Spiritwalk Books      

Book of the Month

February 1999

The great spiritual truths are
right under your nose -- in
the songs, jokes, proverbs,
and nursery rhymes you've
known all your life.

Why The Chicken Crossed the Road

& Other Hidden Enlightenment Teachings from the Buddha to Bebop to Mother Goose
             

by Dean Sluyter

About the book

Excerpts from Why The Chicken Crossed the Road   By Dean Sluyter

Interview with the Author

Reviews and Endorsements

Music to Read By

Mauna Kea from Keola Beamer

About the Book

Why the ChickenCrossed the Road
(Tarcher/Putnam, February 1998)

invites the reader to join in the seriously playful adventure of

"digging the cosmic ordinary" -- exploring our cultural backyard

to discover the profound wisdom hidden there in plain sight.

In 33 illustrated mini-chapters, it reveals the startling,
sometimes hilarious connections between the highest
revelations and the lowliest jingles, jokes, and cliches.
Among them:

"Knock-Knock, Who's There?" teaches the same
process of radical self-inquiry advocated by Hindu
masters.

"Mary Had a Little Lamb" expounds the way of love
and devotion as eloquently as the Psalms or the
Gospels.

"Easy Does It," a principle as precise as E=mc2,
describes both the workings of the universe and the
mechanics of meditation.

"Home on the Range" celebrates the anarchic
freedom of enlightenment.

Author Dean Sluyter shows us that Christ and Buddha
bring the same good news of cosmic liberation--and so do
Mick Jagger and Ira Gershwin, Bugs Bunny and Alfred E.
Neuman. Along the way, he tells lively stories that
incorporate basketball and Sufi dancing, cowboy movies
and Sabbath mysticism, bebop saxophone practice and
Tibetan compassion practice. And he shares spiritual
exercises (some traditional, some home-brewed) that are
powerfully transformative.


For more information:

Kristen Giorgio
Publicity Department
Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc.
(212) 366-2539



Dean Sluyter
The Pingry School
Martinsville, NJ
dsluyter@pingry.k12.nj.us

Excerpts from Why The Chicken Crossed the Road 

 

 

We’re all sleeping buddhas~
enlightened beings of perfect wisdom,

equanimity, and compassion,
who have yet to awaken to our own magnificence.
We don’t need to add anything to our state;

we only need to realize it.
Sooner or later the alarm goes off.
The clock radio we set in some forgotten aeon
blares the clear signal of Radio Free Buddha,
blasting the shackles of ignorance from our minds,
blowing away the morning cobwebs

that obscure our innate Vastness.

~ Dean Sluyter

 

Q. Why did the chicken cross the Road?

A. To get to the other side.

 

This is the great American koan of self transformation.  This is the great riddle, the

supreme riddle, the White Whale and Everest of Riddles.  With archetypal precision,

it pulls the rug out from under the minfd, propelling it into a pratfall, a momentary

flight that defies our usual, carefully maintained gravity.  The question bamboozles

us into expecting a specific, rational, purposeful answer:  The chicken crossed the road

to flee the fox, to search for chicken feed, to file his tax return, to register for classes,

to mount a good-looking hen.  We are lulled by the word Why, by our own sleepy

assumption that all actions must have purposes, that shit (even chicken shit) don't

just happen.

 

But then the answer ambushes us awake, annihilating our expectations. We are blown

into the nonrational, purposeless Void ~ the Other side.   The question is just

a question, but the answer is primal Mystery.  It goes beyond funny to the essential

subversive Fun of purposeless, self-sufficient Being.  For a moment the fabric of

rationality is torn; we laugh as we fall through into the underlying Awareness-Space,

whose nature is Great Bliss.  Whoops . . . Ahhh! This fall, however it may be precipitated,

is the One Joke that makes Rumi smile, Buddha laugh, and Jesus raise his cup.

 

The road that most people are on ~ or at least think they're on ~ is the sleek

freeway of achievement, of straight-ahead linear motion toward some hypothetical

ideal time and place somewhere up yonder, some well-lit, clearly marked turn-off

to the Promised Land of success and/or retirement.  But a few of us choose the dirt

of the off-road, the roadless road that crosses the road.  We're always a minority,

those of us who dare to dart between the axles of the eighteen-wheelers of progress.

