A Thousand Names for Joy

In the next week or so, I will be offering up reviews and thoughts about Byron Katie’s new book, A Thousand Names for Joy. The book is essentially a conversation between a 2500 year old book on Zen philosophy – the Tao Te Ching – and Ms. Katie. The fact that the Tao Te Ching’s author – a Zen monk named Lao-tzu – is long since dead is of little importance to Ms. Katie, and she joyfully wanders through the passages of the Tao Te Ching, adding bits of her own wisdom, and meandering off into random, and highly fascinating tangents. It’s not a book for beginners of any sort, but definitely an interesting read for anyone who’s familiar with either Byron Katie’s work or Zen philosophy.

For a bit of a teaser, and to start this review series off, I’ll tell you about the projector…

Katie suggests that our minds are like film projectors. We watch the universe unfold inside our heads as our minds project sights and sounds and smells and so on, for us to enjoy. But sometimes we don’t enjoy the show. When this happens, Katie suggests that the best way (if not the only way) to fix the problem is not to fiddle with the film itself but with the projector. In other words, the outside world isn’t what’s making us want to boo and hiss. The film is perfect, just the way the director, actors, and producers want it to be. Instead, it’s a faulty projector that is causing our grief: a smudge on the lens, a missing gear, a slipping belt, or maybe even an unplugged cord. So, if we want to go back to enjoying the show, we first need to work on making the projector – our minds – project things more clearly. To do that, we can use a process of inquiry, such as Socratic dialogue, that helps us question any prejudices, biases, and just plain dumb things we have been led to believe.

So, if your movie doesn’t make sense, take a look at what smudges might be blurring your own mind, clear them off, and refocus your projector. And, for heavens’s sake, if you find yourself watching some trashy horror movie from the ’50s in your mind, enjoy it, but don’t take it seriously, ok?

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