David Michie seemed to have it all. Happily married, with a high-flying job in corporate PR in London, he was living ‘the life’. So why wasn’t he ‘happy’? As it turned out, he was paying a high cost for his success. The lack of work/life balance had really started to take its toll and he was constantly plagued by feelings of discontent. It was as if I had ‘stopped living’, he says. Advised by a naturopath to ‘cultivate calm’, he enrolled in meditation classes and it changed his life. Not claiming to be any kind of guru, Michie intersperses his personal story with ruminations on the nature of happiness, the key  teachings and concepts of Tibetan Buddhism and different meditation techniques (included on a bonus CD). Some of the concepts are difficult and require commitment but as Michie says ‘Buddhism is more à la carte than set menu’ so we can pick and choose to suit ourselves. Reassessing our priorities, shifting our focus from ‘arranging the externals’ to changing what’s going on in our minds is one of the  first steps to take. A practical, inspirational piece for our uncertain times, it lends itself perfectly to Nicholas Bell’s soothing, familiar voice.

Paula Grunseit is a freelance reviewer and former deputy editor of Good Reading magazine

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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