Sylvia Boorstein's It's Easier Than You Think: The Buddhist Way to Happiness is a delightful little book of 64 chapters, each only a few pages long, each exploring a different facet of awareness and life and peace. Two clippings to give a flavor of her first-person style:

From "Right Speech: When You Give Someone Your Word, It Might Be Forever":

... Perhaps we think that if we are mature adults we should have gotten over the rebukes of childhood. I wonder if we ever do. I think we are all quite vulnerable, like cream puffs, crisp on the outside but fragile inside and very sweet. ...

From "Generosity Is a Natural Act":

... I used to think that if I began seeing all beings as my kin, it would be a big burden. The opposite is true. When someone I know is doing something admirable I don't feel I need to be doing it. She is doing it on my behalf, or as me, relieving me of that particular task. Mary and Chödrön are being nuns for me, Alex is teaching for me in remote places, Itzhak Perlman is me playing the violin, and Joe Montana is me, too. So is his mother.

It's Easier Than You Think is full of lovely mini-meditations, great fun to open at random, akin to Shunryu Suzuki's Not Always So or John Kabat-Zinn's Wherever You Go, There You Are. Highly recommended; more snippets to follow ...

_{^z - 2011-04-07}