THE DIARY OF A ZEN MAMMA by Brenda Shoshanna
During this startling memoir, Rebecca leaves home in Boro Park, Brooklyn for the first time at seventeen to go to a college in the mountains and explore the outside world. As destiny accompanies her, she instantly meets her acting teacher, Lance and ten weeks later, on her eighteenth birthday, runs away with him in a blizzard and gets married. Lance, from a different culture, is forbidden to her, though.
Once news of the marriage gets out, Rebecca must leave home for good and both are thrown out of college. An outcast, she now has to find where she really belongs, discover her true home.
Rebecca and Lance immediately move into his cold water flat in Greenwich Village, in a building filled with actors, artists and assorted bookies. Lance immediately warns her, that he can never make her happy, she must do that for herself.
Shocked, Rebecca clings to her little book on Zen for guidance, wondering where her Zen Master could be? Incredibly, one day he appears. Rebecca meets a powerful, charismatic Japanese Zen Master, with whom she practices for the next forty-five years. Their unbreakable relationship and his liberating teachings permeate both the memoir and her life. And, despite insoluble differences with Lance, Rebecca is now able to experience a different kind of love. One that cannot be threatened, no matter what.
Yet the past is waiting to flood back into their lives. Danger arises as Rebecca suddenly discovers that her newborn son is on the edge of death. Desperate, she calls home, begging for help. Her brother instantly gathers a minyan, (companions in prayer) and her son is miraculously, and quickly healed.
Overwhelmed, Rebecca’s world starts spinning again. Soon she feels compelled to return to the synagogue and is compelled to continue at the Zendo as well. We explore Rebecca’s reunion with her family, her journey back to her roots, caring for her children, and the inevitable threat to her marriage. She is torn apart by what seems like radical differences between Jewish and Zen practices and their totally different lifestyles.
At the peak of her conflict, and with the help of her Zen Master, Rebecca suddenly experiences the incredible connection between both worlds. She sees how Judaism and Zen uplift and empower one another. Like two wings of a bird, both are needed to fly. Her relationship with Lance swiftly deepens as well, no matter what form it takes. Above all, Rebecca sees that the children are our real teachers, and becoming a true Mamma is enlightenment itself.
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