Breakfast with Buddha
Ratings5
Average rating4.1
15
Ratings5
Average rating4.1
When his sister tricks him into taking her guru on a trip to their childhood home, Otto Ringling, a confirmed skeptic, is not amused. Six days on the road with an enigmatic holy man who answers every question with a riddle is not what he'd planned. But in an effort to westernize his passenger—and amuse himself—he decides to show the monk some "American fun" along the way. From a chocolate factory in Hershey to a bowling alley in South Bend, from a Cubs game at Wrigley field to his family farm near Bismarck, Otto is given the remarkable opportunity to see his world—and more important, his life—through someone else's eyes. Gradually, skepticism yields to amazement as he realizes that his companion might just be the real thing.In Roland Merullo's masterful hands, Otto tells his story with all the wonder, bemusement, and wry humor of a man who unwittingly finds what he's missing in the most unexpected place.
Series
1 primary bookBreakfast with Buddha series is a 1-book series first released in 2007 with contributions by Roland Merullo.
Reviews with the most likes.
Otto Ringling—suburban father, husband, book editor—takes a cross-country trip to his family home, and, via his flaky sister, along for the ride is his sister's guru. Otto is quite happy with his life, his family, his work, but since the sudden and unexpected deaths of his parents, he's had a little nagging voice in his head, and the presence of Rinpoche during the long drive gives him the opportunity to talk out some of the questions pressing on him. Otto gradually moves from a legalistic view of his own spirituality to a more free-flowing view.
“...I have a tremendous fascination with the United States of America, the grand, swirling variousness of it, the way it siphons off the ambitious, the Poor, and the abused from so many other nations, the ability we seem to have to be noble and heroic at the same time we are being arrogant and stupid. I love my country. But I love it the way you love a wife of many years: not because you have some sentimental notion of her perfection, but because you know her thoroughly....”
The scene with Rinpoche giving a blessing to a biker-type in a bowling alley shines for me: “When it was finished, Rinpoche took a step backward and bowed. The man with the snake tattoo stood frozen in place. And then across his jagged features bloomed the smile he must have had as a young boy, before anything had been taken away from him by what he saw and heard, before the world had shown him its teeth and bitten him.”
It's a beautiful moment among many beautiful moments in the book.
