Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide

This new book from Zen teacher, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and critical favorite, Barry Magid, inspires us to outgrow the impossible pursuit of happiness, and instead make peace with the perfection of the way things are. Including ourselves! Using wryly gentle prose, Magid invites readers to consider the notion that our certainty that we are broken may be turning our pursuit of happiness into a source of more suffering. He takes an unusual look at our secret practices (what we're really doing, when we say "practicing"), "curative fantasies," and our ideals of what spiritual practices will do for us. In doing so, he helps us look squarely at some of the pitfalls of spiritual practice, so that we can avoid them. Along the way, Magid lays out a rich roadmap of a new psychological-minded Zen, which may be among the most important spiritual developments of the present-day. Read more