Essays on Marriage

This brief book offers perceptive, practical marital advice from a rare Buddhist perspective. Hasegawa, a Zen monk who is also a husband and father, provides firm guidelines, showing that loyalty, time, energy and compassion are the key ingredients of married success. He covers almost every aspect of marriage, including virginity, anger resolution and children. (""Married life without a child is like a house without any light,"" writes the monk.) Some will find his reproductive views controversial; he claims, for example, that nonprocreative sex within marriage is ""not different from masturbating or having a hired prostitute."" Hasegawa views marriage as a collaboration that must come before any individual interest. Partners should preserve marriage's inviolable sanctity, for example, never revealing each other's secrets to outsiders. His wisdom often emerges from the visual imagery of his Zen training (""Unexpressed love is of less use than a dead fox""). He advocates deep contemplation of the partner's future death, not to be morbid but to encourage greater appreciation and expressions of love in the present. Hasegawa's approach is not that of Western ""Buddhism lite"" but rather the bracing Buddhism one finds in the Theravada forest monastic and Rinzai Zen traditions. While best suited for those with some practical training in Buddhism, this book's direct, matter-of-fact counsel could benefit many other readers. (Oct.)