A Mindful Reader’s Guide

Daniel Doen Silberberg weaves the classic tale of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with the The Diamond Sutra, One Mind, and other stories from his own life to explore the differences between how we perceive our world and how it truly is.  He offers important ideas on how to live fully and happily in the Wonderland we’re already in.

REVIEWS

Publishers Weekly, August 10, 2009: “In this short book Silberberg weaves snippets from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with personal anecdotes, classic Buddhist sutras, koans and popular culture to illustrate Zen approaches to the true nature of enlightenment: “When we get to the other shore, to what I am calling Wonderland, we may experience One Mind.” Rather than using Zen to explain Alice, Silberberg playfully mingles, for example, the upside-down logic of the Caterpillar and Mock Turtle with the wisdom of the Diamond Sutra to explain key ideas. A longtime practitioner and former vice abbot of the Kanzeon Zen Center in Utah, the author is adept at explaining Buddhist teachings and ideas, such as the causes of suffering and Siddhartha’s search for the truth of existence. Silberberg’s description of the Zen path demonstrates more rigor than gentleness, reflecting a “warrior” approach to the search for knowledge.”

Library Journal October 2009: “In his first book, Silberberg, a Zen teacher and practicing psychologist and counselor, gives a good, brief introduction to Zen practice by drawing on ideas he finds in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. For example, he finds something koanlike in pieces of the narrative that shake up our ways of thinking and foster new insights. To make religion or philosophy more relevant, practitioners have written many works associating philosophy or religion with popular culture, e.g., Benjamin Hoff’s The Tao of Pooh, Open Court’s “Popular Culture & Philosophy” series, and the University Press of Kentucky’s “Philosophy of Culture” titles. Silberberg writes clearly and with humor and intelligence.”