Portland Public Library

The rainman's third cure, an irregular education, Peter Coyote

eng

Includes bibliographical references

autobiography

platesillustrations

no index present

non fiction

The rainman's third cure

bibliography

892163318

Peter Coyote

an irregular education

The guiding metaphor in Coyote's new spiritual biography is drawn from a line in an early Bob Dylan song, and has become the tale of a young man caught between apparently antipodal options and the journey that leads to wealth and power. Coyote provides readers intimate portraits of mentors that shaped him, as what begins as a peripatetic flirtation with Zen deepens into a life-long avocation, ordination as a priest, and finally the road to Transmission-- acknowledgment from his teacher that he is ready to be an independent teacher"The guiding metaphor in Peter Coyote's second memoir is a play on a line from an early Bob Dylan song. For Coyote, the twin forces Dylan sings about--Texas Medicine and Railroad Gin--represent the competing forces of the transcendental and psychedelic with the world of wealth and power. The Rainman's Third Cure is the tale of a young man caught between these apparently antipodal options and the journey that leads him from the privileged halls of power to Greenwich Village jazz bars, to a radical commune in the desert, to zen sesshins, and to international success on stage and screen. Expanding his scope beyond his wild ride through the 1960s counterculture that occupied so much of the focus of his praised debut memoir, Sleeping Where I Fall, here Coyote provides readers an intimate glimpse into the relationships that shaped him--with his own father, jazz men, a Mafia consigliere, a gay dancer in Martha Graham's company, and poet Gary Snyder, who introduced him to Zen Buddhism. Ultimately, what begins as a transitory attraction to Zen finally develops into a life-long avocation, ordination as a priest, and finally a road to transmission. In Zen, Coyote discovers a third option that takes him beyond the worlds of Love, Ecstasy, Collaboration, and Power--and its correlatives of seeking after status and material wealth. In this energetic, reflective and intelligent memoir, The Third Cure is the way out of the box. The way that works."--Jacket