Stumbling Toward Enlightenment

I completely enjoyed this book - several times. Any fiesty woman can completely identify with Ms. Larkin's perspective on life, love, loss, and coming to realize that there are better things to do with your life and your family's life than work 70+ hours a week for a corporation. This is not a guide to Buddhism for a school report - it is a guide to getting real and knowing you're not alone in feeling like being Superwoman isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's also a good guide to getting out from under the mountain of false corporate gods and retaining your sense of humor a la Buddhism. I laughed, I cried, I gleaned a lot of great information.

"Accessible Zen" is how the author describes her book about embarking on a spiritual path. With chapters like "The Invaluable Lessons of Miserable Days" and "The Art Of Cultivating Sympathetic Joy" you cannot help but stumble upon a gem or two of truth. This book will help you become wiser and make you feel human along the way. You've gotta fall before you fly, but fly you can. Stumbling Toward Enlightenment will help you on with your wings.

No pre-fabricated philosophy here. No set of rules to follow. Like good discussions with old friends, what "Stumbling Toward Enlightenment" offers is an unpretentious look at what has worked -- and what hasn't -- for Zen teacher Parang Geri Larkin, informed throughout by an apparent wish that all beings everywhere might stop and smile a little more often.Forgetting for a moment Larkin's obviously huge heart, insatiable curiosity, warmth, kindness, and compassion, what makes "Stumbling" such a wonderful book is that Larkin asks no one to clean a kitchen she herself isn't willing to clean a thousand times.

I am a practicing Buddhist and Unitarian Universalist minister and when I first read Geri Larkin's book I was immediately moved to read it again from cover to cover. Imagine someone writing about Zen practice with a sense of humour and gentle wit? Imagine seeing ourselves all with 'bad hair days' and still able to laugh and see it as part of the healing that brings so many of us to spiritual practice. I have recommended this book to many friends and colleagues and I know many of them have bought it. People in their 20's have been especially moved by Geri's down-to-earth style because they seek honesty, integrity and gentleness - this book has all three and so much more.

I knew Larkin in her pre-Zen days and during the early "what-am-I-doing-in-a-Zen-temple" days too. I worked with her and edited a good deal of her business writing. The thing that always struck me then and struck me again as I reviewed the advance copy of "Stumbling. . ." is that she always finds a way to make the deepest, most profound points in a down-to-earth, accessible way. Even if you are not "Zen" yourself. . . if you are a seeker, or are new to spirituality, this is the book on Zen that you want to read. Larkin is above all honest. She gives you herself, the genuine article, with no window dressing. And what she is - what she gives you - are wit and openness and forthright, hard-won answers. She weaves personal stories and humor into the message and eventually you come out at the back cover realizing that while Zen may be profound, it need not be stuffy or unapproachable