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Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions For An Ordinary Life (2010)

by Karen Maezen Miller(Favorite Author)

3.82 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1577319044 (ISBN13: 9781577319047)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

New World Library

review 1: Deeply unsatisfying. The premise seemed good, but the author talked in circles and I couldn't figure out when she was referring to her first husband, second husband, random boyfriends from her days before any husbands.... She broke up her book into three sections, comparing life to laundry, the kitchen, and tending the yard- those metaphors made sense, but then she continued her random thoughts and simply lost me.
review 2: This book should be subtitled "care instructions for the hypocritical life of a privileged upper-middle class white woman". She talks of taking things as they come, and yet admits she still argues with her second husband about the toilet seat? She says she gave up on the idea of idealized storybook romances, yet spares no expensive in ideali... morezing her own life. How great, you have the privilege few do to sell all your possessions, your house, divorce your husband, fly half way across the country to meditate at a retreat, and then fly to Italy where you embark on a brand-new storybook romance in your 40's with someone else--and your advice in the end is that no, your new husband isn't really any better than your old one, you're just more accepting of your unhappiness?I quit reading at that point. I get that maybe the point is that as a zen priestess or whatever you are constantly trying and "practicing" but, again, the whole "we still argue about the toilet seat" thing is a massive red flag. Are you really happy or better off than you were if you still argue about garbage that isn't important? Are you at all qualified to try to tell people how to be happy if your book makes it shamefully clear that you aren't?I'm not at all willing to buy this defeatist concept that happiness is surrendering to misery. The author admits to dreaming of being a possessionless monk but "surrenders" herself to a life of dishwashing machine anecdotes. How cute, you can afford to break a dishwasher and immediately replace it. How terrible that must be for you to have abandoned your miserable upper-middle class lifestyle only to land in it again but this time with the Zen ability to revel in it, to realize that life is misery or something.This book is meaningless to anyone who doesn't live with continual wealth. Even if you do, I have no idea how this book could instruct you on feeling more fulfilled. At her first meeting with her Zen master she asks him how she should bow when leaving, he says some nonsense about how "smartness alone isn't as nice", avoids the question, and she leaves enlightened or at least fearless? What does that mean? Does it mean anything? Did it mean anything to her? Probably not, but it adhered to her storybook concept of spiritual enlightenment.She says something in the book about how you should judge a teacher by their practice. Based on her continual admissions of being argumentative with her husband, of her infatuation with her appearance and desire of her husband to make more money, her attachment to "stuff", it's pretty safe to say this woman practices not a single thing she claims to preach. She is pretending, living out a life she decided to fantasize about, doing over and over the thing she is telling you not to do. If being Zen or Buddhist means you just have to be what you've always been, tell other people to not be like you, and write overwrought memoirs romanticizing your "troubled" wealthy life, then I guess anyone can do it... so long as you've got the money. Writing books like this seems to be a good way to keep that money flowing in. less

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