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Buddhism for Busy People: Finding Happiness in an Uncertain World | 
 enlarge | Author: David Michie
Publisher: Snow Lion Publications
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 380002
Media: Paperback
Pages: 240
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 1559392983
Dewey Decimal Number: 294.3444
EAN: 9781559392983
ASIN: 1559392983
Publication Date: June 25, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: Ships immediately! Perfect and New! 2008 Paperback.
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Product Description
What does it take to be happy? We've all asked ourselves this question at some point, but few of us have found the path to lasting fulfillment. David Michie thought he had achieved his life's goals--the high-level job, the expensive city apartment, the luxury car, the great vacations--but a small voice was telling him he wasn't really happy. A chance remark from a naturopath sent him to his local Buddhist center. There he began the most important journey of his life. In this simple but beautifully written book, David Michie opens the door to the core teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. With wry, self-deprecating humor, he shows us now he began to incorporate Buddhist practices into his daily life. He explains how he came to understand the difference between the temporary pleasures of ordinary life and the profound sense of well-being and heartfelt serenity that comes from connecting with our inner nature. Every once in a while you come across an extraordinary book with the power to change your life. Buddhism for Busy People is one such book.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 Wonderful Book January 5, 2009
E. Douglas (London, England)
This is a wonderfully written, humorous and thoroughly accessible book. If you would like to find out more about Buddhism and also broaden your perspective of life, Buddhism for Busy People is just the ticket.
David Michie has warmth, great energy and humanity. One of my favourite parts is his description of interdependence - before we have even got out of bed in the morning, we can be thankful for many relationships: the person who made the bolts in the bed, the person who sewed the sheets, the driver who delivered the mattress. It's a reassuring thought (we are all connected!) and a reminder to be grateful.
 Some good mixed with some bad as well as some downright hokum August 25, 2008
The Doctor (The TARDIS)
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
In this peculiar book, David Michie mixes much clarity and useful discussion of basic Buddhist concepts with, unfortunately, much humbug and hokum. Here are the pros and cons as I see them:
The pros:
Michie is good at discussing key Buddhist concepts using the simplest of language, making them very easy to understand. Instead of saying that the first of the Four Noble Truths is that "life is suffering," as is so often done, Michie instead explains that the First Noble Truth is that the status quo functioning of our brain is to be dissatisfied with things. This makes much more sense.
Furthermore, the cause of this dissatisfaction comes from within, not without. Attitude is more important than fact. Westerners tend to assume that the cause of their happiness and unhappiness is external. Not so. It lies not in the way the world is, but in how one reacts to it. As Shantideva said, though you cannot cover the whole world with leather so that you might comfortably walk on it, you can nevertheless cover your soles with leather. In other words, you cannot change the world but you can change how you respond to it.
Michie makes the EXCELLENT point that most Westerners claim that they are not superstitious because they have no problems walking under ladders or opening umbrellas indoors, etc. But what is a superstition, really? A superstition is a false belief about a relationship between two things. We might not think that breaking a mirror will bring us seven years of bad luck, but we probably do think that doing things like purchasing a new watch will make us happy. But both beliefs are equally superstitious.
Michie also does a good job explaining dependent origination, which he calls "dependent arising." Everything is empty of self-essence, because everything is an emergent property arising from a conjunction of other things that are entirely anterior to it. We cannot pinpoint when a seed, sprouting and growing, stops being a sprout and becomes a lotus flower. Furthermore, we ourselves are all made up of "non-we" things. Candace is composed of "non-Candace" DNA, RNA, etc. What she thinks of as "herself" is nothing more than a set of beliefs. Beliefs, furthermore, that no one else possesses but her. Thus there is no essential "Candace," only an idiosyncratic set of beliefs. But she could just as easily believe something else about herself and thus the mystery of dependent origination and emptiness comes into play. All things are "empty" (of an essential nature) because they dependently arise. All things stem from dependent origination because they are empty (i.e., emerge from the same interconnected matrix of inseparable events).
