What Would Buddha Do?: 101 Answers to Life's Daily Dilemmas

I've been exploring Buddhism for over a year now, first intrigued by reading HHDL's "The Art of Happiness." While I respect the many talented authors who have worked so hard on their books about Buddhism, so many of them spoke way over my head. I humbly admit that I'm no scholar. Add to that the fact that I'm brand spanking new to Buddhism, and you've got the perfect prescription for confusion. I was going from book to book in my local library, trying to find something that spoke to me...something that would inspire me like "The Art of Happiness." I was getting very discouraged until I found Franz Metcalf's books. "WWBD" is warm, funny and practical ~ JUST what I was looking for! Instead of going on and on about the concept of "emptiness" (for that, I recommend "The Naked Buddha" by Adrienne Howley, another down-to-earth teacher), Metcalf takes modern, every day problems and answers them with Buddhist wisdom in a way that anyone can understand and immediately apply. In fact, I plan on using Metcalf's books as aid in teaching my daughters the wisdom of kindness, patience and compassion. There are many books out there that delve deeper into the history/schools of Buddhism, philosophical discussions and the art of meditation. I tried reading through those, and it nearly put me into a coma. :o) (Clearly, I'm not ready. Nor am I sure I ever will be.) However, if you're more interested in how one can apply Buddhism to plain old everyday life, this is your book.

This book holds a lot of thought for only 130 pages. Franz Metcalf takes his knowledge of Buddhism to answer now just the big questions of "Life", but the smaller questions of daily life. What would Buddha do or think about such subjects as failure, anger, road rage, gun control, lying, the environment, eating meat, money, sex, drinking, drug abuse, boredom and even prostitution. Hard issues, but each is given a page, answered with a quote from Buddhist teaching and advice from the author. Great gift for a friend or a gift for yourself. It really helps you strip away the fat and get to the very core of the subject in question.

I found this book in a little bookshop in Marin Co., CA. Why isn't it being publicized more? Even the authors say "getting promoted is a happy side-effect of excellent work," and this book is just such an excellent work in that it furnishes great exampoles of practical ways to handle ourselves in the ready-made workplace or to create a workplace where dilemmas can be faced with the guidance of Bhudda thinking. Thanks to the authors for this help and recommendations.

We all are aware of the cliche "What Would Jesus Do?". In fact whenever I hear that question I groan and I know Jesus covers his ears and says "Get a new line".I am not a Buddhist, but I think this book is very good and insightful. If you are Buddhist, buy this book, it will help guide you to Nirvana, or at least it will give you a lot to contemplate. If you aren't Buddhist, buy this book anyway, it will make you laugh and it is good lessons for life.

My impression is that Buddha would have been in favor of anything that might help alleviate suffering in this world - and this book does just that. Its charm lies in the fact that it focuses not on dry dogma or meditation techniques, but on simple questions, such as how the Buddha might have dealt with that barking dog next door that JUST WON'T SHUT UP! (By the way, the author doesn't deal with the noisome problem as well as The Enlightened One probably would have!) This is a delightul book, and a deceptively breezy read. My only quibble was with a few grammatically-challenged chapter titles. But these are surely attributable to the publisher rather than Metcalf, whose prose is otherwise impeccable.