Through an Eastern Window

In a simply and clearly written book, Mr. Huber relates his personal experience with Zen meditation for which he traveled to Japan. In Zen style, he leaves out many details about his life and reasons for going in the first place, and we the readers first see him arriving at the meditation center. We are brought along on his journey day by day and feel along with the author the difficulties and challenges that a westerner encounters when trying to grapple with an intense discipline such as Zen meditation. Making the conscious mind empty is perhaps one of the hardest human challenges and Mr. Huber and his fellow students were asked to do just that. In doing so, however, the author undergoes a shiftin consciousness and his teacher tells him he had a successful experience in zen, rare for a first-timer, even more rare for a westerner. Mr. Huber does not attempt to paint himself as a star ascetic, as the second experience he recounts ends with him stopping his apprenticeship early in order to go and experience life with his new found counsciousness and awareness. In this way, he makes himself more credible to the reader, as most of us would want to go and see the world with new eyes after experiencing another level of awareness, rather than immediately go and cloister oneself off for a further time period. An engrossing book, Through an Eastern Window has a compelling narrative structure, so that you "want to see what happens," while at the same time experiencing and understanding zen s precepts through the main character. I would recommend this as a short and engaging read to anyone considering meditation or even who has had experience in it, as an affirmation