A Zen study wrapped in a memoir of destruction and healing written by an elite ultrarunner as she struggles to make it to the other side of a life-shattering injury with her sanity, and her marriage, intact
After flipping her raft days away from help on a trip down the remote Salmon River, Katie Arnold’s shattered leg tests both her spirit and her marriage for years to come. It also reignites her meditation practice and motivates her to dive into Zen in search of healing. Before the accident, Katie was an elite ultrarunner with a simmering but adequate marriage who avoided being indoors whenever possible. But who is she afterwards?
In the midst of hardship, Katie turns for support to the Zen practice she had long dabbled in. Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World is a Zen study wrapped in a memoir that tells the story of a search for stillness by a woman born for wildness. Spanning roughly two years, from shortly before the accident through the long, uncertain healing of both leg and marriage, it is a personal narrative of that tumultuous time nested inside meditations on Zen.
Having gone from a reluctant spiritualist to a Zen practitioner over the course of a decade, Katie Arnold offers unique company for those seeking nature’s exquisite highs as well as for creatives, spiritualists, and sensualists who want to slow down and examine the possibilities of a well-lived life. As the late Japanese master Shunryu Suzuki wrote, “Sometimes a flashing will come through the dark sky.” These brief flashings are enlightenment—moments when we suddenly feel as if we’re part of everything, and everything’s part of us. This book is about how to experience the flashings when they come, and about what they mean for how we live our lives.
ISBN-13: 9781952692697
Media Type: Paperback
Publisher: Parallax Press
Publication Date: 04-16-2024
Pages: 208
Product Dimensions: 5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)
Katie Arnold is the author of Running Home and a contributing editor at Outside Magazine. A Zen practitioner and elite ultrarunner, Katie teaches writing workshops exploring the link between movement and creativity. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Men’s Journal, ESPN Magazine, Marie Claire, Runner’s World, Elle, and Sunset, as well as on NPR Weekend Edition Sunday and The Upaya Zen Center Podcast. Katie lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her husband, Steve Barrett, their two daughters, and two dogs.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Flashpoints
PART ONE: RIVERS
1. Lessons in Falling
2. The Idea of Order
3. Flow
4. Boredom
5. The Summer I Didn’t Die
6. Idaho
7. Stories
8. River of No Return
9. Not Knowing
10. One Rapid at a Time
11. Back to Zero
12. Broken
13. No Good, No Bad
14. Running on the Page
15. Range
PART TWO: MOUNTAINS
16. Zen Mind, Runner’s Mind
17. Teachers
18. Anything
19. Forgetting
20. Undoing
21. Form
22. Right Effort
23. Beast Mode
24. Phenomenal Expression
25. Fourteen
26. Ordinary
27. Hair on Fire
28. Continuous Mistake
29. Everyday Mind
30. Clear Water All the Way to the Bottom
31. Lightning in the Sky
Epilogue
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