Full Description
Reveals how to use masks, meditation, and improvisation to free yourself from overthinking, self-doubt, and fixed ideas of who you think you are
Sharing a series of mindfulness techniques and acting exercises that show how malleable the self can be, award-winning actor, narrator, and Zen Buddhist priest Peter Coyote reveals how to use masks, meditation, and improvisation to free yourself from fixed ideas of who you think you are and help you release your ego from constant defensive strategizing, calm the mind's overactivity, and allow spontaneous playfulness to arise out of your deepest nature. Developed through 40 years of research and personal study, Coyote's synthesis of mask-based improv games and Zen practices is specifically designed to create an ego-suppressed state akin to the mystical experiences of meditation or the spiritual awakenings of psychedelics. After preparatory exercises, seeing yourself in a mask will temporarily displace your familiar self and the spirit of the mask will take over.
Likening the liberated state induced by mask work to "Enlightenment-lite," Coyote draws on Buddhist philosophy to describe how and why the exercises work as well as how to make your newly awakened and confident self part of daily life. In true Zen form, woven throughout the narrative is a lighthearted parable of an out-of-work Lone Ranger and Tonto, who meet Buddha and experience spiritual awakening. Illuminating the lessons of mask work, the transformation of the Lone Ranger mirrors that of the individual pursuing this practice, revealing how you will come to realize that the world is more magical and vaster than you thought possible.
Contents
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
A True Holiday from Self-Consciousness
PART ONE
Finding the Secrets
1 Losing Myself
2 The Wheel's Spinning, but the Gerbil's Gone
3 Working with Masks
4 Just Who Do You Think You Are?
5 Tricking and Trapping the Self
6 Inviting the Shock of Recognition
7 You Think It's a Game? Try It!
8 The Imaginary Performance
PART TWO
Keeping Your Learning Accessible
9 The Devil You Know
10 Masked in a Hall of Mirrors
11 More on Meditation and Masks
12 The Masks of Language
13 Seeing for the First Time
14 Buddha's Empty Hands
15 The Devil You Don't Know
16 Even Buddha Can Betray You
17 Locating and Listening to Your True Self
Postscript
Acknowledgments
Notes
Suggested
Reading Index
