A Thousand Names for Joy: Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are
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- ISBN13: 9780307339249
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Product Description
“Byron Katie is one of the truly fantastic and inspiring teachers of our time. I encourage everyone to immerse themselves in this phenomenal book.” –Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
In her first two books, Loving What Is and I Need Your Like–Is That Right? Byron Katie showed how suffering can be finished by questioning the stressful thoughts that make it. Now, in A Thousand Names for Joy, she encourages us to learn the freedom that lives on the additional side of inquiry.
Stephen Mitchell–the renowned translator of the Tao Te Ching–selected provocative excerpts from that very ancient text as a stimulus for Katie to talk about the most essential issues that face us all: life and death, excellent and evil, like, work, and fulfillment. With her tales of total ease in all circumstances, Katie does more than clarify the awakened mind; she lets you see it, feel it, in action.
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This book is full of the enthralling rantings and chronic self-contradictions of a mad guru. Hypnotic. Delightful. Mind-bending. Chances are, you’ll never be the same after reading this book.
In my opinion, that is too high of a fee to pay. If you value your sanity, don’t waste your time on this one.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Only if you are a Byron Katie fan, will you be interested in this scattered, stream of consciousness, hodgepodge. It’s as if a name said, “It’s time for another book!” so this was thrown together. It’s obvious that this woman is grieving, that she has health problems, that she is bombarding her consciousness with positive thought. Regularly zen, with
cursory understanding of Buddhist and Taoist philosophy, she seems to be regurgitating thoughts and phrases she’s read or heard, applying them within the context of her Work, and what she (psychologically) needs to keep a balance of her daily life, long-suffering what some others would consider tragedy. One understands her blindness, her health, etc. are all building her live day by day. And if you like her, scanning through this stream of consciousness blather will only make you like her more for her fierce courage in the face of misfortune. But, as for the book, there’s no energy in it, no new insights; it’s reasonably a bit dull. One does marvel if she will get her eye surgery, how her physical life will improve. After reading the book, I am now invested in her well being as a person. And she did remind me of The Work, from her fantastic first book. So, ironically, I did benefit from reading this book. Why? Because I’ve been trying not to eat after 8PM and not take a second helping of excellent food. So now, I question myself “do I need a second helping? or Do I really need a snack?” Is this right? Who would I be lacking it?, etc. Sometimes, enlightenment comes through the side door!
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
Byron Katie gives insight as to how to change your thoughts and find peace about everything in life.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
OK, so I start reading Katie and she says lots of excellent things. I probably agree with Katie more than I disagree with her. But my initial thought about her “Work” boils down to this: How can the illusory, fake self practice something in order to reveal that it is illusory?
But I’m willing to learn. So I read. I learn that a “Master” is simply one who “no longer believes that in this moment things should be different than they are.” Ah, well, then why the heck am I reading this book?
No matter, I continue reading and learn that Katie, at some point in her life, “veteran a life-changing realization.” At that moment things evidently were “different than they [were]” in Katie’s life. How ironic! And of course the “seeker” in me thinks, “Yes! I want that same experience!” Ooops, there I go again believing that in this moment things should be different than they are!
No matter. I read on. Katie has developed an “extremely powerful method” wherein anyone (me!) can learn for themselves what Katie realized. Fantastic! Another “process,” another “method” to add to all the additional steps I’ve taken to realize enlightenment or peace or heaven or oneness or whatever mark is currently in vogue in the world of non-duality.
Katie says that she “knows about the mind: how it can make us miserable, how we can use it to get free.” Really? How does the mind make us miserable and from where does it get this power? Who made this mind? Who sustains this mind?
But I keep turning pages. I’m told, “anyone can learn exactly how to question a stressful thought.” That method, I’m told, is “how to end suffering by questioning the thoughts that make it.” But who is it that is learning this? Who is it that is doing the questioning?
Katie’s “Work” consists of four questions…questions which are said to have “power.” Really? Questions have power? Power for whom? Well, I guess they have power to change things so that they are different than they are. How ironic! I thought I was to “no longer judge that in this moment things should be different”!
Katie says that “The Tao Te Ching says that the source of everything is called ‘darkness.’ ” Katie says that is a “gorgeous name.” She doesn’t say WHY it’s a gorgeous name…just that it is. “Darkness is our source,” says Katie. Somehow I’m not excited about Katie’s pronouncement…but Katie’s the one who’s had the “life-changing realization”…and so I read on.