I also like the hypothetical of a criminal who is punished by being condemned to always be shadowed by an invisible person who will never stop talking to him. The criminal comes to identify with this narrative, loves it even, and comes to believe that it is "him." We all live with this punishment, even though the incessant narrative playing in our heads is not "us." You are NOT your thoughts. The goal of meditation, in part, is to quite this invisible monster.
The cons:
With this said, there is also MUCH about this book that is bad. First, WAY too much of it is little more than Michie's (boring) autobiography. Much of the book is actually Michie describing how he always wanted to be a writer, how he has written 10 unpublished novels. It then describes his successes, publishing a nonfiction book followed by two thrillers. He goes on to describe that he as since met with failure, and ends by saying that Buddhism for Busy People is the publishing sensation he has always dreamt of. So what I say. This would be appropriate if it comprised several paragraphs of the book, perhaps. Instead it comprised about a fourth of the entire book. He also drops the name of almost every other book he's written, as though he were begging and pleading with us to purchase them.
Further, many readers will quickly tire of Michie describing just how posh and privileged his life is. He says that things like this shouldn't matter because, he thinks, we are all amazingly privileged to be "incarnated" as humans rather than ants or hungry dogs. He even says--and here he gets REALLY wonky--that we are privileged to be here instead of being incarnated as aliens on planets where Buddhism doesn't exist (but maybe they have an even better philosophy!). And so, even as humans, we are priveleged to be reading his silly book about Buddhism. How conceited. To this I say that, first of all, most Buddhists I know do not take reincarnation literally, as Michie does. Secondly, most readers will take in Michie's overall point but then still QUICKLY grow tired of him describing the lavish parties his wife throws for him on the Thames river, their round-the-globe travels, etc. What does it really have to do with the gist of the book? Nothing.
Also, Michie slips several times into charlatanry. He says he KNOWS that past lives exist because he has "studied" hypnotic regression. Well, I am a psychologist and have also studied hypnotic regression. It's a fraud. Hypnosis itself is little more than a parlor game. Anyone wanting to understand how hypnosis actually works should read Multiple Identities and False Memories by the late, great Nicholas Spanos. Psychologists have known for decades that hypnosis creates false memories. These can be about alien abductions, satanic ritual participation, or...past lives. A false memory about a past life is not "proof" of reincarnation, period.
Many Buddhists today understand samsara to be the cyclical pattern of maladaptive behavior that we all go through. This, in terms of our shifting beliefs regarding our "self," creates a metaphorical "birth, aging and dying" of these conceived selves. Reincarnation is best understood in this manner. Michie wants us to take it quite literally, unfortunately. He also claims that psychics exist and that animals are clairvoyant. To back up such claims he references the thoroughly discredited research of Rupert Sheldrake.
In fact, there are way too many instances in this book where Michie simply states "Research on this topic demonstrates X, Y and X," without referencing any actual studies and never minding the fact that real research on the topic indicates no such thing. Very disingenuous. Michie even points to the reality of ghosts as "proof" of one of his points. I guess here were supposed to never mind what scientists has to say about that one. In short, because of antics like these, Michie loses many credibility points with me.
Many of Michie's discussions are also greatly confused. He argues, for instance, that when we drive down a road cows do not fly into our cars and our coffee does not magically turn into champagne. This, he says, is "proof" that things don't happen "due to chance alone." They happen, he says, because of "cause and effect." The problem with this argument, as any scientist would point out, is that cause and effect and "chance," or probabilism or randomness, are by no means mutually exclusive. In other words, one of Michie's key arguments is nothing but a false dichotomy. Science today informs us that the universe IS probabilistic in nature, not deterministic. Determinism, in fact, was abandoned in the late 1800s. This does not mean that cause and effect do not operate. They do. Of course they do. But most causes are probabilistic in nature. The universe is chaotic and by and large random. Saying that everything is caused is not the same thing as saying that everything happens "for a reason." Such points are, unfortunately, lost on Michie.
