Book Review: This is Always Enough by John Astin

My friend Gloria Lee, Editor of Nondual Highlights published this review:


#2903 - Friday, August 17, 2007 - Editor: Gloria Lee

NONDUAL HIGHLIGHTS

This is Always Enough
John Astin

Clear and Still
A review by Gloria Lee
Silent Retreat


The nametag
says it all:

"I am
observing
silence"

How true.

This is indeed
what I am -
the observing silence,
and everything
that is observed.


John Astin


To see fish at the bottom of a pond, the water needs to be both clear and still. So does the observer. John Astin renders his precise observations with the artistry of a Zen master's ink drawing. Simplicity and naturalness characterize both his poems and prose. This book is a work of art that will stop you in your tracks. Will you see the vision of reality pointed to by the words? It would be hard to miss, presented in a way that goes so directly to the heart of the matter. Indeed, why complicate it? Few writers can paint a picture of essential truths so succinctly and with such loving grace. Like a hologram, each poem somehow contains the whole.

There is also a familiarity with the ways life can slip by us, how the moment may elude us. Reading the section "Our Argument with What Is" provides invaluable insights that question our habitual ways of thinking and our unexamined assumptions. The way "All Strategies Eventually Fail" is actually good news! So what if we are going from one unknown to the next unknown? Hasn't it ever been thus, whether we realized it or not?

"There is no escaping the truth of this impermanence, is there? But who would ever want to?"
~ ~ ~

The mystery that is aware of this moment has already
accepted it, as it is. We cannot create this radical acceptance
and we are powerless to make it go away, for the very nature
of awareness is to accept, without conditions, what is.

~ ~ ~

To not-know is to be free, free from the prison of your own ideas.

~ ~ ~

Awareness is free -- free from knowing what will
happen next, free from knowing what should happen next, free
from knowing what anything really is, free from knowing the
reason for anything, free from knowing what freedom is.

~ ~ ~

The Story

Rest here and watch.
See how long it takes for
the story to reappear –
that ancient legend that tells us
this is not enough.

Keep watching.

Can you see it happening?
Nothing is missing, is there,
until the mind comes back
to tell us there is,
no problem
until the storyteller returns
to tell us something is wrong.

Can you see?

The whole thing
is made up –
the destination
and the path
to get there.
Every story,
even the one
that tells you to stop
telling stories,
is a lie, a tale of lack
where none
has ever been.