Book Review Taking the Leap Reviewed by Futoon

Taking The Leap is not just a book about meditation. Pema Chödrön is able to deliver guidelines for changing & freeing ourselves from certain bad habits in her book by only taking moments to think.

In the book “Taking the Leap”, Pema Chödrön demonstrates how we can break free of toxic standards in our daily lives in a sense of way that is more free and satisfying by only taking some moments to think and evaluate based on her meditation expertise. She first mentions individuals who are tempted by harmful stories, emotions and actions within the instability of their experiences. In addition, Chödrön discusses clear descriptions of how this process works by simple techniques to begin to breakdown the cycle. Furthermore, she suggests that it can be easily practiced by anyone at any time without meditation training, although she shows the benefits of sitting meditation. Moreover, Chödrön illustrates that people can stop their suffering and access their natural intelligence, warmth and openness with anecdotes from her teachers and examples from her own and others' lives. To be specific, this transformation happens by trying to quickly look upon the shenpa, which is the moment of attachment, as an opportunity rather than an obstacle to be overcome. She also emphasizes the common effects of personal change. Additionally, Chödrön explains that among her strengths are concern about the difficulty of human existence, and her willingness to acknowledge her own flaws. Thus, this short guide provides valuable tools for transformation in uncertain times.

In this book, Chödrön helps us to open our eyes to how certain old habits holds us to a state of mind where we can feel heated, criticizing, insecure and addicted. This book gives us keys and practices we can easily prepare to use in our lives to motivate these necessary aptitudes. In addition, in her friendly and encouraging approach, Pema Chödrön inspires us to take a brave leap towards a new way of living, a way that will bring positive transformation for ourselves and for our disturbed world. Furthermore, the significant secret is to learn a new way to face the unavoidable troubles and insecurities of our daily lives, which is by learning how to stay present and liberate ourselves. Moreover, she revels three important traits that were all along in us, but only discovered when we take this path. These qualities are natural intelligence, natural warmth, and natural sincerity. Thus, she mentions that everyone, all over the globe, has these capacities and can rely on them to help themselves and others as well. Shenpa is a central theme in Taking the Leap. "Each of us can be an active participant in creating a nonviolent future simply by how we work with shenpa when it arises. How individuals like you and I relate to being hooked, these days, has global implications." The key to working with shenpa in a different way is to remain open and even curious about the energy that arises when we are 'hooked', instead of acting out to distract ourselves.

          I didn't really find much difference between the chapters of the book. they seem to repeat the teaching of not getting hooked, which is good, but personally, I found I would like to have read a bit more life-experience examples, as that helps me to better take in and understand what I'm reading. One interesting thing is that this It has great exercises that I would never have thought of such as trying to feel others pain to gain compassion and peace of mind. Lastly, it has equal parts of Buddhist philosophy and down to earth advice, and one shouldn’t be scared off by the Buddhist philosophy because all that she writes about can be put into action without needing any religious spin to it. Highly recommend this book, she is so straight forward with her words of wisdom. She puts herself at the same level as everyone else and is crystal clear.