Nothing on My Mind: Berkeley, LSD, Two Zen Masters, and a Life on the Dharma Trail

Author Storlie begins this book of the inner mind seated in the full lotus position. He doesn't get much farther. Recounting a tale that is not quite fiction, not quite fact (he has combined characters and dredged up quotes from 30 years of memories, he tells us in the preface), he leads us through a life spent in the quest of knowledge and bliss-the pursuit of Zen. He starts in Minnesota, journeys out to San Francisco at the peak of Haight-Ashbury and studies under two Zen masters as the years progress, all in an effort to satisfy his thirsty soul. Yet this memoir reads like a Less Than Zero for hippie burnouts. Too much of it is devoted to acid trips, beery nights out in the Bay Area wilderness, a few dabblings with heroin. It dwells on mind games and pointless journeys in the forest, a Walden without a reason for being written. While Storlie says he seeks spiritual attainment, he never tells us why. Cheering him on as his 1960s hippie friends turn his life into an outtake from Trainspotting (complete with a visit while stoned to Timothy Leary), as he struggles to complete an academic degree, any academic degree, and as he marries and divorces, becomes difficult. (Dec.)