They've got the manpower and they've got the horsepower.  Let's go troops.

Whatsa matter . . . chicken?

Click here to purchase Why The Chicken Crossed the Road  by Dean Sluyter

Chapter 1

" What Me Worry"

True story:

A San Fernando Valley afternoon in 1961. I'm twelve

years old. My family is planning to see a drive-in movie

later in the evening, and my mother sends me to the

garage to clean out our Rambler station wagon. As I

gather up the toys and clothes and comic books my

brothers and I have left there, my hyperactive mind is, as

usual, rehearsing and rehashing conversations, fretting

over eventualities, calculating consequences. I am, as

usual, utterly unaware of the noisy, agitated way my mind

is functioning, both because my mind has always been

this busy (I have nothing to compare it to) and because it

is so busy (it's too caught up in chasing and snapping at

its own tail to notice that it's caught up).

The next item I find on the backseat is a Mad

magazine. I glance at the cover, with its picture of the

magazine's idiot mascot, Alfred E. Neuman, and read his

motto: "What — Me Worry?"

Time stops.

Suddenly it's as if my skull has been cracked open

and emptied out. In an instant, my mind stops sizzling in its

habitual static. In the vibrant silence that follows, I realize

that this sizzle is what's called "worry," and that, until this

moment, I've been doing it for as long as I can remember.

My mind — freed at last from whipping itself through all

those tortuous channels of how-come's and what-if's —

becomes blissful clarity, perfect peace. I feel like an

endless sky from which ancient, toxic clouds have been

suddenly blown away. I am, in fact, floating in a bona fide

state of satori, and I continue to float through the rest of the

afternoon, the evening, the movie (Parrish, a plantation

soap opera starring Troy Donohue), till bedtime, when I

float blissfully into sleep.

The Sanskrit term for this phenomenon is

mahavakya — "great utterance." When a master realizes

that a disciple's mind has reached a moment of particular

ripeness, he or she utters one of the classic formulations

of cosmic Reality, perhaps a line from the Upanishads,

such as "Thou art That." And whammo: the disciple

clearly, experientially Gets It. In my case the master was

Sri Guru-ji Alfred E. Neuman. Well, the Lord moves in

mysterious ways.

Or maybe not so mysterious. Maybe the Infinite

reveals itself in ways that are exquisitely tuned to time,

place, and audience. The most nagging worry of

adolescents (Mad's traditional readership) is physical

appearance. Is my chest too small? Is my nose too big?

Braces? Acne? Alfred E. Neuman has splotchy freckles,

protruding ears, ridiculous cheekbones, impossible hair,

gap teeth, cockeyes ... and he doesn't worry! Cheerfully

oblivious to his funny looks, he embodies the teenager's

chronic worry and explodes it away in the tension-release

of laughter.

We Cold War kids also had some special, acute

worries, which Alfred showed up just in time to ease. (Mad

introduced him in 1956, borrowing a face that had

appeared on postcards and advertisements for decades.)

We grew up doing "drop drills" — huddling in silence

under our desks with our hands clasped over the backs of

our heads, waiting to see whether the next moment would

bring nuclear Armageddon or the teacher's all-clear. And

precisely in that moment of breathless, fearful anticipation

lies the problem. Two thousand years earlier, Jesus

diagnosed the condition and prescribed the cure:

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for

the morrow shall take thought for the things of

itself.

The futility of worry is rooted in the element of time:

worry is the agitated anticipation of what the world may do

to us in the near or distant future. (Resentment is the

agitated recollection of what the world did to us in the

past. Guilt is the agitated recollection of what we did to the

world — and often a convenient form of self-flagellation

that allows us to keep doing it.)

The cure for worry, then (and resentment and guilt),

is to live right now. This is not just some happy-face

spiritual slogan, but the starkest realism — in fact it's our

only option. We worry about tomorrow, but we always

wake up today. It's never tomorrow, never five minutes

from now, never one second from now. (When the future

arrives, please raise your hand.) There's no time but the

present, and even that is suspect.

