Nishioka, the temple carpenter

Azby Brown, a friend in Japan offered the following comment after reading through most of my new book. 

"What I get from your book is that creative craft work gives us the opportunity to live a life worth living, and to become better than we are. This really resonates with something I’ve been thinking about and sharing with people lately. 

"The temple carpenter Nishioka was Buddhist to his bones. He didn’t talk a lot about it necessarily, unless you asked him, in which case he revealed himself as an erudite scholar. More importantly he lived it and it shaped everything he did. 

"In his tradition, the best thing a master carpenter can do is help provide a path to enlightenment for his apprentices, through devoted and meaningful work in which they can become selfless. But they never say directly that that's what they’re doing. I think the reason is connected to something you alluded to, about “spiritual competitiveness,” which is just another kind of attachment. 

"Better to just live the work."—Azby Brown

Azby is the author of Just Enough: Lessons from Japan for Sustainable Living, Architecture and Design. 

A book of Zen.

 My new book has been posted on Amazon even though it will not be released until February 2022. https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Our-Hands-Crafting-Life/dp/1610355016/ The posting offers a very brief synopsis of the book's contents. February feels a long ways off. This book has been in the works for 20 years now, so the last few months will make me feel impatient to see how readers respond.

The book is related to the practice of zen the same way zen is related to the practical work of real life and the shaping of self.

Make, fix and create...