Sylvia Boorstein: Paying Attention in Action
It's after lunchtime at Camp Bubbe, and the camp director is taking a break. That would be Sylvia Boorstein, Buddhist insight meditation teacher, observant Jew and grandmother. Besides teaching meditation and running this family summer camp at her home in Sonoma County, Calif., Boorstein is a practicing psychotherapist and acclaimed author.
"This book was a miraculous blessed event from the very beginning," she says of Pay Attention, for Goodness' Sake: Practicing the Perfections of the Heart—The Buddhist Path of Kindness (Ballantine, Sept.). She's surprised at the enthusiasm of the reviews (including a starred review in PW on July 15) and endorsements from the likes of Anne Lamott, Rachel Naomi Remen and Elaine Pagels. She loved her editors, and the look of the book pleases her, too. Like all good teachers who repeat the point so students are sure to grasp it, this spiritual teacher insists over and over in different ways, "It's so important to remember that people are genuinely good. We're fundamentally kind when we're not confused and overwhelmed."
So many acts perpetrated by the confused end up in the newspaper these days that reading it every day has become for her "a challenging spiritual practice," she says. "It is so hard to see what is going on in the world." She is especially glad her book has come out when attention is drawn to the anniversary of September 11.
Boorstein believes that virtue—the practice of the qualities of the heart, or paramitas, as Buddhists call it—is kindness in action. She comes to that belief through an active evolution, having started her professional life as a chemistry teacher, then moved on to a doctorate in psychology that led to her 35-year psychotherapy practice. She was married at 18 (still is, to Seymour), has four children and seven grandchildren.
In 1969 Boorstein met a yoga teacher, and that launched her on a distinctively blended spiritual path. Her first Buddhist mindfulness meditation retreat was in 1977. In the late '80s she co-founded Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, Calif.; in 1995 she published her first book, It's Easier than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness (Harper San Francisco). Interfaith work has been another passion—her third book, That's Funny, You Don't Look Buddhist: On Being a Faithful Jew and a Passionate Buddhist (Harper SF, 1996), dealt with the compatibility of her diverse faith practices. Her work has been translated into seven languages. "I am more and more believing in a kind of magic in the way life unfolds," Boorstein says. "I don't know if I would have said that 10 years ago. I might not have said that 10 weeks ago," she laughs.
Boorstein will take her cheerful teachings on a 19-stop tour of 15 East and West Coast cities in September and October. Pay Attention is a featured alternate of the One Spirit Book Club and is being excerpted in Yoga Journal and Shambhala Sun. —Marcia Z. Nelson
Julia Cameron: Creativity Is Spiritual
Julia Cameron walks her talk. The artist-mentor who guided millions of artists and would-be artists beyond creativity-squashing obstacles with her 1992 book The Artist's Way has been navigating obstacles of her own recently. As proof, her new book, Walking in This World: The Practical Art of Creativity, is set to be released by Putnam's Jeremy P. Tarcher imprint on September 30.
"For me to write another creativity book was a challenging choice," Cameron tells PW. "I know from my own creative path that Walking in This World addresses in greater depth issues that The Artist's Way only touches on, but I suppose it will inevitably be compared to The Artist's Way, and that there are people who could say, 'Oh, she's writing another book about creativity.'"
True, there may be cynics. But then there are Cameron's followers—people who have snapped up nearly 2 million copies of The Artist's Way and have worked its 12-week course on how to get creative juices flowing. They are most likely ready for more. "Julia has a really strong fan base," notes Kelly Groves, a publicist for Penguin Putnam. "I've known people who've done The Artist's Way two or three times. These are people we don't even have to go after. This [new] book fills a void by giving people more and more."
Cameron wrote Walking in This World in the same manner as The Artist's Way, as a sort of letter from artist to artist. Like her earlier work, Walking in This World is a 12-week program that connects essays on creativity with different tasks for the reader to undertake. "Walking in This World was written to encourage, inspire, and comfort the artists around me," Cameron says. "The creative path is very joyful, but also very difficult."
Cameron has kept busy in the 10 years since The Artist's Way was released, writing nonfiction, dramatic plays, musicals, an opera and books of poetry and prayers. She also has continued to work as a teacher and mentor in classes and workshops. Independent artist groups using The Artist's Way started cropping up in the early '90s and continue to spark a creative rebirth among many. Cameron wants readers of Walking in This World to feel free to use it in the same way. "It's my desire for the book to be healing for people. I'm sure a great many people will work Walking in groups."
Cameron adds, "When I wrote The Artist's Way I essentially said, 'start a group.' I believe in the group process, I believe people learn tremendously from others. I didn't think of that as promotion." But the word-of-mouth recommendations and artist groups and gift giving of The Artist's Way were a boon that Tarcher couldn't have engineered through traditional promotion.
That doesn't mean Tarcher isn't also doing its part. Cameron is slated for a five-city tour in October, and an excerpt of the book will run in Body & Soul magazine (formerly New Age Journal). Tarcher is promoting the book primarily to mainstream and independent bookstores. "She doesn't really subscribe to one religious doctrine, and that keeps her out of some evangelical bookstores," Groves says.
"Who knows how Walking in This World will do?" Cameron muses. "You never can tell. I wrote it from the same motivation and to the same audience as The Artist's Way." Does this mean there could be a follow up to Walking in this World? Cameron will only say this much: "I keep discovering new things."—Heather Grennan
Coleman Barks: Introducing Rumi to America
Jalaluddin Rumi is the bestselling poet in the U.S. and the most popular poet in Afghanistan. Not bad for a guy who'd be celebrating his 795th birthday this fall.
