Finding Success in Failure with Natalie Goldberg

Product Description

Natalie Goldberg recently had her world turned upside down when she made startling discoveries about her beloved Zen Buddhist teacher. In this moving dialogue, with her characteristic honesty, she tells how being forced to look at his failings, as well as those of her father, helped her see the light in each of us. She explains, “When I looked into betrayal and failure, I also found enlightenment.” Hear how she wrestled with her own demons to make sense of the things she never wanted to know. With the familiarity and humor of a good friend, and the insight of a wise teacher, she lends hope and courage the fallibility we all face in those we love-and in ourselves. Natalie Goldberg has been practicing Zen meditation and teaching seminars in writing as a spiritual practice for more than twenty-five years.

Her classic Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within (Shambhala 1986) has sold over one million copies and been translated into nine languages. Ms. Goldberg’s other books include Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life (Bantam 1990), Long Highway: Waking Up in America (Bantam 1994), and The Great Failure: A Bartender, a Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Enlightenment (HarperSanFrancisco 2004).

Topics Explored in this Dialogue:

• How you can embrace the bad as well as the good in someone you love
• How failure and betrayal can lead you to success
• Why a good writer must be a good listener
• What changes you may experience when you see things as they really are
• Why keeping secrets may be the biggest mistake of all

Host: Michael Toms Interview Date: 10/9/2004