The Wonder of Presence: And the Way of Meditative Inquiry
The Wonder of Presence--every page peppered with question  marks--makes it immediately clear that Toni Packer is not going to spoon-feed us answers. A sort of Zen Krishnamurti, Packer entertains the burning questions of "spiritual practice" (a term she avoids) and of life itself, all the while turning us back to ourselves. She calls it the way of meditative inquiry, a method in which meditation has no other purpose than to derail habitual modes of thinking and feeling, thereby opening oneself up to everything that is happening--just as it is. In chapters on anger, fear, and peace, Packer, formerly a Zen teacher in the lineage of Philip Kapleau, shows that "when a powerfully driven emotion gives way to simple awareness, it is like a miracle." The book is based on Packer's retreat talks and entertains the questions of retreatants on wide-ranging topics from relationships to suffering and from freedom to judgment. For all of these, she dives into the problem, asking about origins and peeling back the layers of the self.The Wonder of Presenceanswers questions by showing us how to look.--Brian Bruya