ZenGuitar

• ZenGuitar, Philip Toshio Sudo, [ISBN 068483877X (amazon.com, search)]

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No matter how adept you are with the guitar already, wearing the white belt here means you have agreed to set aside all knowledge and preconceptions and open your mind to learning as though for the first time. [...] Students here receive one belt and one belt only: the white belt. Those who put in the time, training, and effort will find their belt getting so soiled that eventually it turns black of its own accord.

A small quote from the excellent ZenGuitar. It's all I can do to refrain from quoting more, in fact I could quote nearly the whole book.

Ostensibly about playing guitar , Sudo's small but dense book conveys an approach to learning and life, permeated with much more pragmatism and down-to-earth feeling for the topic than the title suggests. It fits perfectly alongside George Leonard's Mastery as a reflection on what we gain from learning anything, be it guitar, martial arts, or programming. There's also a web site - http://zenguitar.com/ -- lb

Would someone with no musical talent and little interest in actually playing the guitar get anything from this?--ade

I have a little musical talent and some experience playing the guitar. I found the guitar references mostly unrelatable, but that didn't make any difference. The core of the book is accessible to anyone. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in achieving mastery. --DaveHoover

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Zen Guitar is a good book. It has the ideal structure for a book that's trying to express esoteric concepts to the mainstream: short chapters with a clear theme. It is occasionally profound but sometimes the zen influence makes Toshio Sudo's writing so vague as to be mystical. This is a book of things it would be helpful to believe not things it would be helpful to do.

In many ways this reminds me of LeonardKoren?'s WabiSabi. Both book struggle to translate Japanese concepts into English and ultimately fail unless they can connect with readers who are already predisposed towards these ideas.

The titular 'guitar' seems to be little more than a conceptual hook to hang some zen-related values. I know that Toshio Sudo is a guitarist so it's not just a gimmick but I found that after reading this book I had learned a lot about how zen applied to the author's life but nothing about playing the guitar. Perhaps if I already played the guitar then this wouldn't have been the case.

In trying to reach an audience beyond 'just musicians' the author has ended up with an unfocussed and ultimately disappointing work.--AdewaleOshineye

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A BookOnTheBookshelf