The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/Searching for Home: Difference between revisions

This final third of the memoir is the story of the last retreat, a seven-day ''sesshin'', at the SoHo ''zend''. At 80, Roshi has decided to sell the ''zend'' when he returns to Japan, so this will be the final ''sesshin'' Shainberg and twenty others will share with Roshi in New York. It is during this ritual where these narratives come together, and Shainberg develops the metaphor for finding his “long-lost home.” Whether Shainberg is ultimately successful might be up for discussion I won’t give away any more here but he was successful in leaving me with a lot to contemplate about myself, my own influences, and ultimately what I will leave behind. As I said above: I do not want to give the impression that Shainberg’s memoir is depressing or maudlin, but it is honest and compelling. It left me with a sense, finally, of a resonant ambivalence (perhaps akin to Shainberg’s own shaking), similar to my feelings upon finishing Herman Hesse’s ''Siddhartha'', in my role as a fellow human on his own search for a long-lost home.