreal and unnecessary as science and materialism in considering a spiritual life, simply because they do not exist in the unbending reality of the present moment.

I have read both of Joko's books now and conclude that for someone who has read quite widely about Buddhist meditation, she is the source of the most painfully honest, blunt and beautiful teachings I have yet to come accross. You will learn alot about yourself simply by reading this book, and putting her words into consistent practice will undoubtedly change the way you live your life. Her metaphors for human life are so simple and direct that you find yourself wondering how such things had not occured to you before. If you are a practicioner of Zen, I can only say that this book, along with Everyday Zen, have been the greatest aid to my practice thus far. Enjoy this book, and take it very, very seriously, because people like Joko are the greatest treasure this world has given us.

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37 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Book I Have Ever Read, 7 Mar 2006
By Philip Walker "always learning" (Staffordshire uk) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Living Zen was brilliant... This is Better. Her use of Analogies make this book, the reader, able to see. Life changing. theres no going back once you have read this. Who would want to. I feel I can read it again and again and learn something new if I read it for the rest of my life.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Honest and right-on
This book has given me so many answers, and they all feel so right-on and so honest to the bone. One chapter is enough for days. Read more
Published 20 months ago by M. Haugen

1.0 out of 5 stars Too cold!
I find this book to be too cold, I have much more appreciated Osho's books on zen.
Published 20 months ago by F. Villa

5.0 out of 5 stars What's in this book actually WORKS!
What sets Charlotte's work apart from other Zen books is that what she has to say is relevant to modern times: the reader can relate. Read more
Published 22 months ago by L. Mateus

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book on Zen
Although I agree with another reviewer that the whirlpools analogy is a bit weak, this book is nevertheless the best of many, many I have read on Zen. Read more
Published on 20 Oct 2007 by Martin Bennett

1.0 out of 5 stars pseudo-mystical claptrap
I'm afraid I hated it from page 1. All "You are whirlpools in the river of life" and suchlike. Meaningless discussions such as "should I search for the absolute or the... Read more
Published on 31 Jul 2007 by ~PigleT

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspiring!!!
This book is fantastic. Once you have read one page you are drawn into power. Its changed my life. It makes you see people and the world in a whole new light. Read more
Published on 28 Dec 2006 by Stephen Mcleod

3.0 out of 5 stars A few questions still left unanswered....
Hmmm... This was one heck of a difficult book to take in. It was my first exposure to Zen and Buddism and a good one, I think. Read more
Published on 11 Aug 2006 by Ms. J. Francis

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
For me this book can be described as 'Life changing'. Joko explains all a student of Zen needs to know to set them on the path to enlightenment. Read more
Published on 22 Feb 2006 by ricky farrow

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