Tracy Cochran will be known to many by association: she’s the editorial director at Parabola, the popular, non-profit, quarterly, interspiritual magazine. She’s also a committed Buddhist practitioner, a meditation teacher, and founder of the Hudson River Sangha, which meets in Tarrytown, New York.
Her book is all about the practices of being present, compassion, listening, and meaning.
She tells stories from her life, rich with experience, and she quotes other great teachers including Robert Pirsig, Meister Eckhart, Annie Dillard, Bhikkhu Bodhi, the Dalai Lama, and Rainer Maria Rilke.
Cochran’s stories illuminate ways of being in the world that many people miss altogether, especially living fully in the present which, she writes, she’s committed her life to doing.
Anecdotes from the life of the Buddha are here, including Buddha in the forest at night, Buddha leaving the worldly behind, and Buddha achieving enlightenment, pondering then the tree under which he’d sat for so long, giving it his full attention.
Giving life our full attention, might be the best summary of this poetic, poignant book. If Cochran doesn’t get you to sit still, wake up, and listen to your surroundings, perhaps nothing will.
Sometimes the stories are not what we might expect, not the usual anecdotes of meditation teaching. For example, we meet Cochran’s father, who enlisted in the U.S. armed forces just moments after the Japanese bombing at Pearl Harbor, and we follow him through painful moments and his discovery of kindness and generosity. Cochran also remembers conversations with her daughter, talking about the Vikings from whom they are descended. One of Cochran’s aims is to demonstrate how every human being has an opportunity to be a hero. (See the excerpt accompanying this review for more on this.)
Both of Cochran’s parents clearly had a large influence on her. Their teachings are sprinkled throughout. For example, after their house was destroyed by a hurricane: “We’re too old to cry over things. It’s relationships that matter. Love matters. Nothing else lasts.” And, her father: “Do you want to know the secret of life? You keep going for what you love, keep doing things for people you love. Just let things take as long as they take.”
This is how the lessons come, in this book. It is not Buddhism-lite, by any means, but rather, Buddhism’s wisdom and experience without many religious trappings.
Always, Cochran’s experience reveals itself to the reader in ways that we can imagine her beside us, saying simply, for example, “Allow yourself to sit and be still, not meditating but being soft, attending to what is happening without thinking. Notice the wise and loving presence that is always here.”
Go Deeper
The Mindful Life: An e-course on deepening enjoyment of life by cultivating a heightened sense of purpose, awareness, and appreciation.