In meditation you can see through the

illusion of past, present, and future — your

experience becomes the continuity of

Nowness. The past is only an unreliable

memory held in the present. The future is

only a projection of your present conceptions.

The present itself vanishes as soon as you

try to grasp it. So why bother with attempting

to establish the illusion of solid ground? -

H.H. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Relinquishing the illusion of solid ground may seem

scary at first; it does mean going into a kind of endless

free-fall. But we're falling in delicious, total freedom

indeed, with the growing realization that just as there is no

ground to support us, there is no ground ever to hit.

Does living in liberated Nowness mean we can't

work on Monday to get a paycheck on Friday? Or that

we're not responsible for what we did in June because it's

October? No — that would be flakiness, not

enlightenment. We earn the right to be blase about the

illusory past and future only by being conscientious in the

perpetual present. To the extent that we're functioning in a

time-bound apparent world, we have to deal sensibly

today with the seeds of probable tomorrows. But we don't

have to be lost in agitation over the ways they may sprout.

This distinction became clear to me some twenty

years after my Mad experience, in another automotive

epiphany. A friend was driving me through some

aggressively congested New Jersey traffic. He was

holding forth passionately on some topic or other, making

lots of emphatic gestures, looking to me for nods of

agreement, and failing to note much of the sudden braking

and lane-changing going on around him. Soon I felt my

right foot stomping on the brake — the imaginary

passenger-side brake that I had used for years in similar

situations. Then suddenly, in mid-stomp, I realized: This

brake doesn't work. It doesn't stop the car; it doesn't slow

it down even a little. If the situation is truly dangerous, I

should ask the driver to let me out (or better, to let me

drive). Otherwise, I may as well relax and enjoy the ride.

I decided to renounce that imaginary brake. But

suppressing the urge to stomp on it caused a whole new

set of unpleasant sensations. My breathing grew

constricted as I struggled to stifle my anxiety, and the

tension I had denied to my right leg crept up into my gut.

(Years later I became friends with some cops involved in

dangerous assignments and discovered that they all had

serious gastrointestinal problems.) Suppression, I

realized, merely drives worry deeper into the psyche and

the body, there to grow more toxic, resurfacing later in

some other guise. So then I truly let go, of both worry and

suppression. I breathed freely, my muscles relaxed, my

tension evaporated.

We also have an internal passenger-side brake,

which we stomp on incessantly. Worry about work, worry

about family, worry about health ... all involve futile

straining for that brake and tensing ourselves against

imagined crashes up the road. Whenever there is a

practical way to grab the steering wheel of our destiny

(work smarter, talk through the family problem, eat our

healthy vegetables), we should certainly do so, but beyond

that we may as well just breathe out and let go. Having

done what we can, we can relax into the spacious

freedom of simply Being and let whatever happens

happen — which it will do whether we "let" it or not.

You have claim to your actions only; to their

fruits you have no claim. - Bhagavad Gita

This realization — that once we've done our best the

chips are going to fall where they may — is profoundly

liberating. But only if we want to be liberated. One stormy

evening as I was leaving the school where I teach, I saw a

mother standing under the front portico, peering anxiously

up the driveway through the lightning and rain. She was,

she explained, waiting for the bus to bring her son back

from a fencing meet. When I suggested that she could

relax in the faculty lounge with a cup of coffee, she smiled

tightly: "No, I'll stay out here — I'm a worrier." Although

worrying couldn't get the bus there a minute earlier, her job

description as a good mother apparently required it. To

stop would be to let go of that strained, unproductive

self-definition, probably lifting considerable pressure off

her children as well as herself.

If you had done everything in the past exactly the

same except for the worrying, what would be different?

What will you ever do in the future that worrying will

improve?

while you worry about what each note means,

the band plays on.

you are running from a dog who only chases

because you run. turn and face him.

though you hear the buzzing of the bee grow

louder be still. do not fear a sting you have

never felt, you just might be a flower.

do not worry about things falling into place.

where they fall is the place. - Mark Hartley

Suggestions for further practice:

Quit worrying (wouldn't you quit any other job that

paid so poorly?), or at least take vacations. Breathe

out and take your foot off that internal

passenger-side brake for a day, an hour, even a

moment. As you gain confidence that your universe

does not crumble without the tension of worry to hold

it together, extend your vacations.