Evidently Katie is a fan of rap composition. She says that “when mind is understood, there’s room for rap as well as for Mozart.” Really Katie? What kind of rap are you listening to? The rap I’ve heard (and the rap that my mis-understood mind has heard) glorifies the most vile actions towards women, uses language (if “language” is the proper term) that makes my ears melt off and that I would never in a million years repeat to anyone on this planet. Sorry, Katie. No room for that kind of rap in my universe.
Now before my readers get the feeling that I’m being too nit-picky, let me just say that deep down somewhere there’s an “I” that knows what Katie is adage is right. Rap, Mozart, a car clock radio, a bird singing, is “all the sound of God.” In the abstract I know that “God is all,” and that has to mean ALL…all composition, all creatures, all sights, all smells, all touches…all, all, all. It all must be God. After all, “omnipotent” doesn’t mean a fantastic huge power over some small powers. It means ALL power–ONE power. And “omnipresent” means all-presence which leaves no room for another presence (a excellent OR a terrible presence).
I know these things intellectually and maybe even deeper than intellectually. But I am still repulsed at the rape of a 5 year ancient child or the terribly burned body of a baby. Katie’s answer to this dilemma is to question the question, “Could it be that whatever seems terrible to you is just something you haven’t seen clearly enough yet?” OK, I guess I’m back to doing “The Work” to place the clarity back into my seeing.
I haven’t read very far into Katie’s book (I will, but for now these are the thoughts that prompt themselves through my fingers on the keyboard). My mind questions, what is the difference between Katie finding gushing joy in every rap song, every physical act of cruelty, every “terrible” person and the joyful fatalist? Katie has seemingly establish a way to laugh her way through every experience of life. There is something in me (and where the heck did IT come from if “all is God”?) that is dissatisfied with this mental/philosophical/non-dualistic approach to life–even while at the same time I KNOW that GOD IS ALL.
And questioning my thoughts for the purpose of extinguishing the questions (Katie’s “Work”) is one possible way to “freedom,” but it just doesn’t FULLY satisfy the deepest levels of my being. Is Katie TRULY 100% “Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are” or is she fooling herself as a coping mechanism? I don’t know.
You gotta like Katie. She is not bothered by her own contradictions: “[Pain] can stay as long as it wants to. (And that doesn’t mean I won’t take a Tylenol.)” Oh, Katie, I’m really NOT criticizing or judging you…I’ve been there!! But it does tell me (and reassuringly so) that Katie does NOT have all the answers. She’s doing the best she knows; she’s doing what works for her. Somehow it fits all together in her mind…even the pieces that DON’T fit somehow get pushed aside and ignored.
Katie and I agree on this: “I exist as a don’t-know mind.” But for Katie, “This leaves nothing but peace and joy in my life.” I marvel. Does it really? 100% of the time? Really? Katie “hears the sound of the garbage truck, she becomes the sound, and she tingles with gratitude that she is that.” Really? “Tingles”? With such tingling, how does this woman lower herself to see anyone in need of “The Work”? One who sees others to enlighten is in no position to enlighten anyone.
But I’m being much too hard on Katie. I do chuckle when I read page after page. Really, I do. Not the laugh of derision, but the laughter of God. Of knowing that all is well. That there is nothing to “do.”
Katie likes that her skin is getting wrinkled and loose. She likes that some mornings she’s nearly blind. And this is not poetic speech. No, she is stating a fact (I marvel!).
Look, I like Katie. But I have this feeling that there has got to be a better way to clarify this thing called life. There has got to be a better answer for pain, suffering, the appearance of evil. I know that GOD IS ALL…but my heart longs for an adequate answer to the apperance of things “not-god.” And for me, Katie makes a valiant endeavor to provide that answer which falls fleeting. For her maybe it works. Maybe it even works 100% of the time. I hope so for her sake.
And so I am left with this: God is having a excellent laugh playing the role of “dissatisfied seeker/non-seeeker” through and as me. And I am playing the part to perfection. I have read all the books. I have listened to the tapes. I have discussed these things ad naseum with friends. And that’s the best I can do…for now I guess. God is playing the role of a name who rebells against another method called “The Work.” I don’t want to do it; therefore, I guess it’s God in me playing the part of spiritual rebel. For me, that’s “Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are.”
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
When I saw Stephan Mitchell’s name as a co-leader, I expected a wise work on spirituality. Byron Katie only used parts of his translation of the Tao te Ching as chapter headings.
Byron Katie’s message is that all events are jolly. To reflect this way would be to have no empathy and no compassion for others. The “long-suffering of what is” in Taoism is not a message of “joy”.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5