Susan Piver | Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

This morning I finished Susan Piver’s new book, and felt immediately compelled to write a review. I posted it, but wanted to share it here too.

Start Here Now: An Open-Hearted Guide to the Path and Practice of Meditation by Susan Piver is brilliant. It’s an easy to digest overview of the practice of meditation, just what a reader would need to begin, but also includes a wealth of resources to support deepening the practice. The book includes what meditation is and is not, gives an overview of various types of meditation, discusses the obstacles to mediation, and considers how the practice impacts specific aspects of one’s life. The book also provides an easy to follow seven day meditation challenge to help the reader get started, along with a plan for a weekend meditation retreat at home. The other resources made available are extensive – online materials created specifically as companions to the book, three different appendixes (an F.A.Q, a list of important figures in the Buddhadharma, and other resources, including books and in person support for the practice), and of course, the Open Heart Project.

This book follows in the tradition of the best dharma books, ones like Pema Chödrön’s When Things Fall Apart and Sakyong Mipham’s Turning the Mind into an Ally. One way it does so is that each chapter is relatively short and to the point, clear and direct. One doesn’t need a lot of time to be able to read a chapter, and there is plenty in each chapter to keep one in contemplation for some time. And, it would be easy after having read the book from beginning to end the first time, to go back and consult it a chapter at a time, in no particular order, as each one stands alone in the wisdom it communicates at the same time as it adds to the whole of the book. I know I will come back to this book again and again, flipping directly to the chapter I need, as a reminder, as inspiration.

This book is perfect for someone new to the practice of meditation. However, I’ve practiced meditation for nine years, the last three with Susan’s direct instruction, and I found myself underlining multiple somethings on every page of this book.

The foundation of this book is Susan Piver’s many years of practice and teaching, and it is infused with her love of the practice and her students. She ends the book by sharing her personal story of how she made her way to meditation. The story of her own life, how she found her path is an inspiration. Her good nature, wisdom, kindness, and sense of humor fill the book with genuine warmth. To read this book, to make use of the resources offered truly is to have your very own personal meditation instructor. Susan Piver makes the practice of meditation accessible, possible, and even desirable.

1. Our garden, and all the other gardens feeding us. This is one of my favorite times of the season — strawberries, watermelon, peaches, and tomatoes tomatoes tomatoes.

2. Start Here Now: An Open-Hearted Guide to the Path and Practice of Meditation, Susan Piver’s new book. It’s so good. She’s so good at this, the writing and the teaching and the practicing. I’ve been meditating for nine years now, three of those with Susan’s direct instruction, so even though I know some stuff, I am underlining the crap out of this book.3. Settling back into work at CSU. It is so hard to juggle everything I’m responsible for when I’m also on contract there, but so far I’m managing. Can’t wait to get my office prettied up again, to be all the way moved back in.

4. Good recipes, good food. One of the prompts for August Break this week was “favorite recipe.” My response was: How do I choose just one? Roasted tomato soup because I’d never made soup before, it was so easy and delicious, and the tomatoes and basil were from our garden. Chocolate chip cookies with toasted walnuts because they are so good and make Eric so happy. Glazed lemon zucchini bread (which really is cake) with double zucchini and extra glaze and raspberries if you have them, because, and the perfect thing to take to a potluck. And for eating, because I’ve never made crust (and Eric is so good at it, why should I), fruit pie — marionberry, blackberry and raspberry, apple, strawberry, and peach.

5. These two goofballs. You never have to use the bathroom alone with these two clowns, who think everything the humans do is interesting and want to come along, hang out — except when the humans are on the devices, computers or phones or tvs, because that is just straight up boring. This was Sam and Ringo “helping” me take a bath, although Ringo was just as interested in engaging Sam by playing the “look at the awesome toy I have, don’t you want to try and steal it from me?” game.

Bonus joy: Comedians (seriously, how cool is it that some people make it their profession to make us laugh?), good books and my Kindle making it so easy to get and read them, paper copies of good books I can hold in my hands and underline with a pencil, clean cool drinkable water, laughing with Eric, people who know how to fix our stuff and are fair and honest, the funds to be able to hire those people, knowing that the same stupid hangnail I get on my thumb every year about this time always heals, a physical therapist willing to give me a pep talk when I tell her I am officially frustrated, the flock of tiny yellow breasted birds that are so in love with our sunflower patch, sunflowers that are supposed to be 8-10 feet tall growing to 12 feet, breakfast burritos from La Luz, really good friends.