If that seems too hard, start by watching yourself

worrying: "Ah, yes, this is called worry, it's something

I choose to do." If even that's too hard, observe the

worry of others. Note how much of their energy it

consumes, and how it distorts the patterns of mind,

speech, and body.

 

Meditate. (More on this later.)

 

The taste of transcendental ease that you catch through

meditative practice will feed your faith that somehow

everything's fundamentally okay. When you wake in

the middle of the night gripped by anxiety, even the

faint, lingering flavor of that transcendence can keep

you you from being overwhelmed.

A yet more profound liberation into Nowness comes

from abandoning hope as well as worry. But that's

an advanced technique.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: Radio Free Buddha

COSMIC JOKES

1. What — Me Worry?

2. Doctuh, It Hoits

3. Knock-Knock, Who's There?

4. Eh . . . What¢s Up, Doc?

5. What's Black and White and Red All Over?

6. Take My Wife . . . Please!

7. Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

SACRED NURSERY RHYMES

8. Ring Around the Rosy

9. Row, Row, Row Your Boat

10. I'm a Little Teapot

11. Little Jack Horner

12. Mary Had a Little Lamb

13. She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not

EXPLODING PROVERBS

14. Seeing Is Believing

15. Easy Does It

16. Practice Makes Perfect

17. An Apple for the Teacher

18. Speak of the Devil

19. Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beholder

20. It’s Better to Give than to Receive

21. To Err Is Human, to Forgive Divine

22. Now Is the Time for All Good Men

ACCIDENTAL HYMNS

23. Home on the Range

24. (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

25. Love and Marriage

26. (How Much Is That) Doggie in the Window

27. The Worms Crawl In

28. Hey, Hey We're the Monkees

29. Pennies from Heaven

30. Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

31. Happy Trails

POSTSCRIPT: Love Makes the World Go Round

An Interview with Dean Sluyter

from USA Today 6/25/98
Inside Books/BookShelf



Finding spiritual truth in knock-knock jokes

Why The Chicken Crossed the Road  and
Other Hidden Enlightenment from the
Buddha to Bebop to Mother Goose,
By Dean Sluyter (Putnam)
List price $12.95


Mick Jagger is not a Buddhist monk, Bugs Buggy
is not a rabbi and knock-knock jokes are not
New Testament.

But all three offer spiritual truths, says Dean Sluyter, author of Why
the Chicken Crossed the Road and Other Hidden Enlightenment
from the Buddha to Bebop to Mother Goose.

"All these things from the scrap heap of popular culture, if you break
them down and look closely enough, it tells you the whole story of
enlightenment," says Sluyter, an English high school teacher at Pingry
High School in Bernards, N.J.

Why the Chicken Crossed the Road also bridges various spiritual
traditions and contains practical guides to their meditative practices.

The results are as entertaining as they are enlightening, says Gideon
Lewis-Kraus, one of Sluyter's students.

"Mr. Sluyter has pointed out that even in doctrines diametrically
opposed, the same spiritual truth runs through them," the 18-year-old
Watchung, N.J., resident says. "Whether that truth is embodied in
Buddha, God, the Tao or Jesus, Mr. Sluyter uses pop culture...to make
it accessible to anyone."

For 20 years, Sluyter has done "lab work" for his book by teaching a
class called "The Literature of Enlightenment."

Alongside the Tibetan Book of the Dead, he presents The Rolling
Stones' (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction as spiritual truth. Each year,
the two dozen students who take the class can easily relate, Sluyter
says.

"Kids have this natural intelligence, which causes them to seek
something true, real and fulfilling," he says. "They're told, 'Just buy these
sneakers or car or get this diploma and this job, then you'll have a
fulfilled life.' Kids...know that it's a scam. Your natural capacity for
fulfillment is infinite, so none of those finite things are going to fill that
up."

Sluyter calls the spiritual truth found in jokes and songs "the cosmic
ordinary."

"I'm really excited to have been given this opportunity," he says.

Sluyter's publisher, New York-based Tarcher Books, has been
presenting philosophical works since the 1960s.

