Upside-Down Zen: Finding the Marvelous in the Ordinary

Zen teacher Murphy does creative work as a film director and writer, and it shows. Her eye picks up details, stories and images in a rich, distinctive and demanding way: she describes abandoned urban lots as "richly art-directed by time" and cites Shakespeare, Dante, Buber and Raymond Carver in the span of five pages. Trying to imaginatively follow all this associative exposition, the reader may occasionally be left breathless or befuddled. Still, work on koans—Zen riddles that defy ordinary logic—is expected to stretch the mind. Murphy has a deep feel for subtlety and enigma that is different from many other Zen writers, who often draw from the well of ancient Chinese and Japanese Zen masters. Murphy cites them, too, but she also brings in elements from the aboriginal spirituality of Australia, her native country. The metaphor of dreaming has cosmological significance in this spiritual system, though Murphy's use of "dreaming" is sometimes obscure given her tendency to write via imaginative leaps. This is not a book for the nightstand Buddhist to knock off a short chapter before bedtime; it will make the most sense to those who have some experience on the twisting koan path. This is a dense, quirky and rewarding work. (Dec.)