INSTRUCTIONS TO THE COOK: A Zen Master's Lessons in Living a Life that Matters, by Bernard Glassman & Rick Fields (Bell Tower/Crown, 1996). Reviewed by Claude Whitmyer for Shambhala Sun, April 1996.The Ch'an/Zen tradition has a long history of teaching stories that center on the cook. From the Taoist tale of Prince Wen Hui's cook in The Inner Chapters of Chuang Tsu to the koan about Guishan kicking over the water pitcher in the Wumenguan, the cook plays a central role in the practice life of the Zen community. It seems quite in keeping with that history for an American…

MERCHANTS OF VISION: People Bringing New Purpose and Values to Business. Edited by James E. Liebig. (Berrett-Koehler, 1994, 252pp, bibliography, index, ISBN 1-881052-42-7). Reviewed by Claude Whitmyer for AHP Perspective and the Journal of Management Consulting. Moving into the 21st century won't be easy, but the business pioneers of the last two decades have been paving the way. What they have discovered is an essentially different way of doing business, a kind of “paradigm shift” away from the so-called “modern” industrial ways of doing business to the radically different postmodern, postindustrial attitudes and tools used by the newer, more successful…

THE REPUBLIC OF TEA: Letters To A Young Zentrepreneur, by Mel Ziegler, Bill Rosenzweig, and Patricia Ziegler. (Currency Doubleday, 1992, 316 pp, ISBN 0-385-42056-0). Reviewed by Claude Whitmyer for Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Spring 1992.Traditionally, best-selling business books rely heavily on warfare metaphors. From The Business Secrets of Attila the Hun to Waging Business Warfare: Lessons from the Military Masters in Achieving Corporate Superiority, the message is clear: business is the moral equivalent of war. Language has a powerful effect on how we see the world and consequently on how we behave. As author Sam Keen points out in Fire…