The company's titles include Seven Years in Tibet, the inspiration for
the recent Brad Pitt film.

"They were around long before everyone else jumped on the New Age
bandwagon," Sluyter says.

While Why the Chicken Crossed the Road relies on pop culture, the
author says it is based too much on spiritual tradition to be considered
new age.

For Sluyter, the son of Jewish political activists from New York, that
spiritual tradition began while a hippie student at San Francisco State
University in San Francisco in the late 1960s.

Inspired by the late Shlomo Carlebach, a rabbi/musician dubbed the
Jerry Garcia of Israel, Sluyter began to meditate.

"I saw the late '60s as a cultural and spiritual revolution...of peace and
love," he says. "But I found the methods people were using to try to
achieve that, such as psychedelics, would lead to a dead end. So I
found natural, traditional methods taught by all these great spiritual
teachers for thousands of years."

While the counter-culture of the 1960s may have settled for a BMW
and a seat on the stock exchange, the United States has evolved into a
spiritual melting pot because of its cultural diversity, Sluyter says.

The author has meditated and chanted with Hindu yogis and Buddhist
lamas, "davened" (bowing when reading the Torah) with rabbis, and
danced with Sufi masters throughout the country. He shares those
experiences in both his book and class.

"If a Buddhist meditation helps us enter the kingdom of heaven, Jesus
probably won't mind," Sluyter writes. "If the parables of the New
Testament help us see Nirvana, Buddha will no doubt rejoice."

Meditation also results in a healthy body, says Sluyter, whose youthful
appearance defies his 48 years.

"The mind and body are connected, so when the mind settles down into
a tranquil state, there's corresponding changes in the body," he says.
"It's not years that make you old, it's stress. But if you can let go of that
stress, it keeps you young."

By reducing the stress in their lives, Sluyter and has wife Maggy, who
also teaches meditation, have raised two children with great ease.

Rather than judge and worry about Tara, 18, and Day Rosenberg, 27,
Maggy's son from a previous marriage, the meditative couple gave them
the space to grow into responsible, kind-hearted adults.

"You don't sweat the small stuff," says Maggy Sluyter, a former fashion
model from Philadelphia who met her husband of 19 years at a 1973
meditation retreat. "That helps when your daughter comes home and
says she wants a nose ring."

"But you can't just read about these spiritual truths," she adds. "You
have to meditate. It would be like me telling you what a strawberry
tastes like. It's bumpy and tart but sweet. But until you really taste it for
yourself, you won't really know."

Tara Sluyter and Day Rosenberg say they know that some might
consider their parents to be "hippie freaks."

But both say that they have had a stable upbringing as a result of their
meditative practices.

"We never had a house where people yell," Sluyter says. "We hardly
ever lose our tempers. We could always go to our parents with
anything."

"With a name like Day, you're bound to get some questions," adds
Rosenberg, who was a champion fencer at Pingry and Rutgers
University in New Brunswick. "But I genuinely feel that my meditation
background made me a better fencer. Meditation helps you filter out
the static and get centered on the task. That's why Phil Jackson has the
Chicago Bulls do it. It's certainly worked for them."

A family that meditates together also works together.

Avid amateur photographers, Tara took the publicity shot that
accompanies Chicken and Day shot the back cover photo of his
stepfather. Their mom drew the illustrations that accompany each of the
book's 33 chapters.

"We had a fantastic time working on it together," Rosenberg says. "My
dad's a very gifted writer. Maybe this will help him with a couple of
other books he has in the wings."

By Robert Makin, Bridgewater (N.J.) Courier-News

©COPYRIGHT 1998 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.


Amazon interviews Dean Sluyter (incomplete)

Amazon.com: How did you begin writing? Did you intend to become an author,

or do you have a specific reason or reasons for writing each book?

 

D.S.: In the beginning, the Chicken book sorta just happened. After a couple of

decades of immersion in various meditative practices and spiritual teachings,

I started to hear those same cosmic truths between the lines of the songs on

the radio, nursery rhymes I'd learned as a child, etc.  At first I just typed notes

on these connections into the computer, thinking they were too wacky to make

sense to anyone else, but when I mentioned them to my agent he encouraged me

to turn them into a book.

