Dear Jon J M.,

Peace. Intuitive. Enlightenment. Zen Buddhism literature teachings create and protect one’s inner peace. Your story Zen Shorts has changed the way I view the world and carry myself in everyday situations. Stillwater is my favorite character because of his interpretation of the situations he faced. Even though, your audience is mostly children of a young age. I find the book to be insightful because of the way you told the “Shorts” made me realize your way of teaching these lesson’s was through using all of the key elements of the lesson and while adding arbitrary characters to intrigue your younger audience. A couple points I pondered on were how can I apply these lessons to my everyday life, how can I use them to enhance my own way of life, and how can I become more like Stillwater. I discovered that taking the higher road meant more than what it had been sought out to be. This had helped me realize the only true way to take the higher road would be by forgiving those who had wronged me and finding a way to solve and avoid conflicts that I am faced with by simply being honest and passive aggressive. Your story Zen Shorts introduced a new type of perspective to my life that can be used to improve upon myself.

At a young age I would become furious when people would tell me that I shouldn’t do something so to prove I could and I would hold a grudge against anyone who angered me enough. I would go days, weeks, and sometimes even months being made at someone for making a petty mistake. For example, a wild child of a kid in my neighborhood rode his bike through our garden that I cared for (with the help of my mother) since the early spring. I despised him for the longest time because of that one incident. The short story “A Heavy Load” which was later introduced to me from reading this book to one of my many younger brothers. It made me reflect on how I used to act and now I ask myself “Have you carried it long enough?” Turns out that I find the kids who seem defiant like my former and younger self, a real nuisance, Ironic right?

Another of the Zen Shorts was called “The Farmer’s Luck”. Before I had read this short, I thought that good luck and bad luck were completely unrelated, but after I read this short story it changed my opinion of that. This short book has shown me this with some arbitrary humor considering the perspective of the story.  This story showed me that bad luck might not pertain to luck at all because “Maybe good luck and bad luck are all mixed up. You never know what will happen next.” I found it very easy to relate my own experience to this because once I’d been down I felt that my luck would never turn around.

Yours truly,

Wyatt F.