Enlightenment Town | Free Book
In The Press
“A witty, in-depth exploration of a unique place and its spiritual
inhabitants.”
— Foreword (starred review)
“Crestone is now home to twenty-five spiritual communities, including
Vajrayana, Zen, Catholic, and Hindu. Enlightenment Town is the
fascinating story of how these communities live and thrive side by
side.”
— Lion’s Roar
“Who knew that among the mountains of Colorado there exists a town
devoted to enlightenment — and boasting twenty-five religious centers,
coexisting in perfect amity? How is that possible? In Enlightenment
Town, Jeffery Paine takes us on a journey to meet its unforgettable
inhabitants in Airstream trailers, disused mineshafts, and quiet
retreats, across nineteen years. Fascinating, beautifully written,
often funny, sometimes weird — you will love this modern Thoreau.”
— Nigel Hamilton, award-winning biographer of JFK,
Thomas Mann, Bill Clinton, Bernard Montgomery, FDR, and others and
senior fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Boston
“In Enlightenment Town, readers go on the most uncanny, humorous,
profound, and completely surprising journey to the heart of the
spiritual Wild West. If you thought you knew what makes contemporary
pilgrims tick, guess again. Jeffery Paine gives us wonderfully vivid
portraits of renegade seekers of truth. He anoints our language with
his splendid prose; he is our most creative journalist-scholar of
religion. An indispensable book.”
— Howard Norman, author of The Bird Artist and My
Darling Detective
“What if Thornton Wilder had read The Tibetan Book of the Dead before
writing Our Town? What if Norman Rockwell had spent time in a Native
American sweat lodge and then decided to paint spirit animals? What if
Billy Graham had befriended Allen Ginsberg and they had done ayahuasca
together? This is the sort of wild nowhere/everywhere American
landscape Jeffery Paine describes with great flair, courage, and
insight in Enlightenment Town.”
— Dana Sawyer, author of Aldous Huxley: A Biography
and Huston Smith: Wisdomkeeper
“Paine . . . is an open-minded pilgrim who has written an edifying and
entertaining book about his journey to Crestone, Colorado.”
— Spirituality & Practice
“Enlightenment Town is a generous, delightful book, full of divine
misfits and quasi-saints who have dared — or been forced — to widen
their (and our) horizons. You won’t be able to resist Jeffery Paine’s
openness to this community, nor his sly proposal that spiritual life
can be both gentler and quite a bit wilder.”
— Kate Wheeler, Buddhist teacher and author of Not
Where I Started From
“I am not a religious man. Perhaps my few years incarcerated in a
South Indian missionary boarding school cured me of this quest. But as
Jeffery Paine intimates, even those of us who are ‘postreligious’
nevertheless seek some ‘hallowed understanding’ of the human
condition. Paine writes such vivid stories about Crestone’s eclectic
spiritual characters that, I have to confess, I am charmed beyond
belief.”
— Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer and
author of The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames
“With warmth, wit, and tenderness, Jeffery Paine introduces us to a
remarkable community where the secular and the sacred exist side by
side — often indistinguishably. What is it about a small mountain town
in Colorado that has drawn Buddhists, Christian mystics, Sufis, and a
host of other denominations to live together, not with mere tolerance
but with something approaching transcendence? Whatever their secret,
the residents of what Paine calls a ‘Wild West Jerusalem’ have lessons
for all of us.”
— Tim Folger, science journalist and series editor of
The Best American Science and Nature Writing
“Whenever we open our hearts with unconditional love and illumine our
brains with boundless wisdom, everything arises as the world of
enlightenment. Enlightenment Town portrays a true land of Dharma,
where this can happen.”
— Tulku Thondup, author of The Healing Power of Mind
and The Heart of Unconditional Love
“In Enlightenment Town, Jeffery Paine takes us on pilgrimage into the
heart of what it means to be human. In Crestone, Colorado, home to the
world’s most religiously diverse community, we venture high into the
mountains on sacred vision quests and into cathartic sweat lodges, and
join spiritual activists ‘on the path.’ We leave behind the old stale
debate of religion vs. atheism — and belief vs. nonbelief — as we see
people living their enlightenment. Joining this pilgrimage, you will
be well rewarded.”
— Matteo Pistono, author of In the Shadow of the
Buddha and Meditation
“Enlightenment Town is a lively meditation on the nature of religion
and an inquiry into the dynamics of spirituality, articulated with
genuine compassion, empathy, and warm, humane humor. A personal and
heartfelt exploration of the spiritual, Jeffery Paine’s quest situates
him in the town of Crestone, high in the mountains of central
Colorado, where he interacts with a quirky cast of fascinating
characters, spiritual beings from diverse traditions — Hindu, Tibetan
Buddhist, Carmelite Christian, Jewish, Taoist, Native American — all
of whom have something profoundly in common and each of whom teaches
Paine something about the myriad meanings of our relationships with
nature and other human beings. As the journey progresses, Paine begins
to understand and show us the ways in which everything, no matter how
mundane, may be appreciated in some way as sacred.”
— Lee Siegel, author of Love in a Dead Language,
Trance-Migrations, and other books
“Via Crestone, CO, Jefferey Paine chronicles the strange reality of
being a mind and body on earth, our interconnectedness and the
necessity of having to rely on one another. A fascinating read.”
— Sharon Salzberg, author of Real Happiness and Real
Love
- Title: Enlightenment Town | Free Book
- Author: Steven
- Created at : 2024-10-24 00:52:47
- Updated at : 2024-10-26 20:13:35
- Link: https://novels-ebooks.techidaily.com/96164317-9781608685752-enlightenment-town/
- License: This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.