 

 

Amazon.com: What authors do you like to read? What book or books have had a

strong influence on you or your writing?

 

D.S.: Chögyam Trungpa, Ngakpa Chögyam, William Blake, Gerard Manley Hopkins,

Jackson Pollock, Lieber & Stoller, Samuel Beckett, Dizzy Gillespie, James Joyce,

Federico Fellini, Ikkyu, Rumi, Kabir, Thomas Merton, John Donne, B.B. King .

 

 

Amazon.com: Could you describe the mundane details of writing: How many hours

a day do you devote to writing? Do you write a draft on paper or at a keyboard

(typewriter or computer)? Do you have a favorite location or time of day (or night)

for writing? What do you do to avoid--or seek!--distractions?

 

D.S.: I carry one of those credit-card sized digital recorders in my pocket to capture

random epiphanies.  Writing happens on Macintosh PowerBook: in bed, on back patio

(fountain, Buddha statue, squirrels, cardinals, crows), at the beach . . . I rewrite

compulsively. Some commas have been removed and replaced a dozen times or more.

 

 

Amazon.com: Do you meet your readers at book signings, conventions, or similar

events? Do you interact with your readers electronically through e-mail or other

online forums?

 

D.S.: I do signings and readings as well as meditation workshops and assorted

speaking gigs. E-mail and forums are OK.

 

Amazon.com: When and how did you get started on the Net? Do you read any

newsgroups such as rec.arts.books and rec.arts.sf.written, mailing lists,

or other on-line forums? Do you use the Net for research--or is it just another

time sink?

Are you able to communicate with other writers or people you work with over the Net?

[incomplete]

[You may email Dean Sluyter at dsluyter@pingry.k12.nj.us]

Reviews

Some Kind Words About the Chicken . . .

"Sluyter's fresh, enticing manifesto of found wisdom from the scrap heap of popular

culture highlights the right stuff. This dean’s instruction goes down easy, nourishes

both heart and mind, and tickles the funny bone too. I found plenty of good eggs

in his basket."

– Lama Surya Das, author of AWAKENING THE BUDDHA WITHIN

"A brilliant, funny, profound and crazy vision of the sacredness in everyday life.

I didn't know whether to laugh at its wit or cry at its insight. If Franny and Zooey

are your friends, this book will mean a lot to you."

– Jane Cavolina, author of GROWING UP CATHOLIC

"This is a witty and wonderfully wise presentation of the freedom of non-desire

(but I cannot guarantee that it liberates completely, because I often wished I had written it)."

–Sylvia Boorstein, author of IT'S EASIER THAN YOU THINK

"Dean Sluyter is an enthusiast: for language, for life, and for the juice of it all —

the rich living gravy that oozes out of every nuance of experience. The nature of reality

is our most fundamental teacher and it speaks of itself everywhere and in everything

— Dean Sluyter has listened to the rumours for years and now he presents them

with delicious fun and lightness."

 

– Ngakpa Chogyam Rinpoche, author of SPECTRUM OF ECSTASY

"Sluyter proves to be a subtle and imaginative guide through the contemporary

world of pop culture, dazzling us with epiphanies growing out of jingles, jokes, and

folk sayings. He provides fresh takes on faith, devotion, grace, being present, beauty,

practice, selflessness, forgiveness, and simplicity. Like the best spiritual teachers,

Sluyter lets light in from many angles — in this case, the wisdom of Buddhism,

Christianity, Taoism, and more. WHY THE CHICKEN CROSSED THE ROAD is a surefire

demonstration of why play is an essential ingredient in spiritual growth."

 

– Frederic A. Brussat, VALUES & VISIONS REVIEWS SERVICE

Customer Comments

Average Customer Review: 5 out of 5 stars Number of Reviews: 7

Lowell Byrd (lowell49@yahoo.com) from U.S.A. , November 26, 1998 , 5 out of 5 stars

 

Smartest, funniest, most practical

This must be the smartest, funniest, and most practical guide to the spiritual path

I have ever read. By using funky American pop culture (knock-knock jokes, "Doggie

in the Window," etc.) as his jumping-off point, Sluyter manages to present 

enlightenment in a way that anyone can connect with. He writes with a wonderful

openness that embraces Zen, Jesus, rock 'n' roll and Mad magazine in one big hug -

yet he never goes New Age sloppy, but lays out the What's What of spiritual

development with precision. A must!