Michie is also fond of stating that "there is no objective reality." Nonsense. Of course there is an objective reality. If you die the external world is still there. That is objective reality. Objective reality is that which, when you stop believing it, is still there. What he means to say is that our perceptions of external reality are all subjective. The language he uses here is quite confused. He also attempts to claim--also almost ALL new age authors do--that quantum mechanics "proves" this that and the other thing. Actually, as Einstein and later Richard Feynman went to great lengths to point out, quantum physics implies NOTHING about reality.
In short, Michie's book is a real mixed bag. Parts of it will have you nodding your head in total agreement while other parts might want to make you throw it in the fireplace.
A top pick for both new age collections and general-interest libraries August 14, 2008
Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
David Michie's BUDDHISM FOR BUSY PEOPLE: FINDING HAPPINESS IN AN UNCERTAIN WORLD provides an easy handbook which links Tibetan Buddhism teachings to daily life, beginning with the owner's own efforts. Chapters show how life goals can be linked to spiritual exploration and cover everything from cultivating compassion to understanding memory and rebirth experiences. A top pick for both new age collections and general-interest libraries interested in accessible, easy Tibetan Buddhism texts.
Genius writing June 27, 2008
Julie Rollnik
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Buddhism for Busy People is a wonderful introduction into the world of Buddhism. I can't speak highly enough of this book. It is a gentle and easy introduction into buddhism. David takes you on a life changing journey. It changed my life and it is my bible. I don't mind lending most books to people but I can't part with my copy of buddhism for busy people. It is a little gem. Thank you David. I am eternally grateful to you for writing this book.
Be kind to all life June 22, 2008
Reader from Japan (Tokyo, Japan)
In "Buddhism for busy people" David Michie shares with a reader his very personal emotional experience of finding the everyday support in Buddhism teaching and meditation. The book is written in an easy to read, entertaining and such a friendly way that you can feel the author's care and honest desire to tell something very valuable that he discovered in Buddhist practices, tried for himself and found that it really works in a daily life of a busy person.
In the beginning of 20th century, the Russian philosopher G.I. Gurdjieff (as well as number of other western psychologists, including cognitive neuroscientist John Cutting for example)taught that the average person consists of many "I's". Each of them relatively unaware of the others and competing for attention.According to Mr. Gurdjieff, people are asleep, fully mechanical and their repetitive patterns rob them of the free will. For the western psychology and philosophy oriented reader it will be very interesting to read how the author addresses this "second Person "I" and the question of awakening with the help of Buddhist teaching that has been available for centuries.
Mr. Michie in his book will walk you through the hard learned Buddha's lessons and the price of success, details of meditation practices, applicable to the modern daily life of a busy individual, the law of Karma and why the bad things happen to good people. You will read author's slightly unorthodox, but very practical view on Buddhism as the box of tools that you can use to fix things in your daily life and all of this you will learn the same way as if you just sit and talk with your best friend in time you need his support.
The English language readers from the Buddhist Far East countries will be refreshed to read about the experience of a western person on his way of discovering the value of the teaching and the impact it has on his life. It is going to be awakening experience of re-valuing well-known ideas that unfortunately too often are taken for granted in the modern East. For those readers I would like to remind the words of Odaishisama in his Hannya Shingyo Hiken- "How pitiful, the children long asleep, how miserable, how painful, the mad, intoxicated people. The suffering mad ones laugh at those who are not drunk. The cruel sleepers mock the awakened. Never asking the King of Medicine for the cure, when will they see Dainichi Nyorai's light?"
The greatest value of the book I see in author's kind way of talking to you very personally on daily madness of our busy life and offering help through the Buddhist practices. The book does not speak on "levels of mind", "ultimate Dharma body", "layers of Delusion" or "stages of Samadhi" It rather gives you a hand of support from a friend to go through your daily life and feel better. Much better!
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