Be Here Now

This book offers a diverse range of experiences. While some sections were challenging and I didn't enjoy them, others were easy to read and I thoroughly enjoyed them. Overall, the book is packed with fascinating and valuable Buddhist wisdom. Some sections are better suited as reference materials, allowing readers to revisit them when they're in the mood and when they resonate with their current life circumstances. I'll rate this book 4 out of 5 stars, primarily due to the challenging parts. If the rating were solely based on the wisdom in the book, it would easily earn a 5-star rating.

This book's first section is a captivating memoir by Ram Dass, also known as Richard Alpert. It's an engaging and easy-to-read read that I thoroughly enjoyed. The second part is a collection of hand-drawn and sometimes humorous illustrations that illustrate Buddhist wisdom. While I found some of the pictures interesting, I eventually grew tired of them and skipped the entire section. The final section is a treasure trove of wisdom, each piece relevant to a specific topic. Most of the wisdom is straightforward and practical, making it easy to apply to my life. However, there are a few other sections that seemed strange and unnecessary, so I skipped them.

I picked up Be Here Now after the passing of Ram Dass. I didn't actually know who the hell Ram Dass was until people were suddenly mourning him, but was quickly made aware that one of my favorite quotes - “We are all just walking each other home” - could be attributed to him, and decided to give it a shot.

This is a hard book to review, since it's really four books in one, and they're all rather different. The first part is an autobiography, the second part is a psychedelic, illustrated, Alice in Wonderland style trip that reads like a transcription of a speech, the third part is a how-to, and the last part is the first chapter of another book (Be Love Now). Overall, I gave it four stars, which puts it in the glad-I-read-it and would-recommend range.

I consider myself both a seeker and a skeptic, so I believe there are likely dimensions to existence that our human minds - limited both by biology and our own constraints - cannot readily perceive, and also that our human minds are capable of concocting some wacky shit. So, for example, I don't honestly know if seeing the light at the end of the tunnel at near-death is the experience of entering a heaven or a shared universal consciousness or if it's the experience of neurons firing along shared biological and chemical processes that all humans have.

Either way, I figure we're all on this ride together, so learning about each other and coexisting well is probably important. This book was useful for that end. I appreciated learning about Dass' trips, both the psychedelic and to-India types. I also thought his conclusions about psychedelics were poignant: Can be a good thing, but you'll always come down, whereas you can achieve a permanent trip with spiritual enlightenment. I agree with other reviewers that some of his descriptions were sort of vague or ethereal, but I can sympathize with the inability to properly explain something to someone who hasn't been there. Sometimes there aren't words.

There were some pearls of wisdom, lots of good quotes from other sources, and guidelines for action that most of us would benefit from following. There were also some things I just can't abide, like a passing reference to certain very-enlightened folks living on light alone. (I'm sorry, but... no. I cannot. We cannot photosynthesize. That's where I draw the line.) In sum, I think this book fits well in the “take what you like and leave the rest” category.