Ambivalent Zen is a memoir of spiritual ambition, and of the wisdom, disappointment, and antic harrowing comedy that follow in its wake. Introduced to Zen at the age of fifteen by his father, Lawrence Shainberg becomes a sometime devotee of the vision that promises freedom, challenges ego, and aims desire toward the ultimate state of no desire at all. As basketball addict, Shainberg's first failed impulse is to apply Buddhism to the mind, which defeats him when he steps onto the court.

Later, as a novelist and journalist, Shainberg sees his work inspired and blocked by similar inclinations. Every taste of clarity is followed by its opposite. Again and again he is reminded that Zen is nothing more than total embrace of our impermanence.

1. Shainberg's pilgrimage takes him from the books of Alan Watts, J. Krishnamurti, and D. T. Suzuki to psychoanalysis, karate, and, eventually, the arduous practice of sitting meditation-zazen. Along the way he encounters a number of teachers who fancy themselves Zen masters, and finally, in the Arab quarter of Jerusalem, a Japanese master who seems the valid incarnation of all that he's been seeking. The Zen he offers is concrete, unromantic, and demystified.