Book News | September 2020
I’m pleased to present the newest edition of the Book News column. Check out our newest book announcement, and be sure to email me at anne@anneparis.com if you have a new book you would like for us to announce! Please include a brief description of the book, a link to where to buy, and a short (one paragraph) bio of yourself.
Nothing is Hidden: The Psychology of Zen Koans
by Barry Magid
An audio version of this book is now available on Amazon and Audible.
In this inspiring and incisive offering, Barry Magid uses the language of modern psychology and psychotherapy to illuminate one of Buddhism’s most powerful and often mysterious technologies: the Zen koan. What’s more, Magid also uses the koans to expand upon the insights of psychology (especially self psychology and relational psychotherapy) and open for the reader new perspectives on the functioning of the human mind and heart. Nothing Is Hidden explores many rich themes, including facing impermanence and the inevitability of change, working skillfully with desire and attachment, and discovering when “surrender and submission” can be liberating and when they shade into emotional bypassing. With a sophisticated view of the rituals and teachings of traditional Buddhism, Magid helps us see how we sometimes subvert meditation into just another “curative fantasy” or make compassion into a form of masochism.
Barry Magid is a psychoanalyst and Zen teacher whose life and work have been on the forefront of a movement to integrate Western psychology with Eastern spiritual practices. He teaches at the Ordinary Mind Zendo in New York City. OMZ is part of the Ordinary Mind Zen School, a network of independent Zen centers established by Charlotte Joko Beck and her Dharma Successors in 1995.
After graduating from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in 1975, he completed his training in psychiatry and psychoanalysis in New York City at Roosevelt Hospital and The Postgraduate Center for Mental Health, where he became a training and supervising analyst. His primary psychoanalytic orientation was Self Psychology, the school founded by Heinz Kohut. In 1993 he edited Freud’s Case Studies: Self Psychological Perspectives. He has also served on the board of The International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP).
While he was training as a psychoanalyst, he also began Zen training, first under Eido Shimano Roshi and later with Bernie Tetsugen Glassman. Later he met and trained with Charlotte Joko Beck, the Dharma heir of Taizan Maezumi Roshi and founder of her own Ordinary Mind School of Zen. In 1996, Joko Beck gave him permission to establish The Ordinary Mind Zendo, where he became the founding teacher and in 1998, he received Dharma transmission, which gave him full authorization to teach Zen independently.
Magid has published numerous articles and three books on the integration of psychoanalysis and Zen: Ordinary Mind: Exploring the Common Ground of Zen and Psychoanalysis (2002), Ending the Pursuit of Happiness (2008) and Nothing is Hidden:The Psychology of Zen Koans (2013)
