Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought this book on the suggestion of a friend, and I'm sorry I did. Yes, there are a few good things in it. For instance, chapters about specifying what you want in a mate and defining what you are willing to give, provide helpful checklists. No doubt, similar lists and concepts are found in other books. But the title leads you to believe that the author will apply the wisdom of the Buddha to the dating life. And for the most part, that simply does not happen. The Buddha is hardly mentioned or quoted at all, for most of the book, and in fact, the author appears to be much less familiar with Buddhism than she is with the Muslim Sufi mystical tradition. She quotes Rumi, a Sufi poet, a great deal, quotes modern therapists, etc., but even when she quotes something referring to the Buddha, it's a quote at second hand from a modern author, not a quote from the Buddha's own discourses, or even one of his ancient commentators, or even such collections as "The Gateless Gate." This ought to be a challenging book, braced with a healthy irony and detachment, precisely because the Buddha taught non-attachment and emancipation from desires--whereas for most people, of course, desire is what drives the whole dating enterprise to begin with. Obviously, the whole idea of the Buddha dating is highly unlikely, and for that reason alone, we are entitled to expect some wry wisdom from someone who has truly wrestled with the problem of seeking intimacy while cultivating detachment from the blandishments of everyday life. In fact, the book is very little more than a pastiche of New Age cliches, with a few Buddhist references thrown in for window dressing. For instance, around page 142, the author talks about driving along a highway and seeing a wounded deer. What did she do about this? "I breathed in the deer's pain, and felt a swirling cloud within me. Then I breathed a blessing on the deer and had an image of a deer happily running through the woods. I have no idea whether I helped the deer or not, but I sure felt better." I'm not kidding. This is said with a straight face. Not only did she not stop to investigate, it seems she didn't even call a game warden. She just "breathed in the deer's pain," "breathed out a blessing," and drove on. This kind of fatuous, self-congratulatory inanity is a rather remarkable example for this book but is not all that atypical. Since I generally don't read dating books, I can't say whether this book is any better or worse than other such books out there. But as a vehicle for applying Buddhist wisdom to the dating life, the book is a fraud. The author simply doesn't know enough about Buddhism to say much in that line, so she falls back on saying things like "dance with your fears" and "flow into the love of the gem that is you."