cover image TURNING TOWARD THE MYSTERY: A Seeker's Journey

TURNING TOWARD THE MYSTERY: A Seeker's Journey

Stephen Levine, . . Harper San Francisco, $25.95 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-06-251744-9

Levine, a Buddhist teacher, bestselling author and caregiver for the dying, reviews the circumstances and events in his life as one long, ongoing lesson in "the process of opening," as fellow Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg notes in her endorsement. Levine has his spiritual roots in the contemporary flowering of Eastern spirituality in America; he also has his roots in the Rikers Island Penitentiary, where he spent time in the spiritually fermented 1960s for drug possession. This is a man who has known fear, craving and fire in the belly and learned bravery and transcendence of self. Also a poet, Levine is able to convey his unfolding insights in fresh language that breathes unique vitality into the sometimes cool idiom of American Buddhist writers. The book is marred at times by a tendency toward sentence fragments, a literary tic that makes meaning murky. Still, he knows his way around, literarily and spiritually, having stumbled there with innate persistence, a beloved spiritual guide, some famous friends along the path and many lessons from the dying, whom he and his wife, Ondrea—a soul mate found after a few tries—have served and consoled for years. The book has some excesses—"mystery" as central concept and conceit is amply ambiguous but less than fresh—but it offers an affecting case study in the lotus-flowering of truth rooted in sentient life and death. (Apr.)

Forecast:Levine's Gradual Awakening has sold more than half a million copies, so this should easily sell through its first printing of 50,000. Advertising is planned in periodicals such as Body and Spirit, Tricycle and Shambhala Sun.