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Law of Reflection by Marc Preston Moss

“Life is like a great big role-playing game,” writes Marc Preston Moss, “The way to win isn’t to have the most stuff or the highest status—it’s how to find the way out of the game entirely.” That way out is the path that leads to enlightenment and the cessation of suffering, according to Buddhist tradition. It’s the way out of a repeating cycle of birth, death and rebirth, the path to achieve freedom from the pain of worldly existence. And if that path seems beyond your ability to find it, never mind follow it, there’s a book you should read.

Law of Reflection (Holon Publishing/Collective Press) is Moss’s story of how a devastating breakup set in motion his search for answers and solutions — a search that would take him from his Midwest comfort zone to mystical places halfway around the world and back. Along the way, we have the privilege to not only witness his frustrating setbacks and glorious ah-hah moments, but to experience them by his side. As a result, we can benefit from everything he learns on his spiritual journey, one that begins with a fleeting glimpse of the Dali Lama on television and in a bookstore display.

SEEKING ANSWERS AND SOLUTIONS

Moss had been searching through his painful childhood for the reasons why he was in such pain. His most recent ex-boyfriend had cheated on him with what turned out to be dozens of other men, leaving him with not only a broken heart but shattered self-esteem. He could see parallels with his family dynamic growing up — an irritable mother who withdrew her affection and attention from him to tend to the needs of his disabled youngest brother, a disciplinarian father whose own infidelity would eventually break up the family. Every insight Moss discovered, though, would send him into a never-ending loop of suffering all over again. There had to be a way out.

That way out presented itself on television one day, where he caught a brief segment on the teachings of the Dali Lama, and then soon after in a bookstore, which was selling copies of The Four Noble Truths, a book devoted to the core philosophy of Buddhism. He was skeptical at first, but something about these unfamiliar concepts resonated with him, beginning with the idea that suffering is a condition that can be cured through enlightenment.

This began a long period of studying what Moss calls “over-the-counter Dharma.” He attempted to put into practice what he read about. Many times, he would toss aside a book from his growing library of Buddhist teachings, frustrated and confused by the concepts. Finally, he bit the bullet and headed out to a Buddhist monastery a couple of hours away. The visit would put him in contact with people who were more than happy to help him discover, practice and understand the tenets of Buddhism — along with contacts who eventually brought him not only to the doorstep of the Dali Lama himself, but to the jungles of Nepal to meet a Bodhisattva who could very well be the next Buddha.

INSIGHTS AND AH-HAH MOMENTS

As his understanding grows, Moss relates how he was able to wrap his mind around some very complex concepts, and his insights become our own ah-hah moments. Far from being dry and scholarly, his explanations are full of clear language, vivid imagery and inherent poetry, as in this description of how he came to understand the concept of “emptiness” of forms, or the lack of concrete reality:

The tree that I was looking at was a stream of data that stretches backward through time and will stretch forward as well. It was a constantly changing thing, changing millisecond by millisecond. If I were to represent every millisecond with a domino, I would have an infinitely long chain of dominoes that stretched backward and forward in time. The tree I thought I saw was really just a sliver of that stream to which I apply the label tree.

Looking at an object in such a way brings the scientific and the spiritual into surprising alignment. There are many more similar surprises throughout the book, such as the connection between Buddhism and the concepts behind The Law of Attraction, as our superficial impressions of Buddhism are replaced with an introduction to a life-changing set of worldviews that are already all around us in many forms.

For as long as Moss has been studying and practicing up to this point, he will be the first to admit he’s still a student. Yet he has made it his mission to help other students just starting on their journey find the path in the first place. Thankfully, he’s a guide who knows not only how to teach but can show us how to learn.


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Law of Reflection by Marc Preston Moss
Publish Date: 5/27/2021
Genre: Memoir, Nonfiction, Self Help
Author: Marc Preston Moss
ISBN: 9781955342120
Cynthia Conrad

Cynthia Conrad is a contributing editor to BookTrib. A poet and songwriter at heart, she was formerly an editor of the independent literary zine Dirigible Journal of Language Art and a member of the dreampop band Blood Ruby. Nowadays, she's using her decades of marketing experience as a force for good with the United Way. Cynthia lives in New Haven, CT.

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