Richmond had it all: loving wife, great address in the San Francisco Bay area and a successful multifaceted career as software designer, Buddhist teacher, musician and author. He'd even beaten cancer once. Then viral encephalitis—a rare disease—attacked his brain and sent him into a coma for 10 days. While recovering, he experienced an acute neuropsychiatric complication from a therapeutic drug that posed a second life-threatening challenge. This page-turning account of his slow and spotty recovery is a vivid, affecting and painfully honest Buddhist dharma
(teaching) story. This overachieving California-style corporate executive and former Buddhist priest whose previous book was Work as a Spiritual Practice: A Practical Buddhist Approach to Inner Growth and Satisfaction on the Job
here learns that the central Buddhist teaching of life as suffering and impermanence has literal as well as spiritual meaning. Providing additional depth to his archetypal story of near-death and recovery, the author portrays the deeply rooted fears and anxieties that became his companions on the healing journey. The book may make a more valuable contribution to the literature about brain injury than to the well-stocked shelf of Buddhist titles; little non-technical or narrative writing is available on the medical frontier of brain trauma and the light it sheds on the relationship between body and mind. Richmond made a descent to the inner underworld, and returned a sadder, wiser man. His psychic excavations will enrich all who read this gripping account. (Apr. 2)
Forecast:Richmond will be touring New York, Seattle, Portland and San Francisco to promote this title, which should cross over easily between the markets for Buddhist, New Age and illness books. The initial print run is 30,000 copies.
