Why the Chicken Crossed the Road: & Other Hidden Enlightenment Teachings from the Buddha to Bebop to Mother Goose

by Dean Sluyter

Looks at the enlightenment teachings hidden in everyday sayings, songs, and jokes in Western culture, including knock-knock jokes, nursery rhymes, and children's finger-play rhymes.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0874779057
• ISBN13: 9780874779059
• Release Date: February 1998
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.1" x 5.6"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

why i love this book...

i have already read dean sluyter's zen commandments and thought it was wonderful. but this book why the chicken crossed the road was even better. it was very funny, eyeopening and enlightening. it made me see things i never saw or thought about before. it showed how caught up we get in details of our beliefs.. this book was not about beliefs. it was about living them.. i would recommend this book to anyone. i wish it was still in print. i would send it to many of my friends.. i will be re reading as well. it has so much to it.. a blessing of a book...

Thank You Mother Dean

Dean Sluyter has an uncanny ability to make the mundane mystical. He takes phrases and songs, slows down time, and holds the words up to the sun turning them over in his hand and inside your mind to extract a much deeper meaning. His deconstruction of Row Row Row Your Boat is worth the price of admission alone. I am as college educated as the next guy and I was giggling like a monkey by the time I had completed the book. Then I gave it to a repairman, a friend of mine, mechanically a genius but completly unread, and he retured it the next morning at 7am because he 'just had to talk to somebody about it, about life, about meaning" and we had a conversation like philosophers over a cup of my horrible coffee. So I say again, Thank you Dean Sluyter. If you are ever in Newport Oregon please stop by. You seem like the coolest guy in America.

A little bit of wisdom in a confusing universe.....

My father bought this book for me when I was going through spiritual difficulties in High-School. I still read it when life gets tough.

Funky, funny, practical

This may be the smartest, funniest, and most practical guide to the spiritual path I have ever read. By using funky American pop culture (knock-knock jokes, "Doggie in the Window," etc.) as his jumping-off point, Sluyter manages to present enlightenment in a way that anyone can connect with. He writes with a wonderful openness that embraces Zen, Jesus, rock 'n' roll and Mad magazine in one big hug - yet he never goes New Age sloppy, but lays out the What's What of spiritual development with precision. A must!

It's a hoot.

Based primarily in Buddhist practice, this ingenious and delightful, yet profound, little book will be tremendously helpful to those on a spiritual path, whatever their tradition. It's packed with humor blended with nuggets of wisdom on every page. An instant classic.