{"id":828,"date":"2023-11-06T15:16:26","date_gmt":"2023-11-06T15:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/?p=828"},"modified":"2023-11-06T15:19:36","modified_gmt":"2023-11-06T15:19:36","slug":"zen-dynamics-book-and-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/zen-dynamics-book-and-website\/","title":{"rendered":"Zen Dynamics – book and website"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I was very interested in both Zen meditation and Zen Shiatsu, being particularly impressed by how practical and results-focused they both are \u2013 quite different from the fluffy mysticism often associated with such subjects. To get some of those ideas across, I set up a website called zendynamics.com<\/a> in 2001 which was centred around a Javascript\/PHP personality test that I\u2019m still quite proud of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea of producing a Zen Dynamics<\/em> book has been on my to-do list for ages \u2013 in fact I produced a short outline for one 22 years ago when I first created the website, and then a second outline in 2012. One reason the book took so long to see the light of day is that I wanted it to focus on practicalities, but I couldn\u2019t see how to dive straight into them without spending a lot of time on \u201cBuddhist theory\u201d (or my understanding of it) first. But all that theoretical side was covered in my book Is Buddhism Scientific?<\/a> (2019), so now I\u2019ve finally got round to writing my Zen Dynamics<\/em> book \u2013 and polished up the website (hopefully making it a bit more usable on mobile devices) into the bargain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book\u2019s full title is Zen Dynamics: Putting Buddhist Theory into Practice<\/em>, and it\u2019s available as either a paperback or a Kindle ebook from Amazon.com<\/a>, Amazon UK<\/a> and all other Amazon sites. Here is the blurb from the back cover:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buddhism can sometimes come across as abstract and philosophical, but it has a strongly practical side too \u2013 and that\u2019s what this book is all about. It focuses on four areas in particular:
\n\n\u2013 The analysis of personality types, both in Buddhism and traditional Chinese medicine, showing how this can enhance self-awareness and personal development;
\n\n\u2013 How \u201ckarma\u201d, or the law of cause-and-effect applied on a personal scale, functions in an entirely non-mystical, non-supernatural way within the flow of human thoughts and emotions;
\n\n\u2013 How meditation techniques are used in different schools of Buddhism to calm the mind and provide insight into its inner workings;
\n\n\u2013 A \u201cdemystification\u201d of Zen Buddhism, showing how its seeming illogicality and iconoclasm actually serve a serious practical purpose in developing the human mind.\n<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I was very interested in both Zen meditation and Zen Shiatsu, being particularly impressed by how practical and results-focused they both are \u2013 quite different from the fluffy mysticism often associated with such subjects. To get some of those ideas across, I set up a website called zendynamics.com … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Zen Dynamics – book and website”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[66,21],"class_list":["post-828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-buddhism","tag-my-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=828"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":840,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828\/revisions\/840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}