Rumi himself was Persian, and the people of what is now Afghanistan have treasured his mystical, moving, and often funny work for more than seven centuries. But it's a (much younger) fellow poet, Coleman Barks, who's helped develop Rumi's American fan base. His translations of Rumi's poetry, including 1995's The Essential Rumi and last year's The Soul of Rumi have sold more than half a million copies combined. Barks's newest, Rumi: The Book of Love, will be published by Harper San Francisco just before Valentine's Day 2003. The book includes 20 newly translated poems plus selections from other books by Barks.
"I don't think it's a fad—I have to believe it's something deeper," says Barks, who started translating Rumi's work in 1976. In addition to adapting Rumi for a modern English-speaking audience, Barks maintains a full schedule of promoting his books, in ways a bit different from most authors. He gives poetry readings, of course, but he also performs in concert, incorporating music into his readings. "Rumi's poetry was always accompanied by music and movement," Barks says, pointing out that Rumi was a Sufi "whirling dervish." Barks collaborates with musicians who play cello and hand drum in what he describes as "a sort of world music." He adds, "I've tried to put the music and the movement back together to get the poems to a deeper place in the psyche. I love to experiment and see how the music opens the poem up."
Though he is not fluent himself in Rumi's original language, Barks, who taught poetry and creative writing at the University of Georgia for 30 years, has scholars provide him with literal transcriptions of the original Farsi. He then turns them into more accessible free-verse American-style poems. Barks gained widespread recognition when his work on Rumi was featured on Bill Moyers's PBS series Language of Life in 1995. Now a typical concert draws an average of 800 to 1,000 people.
These events appeal to a fairly broad audience.: "A lot of therapists!" Barks says, laughing. "Also, a lot of other professional people. The West Coast is big—the Bay Area, Oregon, Seattle, Denver. It tends to be an older audience, but college town [events] get a lot of younger folks."
Naturally, Harper makes good use of Barks's engagements. "It's a very efficient way of doing publicity," notes Kathi Goldmark, senior marketing and publicity manager. "We can follow a schedule that's already been set." Sometimes that means doing a media mailing or getting an author to do a book signing; sometimes it involves more. For Barks, that typically only means making sure his books are for sale at the event, whether through a local bookstore or through Harper's special sales department.
As for Rumi's concurrent popularity in countries as different as the U.S. and Afghanistan, the mystic poet himself would no doubt appreciate the peculiarity of the situation. "He's pretty much beyond categories of religion and culture," says Barks. "He invited people to meet in the heart." One of his couplets says it well: Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing/ There is a field. I'll meet you there. —Heather Grennan
John Eldredge: Men Must Be Passionate
Not long after writing his first book, The Sacred Romance: Drawing Closer to the Heart of God (1997), author John Eldredge lost his writing partner and best friend, Brent Curtis, in a mountain climbing accident on a men's retreat the two were leading.
Eldredge says what helped sustain him during that time and ultimately enabled him to surmount the challenge of writing without Curtis was the heart of the message for which the two had become known: the only life worth living is one of heartfelt passion.
"Brent's death was a tremendous blow, both personally and professionally, yet his life so embodied our message that I realized I couldn't help but continue his legacy of challenging others to live out of their heart," Eldredge tells PW.
It is just such passion that Eldredge strives to give readers, particularly other men, permission to pursue. And according to Eldredge, it isn't only Christians who are heeding the call of the wild. He now frequently is asked to speak to college groups, corporations and even political organizations.
"Inside every man is a desperate desire for a battle to fight, an adventure to live and a beauty to rescue," Eldredge says. "But the most a man in our culture can aspire to be is a 'nice guy'." In his latest book, Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secrets of a Man's Soul, Eldredge offered his vision for an authentic masculinity and challenged men to embrace their true nature.
Apparently that vision has found an eager audience. Wild at Heart was published in 2001 and has sold about 350,000 copies; The Sacred Romance has sold more than 500,000 copies. Sandwiched between the two is The Journey of Desire: Searching for the Life We've Only Dreamed of, published in 2000 and with sales of about 150,000 to date. His next book, slated for early 2003, is tentatively titled Waking the Dead: The Glory of a Ransomed Heart. All are published by Thomas Nelson, and Eldredge is contracted for at least two more titles with the house.
"The failure of so many fathers, the emasculating culture and the passive church have left men without direction," Eldredge says. He blames this crisis in masculinity in part on our culture's lack of male initiation rites, saying most men have never felt fully initiated into manhood.
Eldredge's solution is for fathers to transfer a blessing to their sons while leading them on a journey of self-discovery, preferably one incorporating a physical test, such as mountain climbing "Boys learn lessons physically before they do spiritually, so I feel it is important for them to experience the rewards of overcoming physical obstacles," Eldredge says. He plans to lead each of his three sons on such a journey when the time comes.
According to Nelson v-p of marketing Pamela Clements, more than a few women also are helping spread the word, about Wild at Heart in particular. Clements confesses that her own husband had to wait for her to finish reading it because she couldn't put it down. With sales of Wild at Heart continuing to build, Nelson has also thrown considerable marketing muscle behind Eldredge. "We will be spending at least an additional $250,000 on marketing for it in the next year," says Clements. "We believe in it that much." —Sean Fowlds
