The Zen Path Through Depression

By Philip Martin and Gerald Martin

Book Overview

This book is a guide to the wilderness that is depression, written by someone who knows the territory and has seen that a map alone is not enough. It is a guide to using our own inner resources, and to learning how to read and listen to the signs around us. It is ultimately a guide to growth, insight, and realization. The Zen Path through Depression is a practical, clear resource that approached depression in an entirely new way. Philip Martin tells us that "depression is an illness not just of the body and mind, but also of the heart." The heart, the spirit, is where the key to healing lies. Philip Martin, a psychiatric social worker and a longtime student of Zen, shows us, through the spiritual practice of Zen Buddhism, how we can heal depression and look fearlessly at our live. He takes us through the realities of depression, the fears and doubts that are so intrinsic to this condition. We are shown the fundamental choice that we face: Do we run, or do we confront ourselves and or fear directly? In brief, inspiring, and instructive chapters, Martin shows how we can incorporate Zen ideals and practices into our everyday lives. Through a step-by-step recovery process, we are offered true help and guidance by which we are able to discover a new path to health and contentment. This beautiful, simple book relates the basic practices and ideas of Zen Buddhism to the process of healing depression. Extremely accessible to people with little or no Zen experience as well as to longtime students of Buddhism, The Zen Path through Depression is a compassionate and spiritual approach to healing this debilitating condition. Exploring the many issues and often difficult questions surrounding depression, author Philip Martin turns to his personal battle with this disease to show is how we, too, can heal ourselves through the Eastern practice of Zen. The Zen Path through Depression reveals a spiritual path we can travel to get through depression--a path that not only eases the pain but mends the spirit. This groundbreaking guide reveals how to cope and rebuild our lives and even how to view the experience as an opportunity for spiritual learning and growth.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060654457
• ISBN13: 9780060654450
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: HarperOne
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.7" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Do the Exercises and This Book Will Work for You

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by D. Burns and Philip Martin's book are the most important books I have ever read to deal with profound depression. I have been hospitalized for depression and now live a healthy, happy, successful life with a challenging career, good friends, and liesure activities I love and enjoy. Moving INTO your depression, instead of escaping from it, is the most important thing you can do to heal. You must practice Zen in order to build the habit of doing this. It is challenging. Pema Chodron's book "When Things Fall Apart" was a very comforting book, but did not offer the strong medicine necessary to deal with serious, profound depression. Philip Martin's does.

A non-psychobabble approach to depression

This book doesn't deal with the psychiatry of the mind in traditional terms. Any person suffering from depression will immediately realize that the FEELINGS they have and have experienced in the past are not unique. The triggers might be unique, but the loneliness, the sense that time has slowed down, the sensation of being stuck in the thickest of mud, those feelings are not unique. This book helps a person understand how to use the experience in a positive way instead of becoming lost in the psychobabble that traditional psychiatrists use to explain why a person becomes depressed. Most people suffering depression want to find a way to feel better--immediately--not sink deeper into a state of melancholy while reading a medical thesis. The chapters are short and to the point and offer a person an opportunity to think about the triggers in their lives which have brought them to this same point again and again. Once a person knows what has made them sad and depressed, they can recognize it in the future and deal with the triggers as they happen and not later on when they feel the worst.

Cross out the word "depression;" change it to "life!"

This book came to my attention just when I really needed it.Don't confuse this volume with the fuzzy-minded dreck filling the shelves of your local New Age bookstore. Martin's writing is simple and lucid, tempered by years of zazen under the guidance of an authentic master of the Soto school. He invites you to recognize your depression as an opportunity to grow, and as a teacher. The modest exercises offered at the end of most chapters cannot fail to help a sincere student.Non-Buddhists will discover much of value here, but Zen students will find it especially rewarding. Many passages earned the approval of my day-glo hilighter. I will return to this little book of wisdom again and again.

Very helpful in those wakeful moments at 3am,

I have found his book very helpful to me when I am awake in the middle of the night and focused on my depression. The exercises at the end of the brief, useful chapters are a calm voice leading me back to letting me relax again. The table of contents allows me to look for the topic that strikes the most immediate note for me. I love this book and recommend it heartily, whether you take medication for depression or not.

I'm usually a tough reviewer, but this book's actually good!

Finally, something helpful for that interminable time when you're in the middle of a six-month bout of severe depression. It helped me to minimise the fear of long-lasting depression and the thoughts that maybe it will never pass. Maybe it won't (though we all know depressions usually eventually lift, but it's impossible to believe this at the time), but at least this book says: "Hey, there are some good things about being depressed." And it tells you what these are, so you can appreciate this awful state of mind for a few moments. Much easier to digest when you're depressed than those useless and offensive "Think Bright And Happy Thoughts"-style of books.