Jim@Mahood.com from South Bend, IN , October 14, 1998 , 5 out of 5 stars

 

A fellow student

Although surrounded by a world of inauthentic materialistic meandering, Dean Sluyter

finds transcendence in everyday life. The funny thing is, as he points out, that everyday

life is what most people overlook, yet it's the only kind of life we have -- we don't

live in the past or future (although our thoughts usually pull us in one of those directions).

In my opinion, "Uncle" Dean has put a modern tap on the essential. Read it and rejoice!

 

The Rev. Canon Linda Strohmier (beamnj@aol.com) from Bergen County, New Jersey ,

September 19, 1998 , 5 out of 5 stars

 

"the unitive vision" and a lively joy to read!

All the great saints seem to wind up their lives finding "the unitive vision" -- the

understanding that it's not "us vs. them" or "sacred vs. profane" or "God vs. devil",

but all a great oneness, a unity of being. All the great teachers seem to be able to

breathe exciting life into the commonplace, and the great artists make poetry of the

ordinary. I didn't expect Dean Sluyter to be a great saint, a great teacher, or a poet,

but he has managed to do all of this: to portray/embody the "unitive vision," to breathe

life into the commonplaceness of the Monkees' theme song and AA's "Easy Does It",

and even, at moments, to make poetry of the ordinary (see "Love and Marriage"

and the exercises for cosmic awareness while brushing your teeth...). Most thrilling to

me (an Episcopal priest and thus, prima facie, an exponent of a particular tradition),

he is as at home with Jesus as with Krishna, and weaves together the Bible, the Vedas,

and the teachings of the lamas so effectively as to overcome the objectionsof all but

the most arrantly partisan of religious thinkers. What an accomplishment! I'm giving

a copy of the book to everyone I know who is hungry for the life of the Spirit.

A reader from Ohio , May 4, 1998 , 5 out of 5 stars

From a previous student:

"Uncle" Dean really knows how to write- and how to make what could easily be

a tough subject to get into very accessible. It's a great book and lots of fun-

never too preachy or teachy, and easy to follow. Can't wait to read it again!

A reader from US , April 3, 1998 , 5 out of 5 stars

Yippee!!! Yahoo!!! Wowee!!

How refreshing that there is a book like this out there lightening us up a bit!!

For all of us spiritual guide and self-help book junkies, this book is the ultimate fix.

We sometimes get lulled into deceiving ourselves that we "get it" but it's all still in

our heads and not necessarily in our practice. Dean Sluyter tweaks you out of your

spiritual complacency by making it all so real and experientially accessible .

Besides, the book's a hellofallota fun to read.

A reader from Gaffney, South Carolina , March 4, 1998 , 5 out of 5 stars

It's a hoot.

Based primarily in Buddhist practice, this ingenious and delightful, yet profound,

little book will be tremendously helpful to those on a spiritual path, whatever their

tradition. It's packed with humor blended with nuggets of wisdom on every page.

An instant classic.

A reader from Bloomsbury, USA , February 28, 1998 , 5 out of 5 stars

A fun, practical guide to spirituality

Sluyter's approach to the spiritual life combines droll humor with very fresh,

innovative, practical "how-to's." His concept of unfolding the hidden enlightenment

teachings of pop culture is usually delightful, sometimes surprising. I also appreciated

the bold way in which he transcends distinctions between so-called "Eastern" and

"Western" approaches to spirituality, serves them with a distinctly home-grown,

all-American flavor, yet avoids being New Age fluffy. As his anecdotes demonstrate,

he has a solid background in traditional, authentic meditative practice, but he's got it

integrated with life in America right now. I would strongly recommend this book to

spiritual "veterans" looking for a fresh slant on their practice, as well as to beginners

looking for a clear, fun, accessible introduction to the practice and theory of enlightenment.

 

This month's Music to Read By...

Hear this album at broadcast.com

Check out our earlier recommendations

April 98  July 1998   August 98  February 99

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