Cops, Zen and the Best Way to Die in Fresno Paperback – August 17, 2024

It’s the late 80’s early 90’s … you’re a 6’4”, 5th degree black belt street cop in one of the top homicide rated cities in CA… you also are a buddhist. Working the night shift, you’re continually witness to gruesome and often tragic events, making intense life or death decisions in the blink of an eye, all while feeling the need for spiritual and emotional balance through the practice of Zen and Buddhism. What would that look like? How would you cope? What reasoning would you give to the unnecessary deaths you have to be called on to report? What if you yourself … were involved in one of them?In this book, my father reveals the mental and emotional anguish and struggles that he faced being a man of ancient Buddhist teachings, a teacher to martial art students and an enforcer of the law in a city that wasn’t as forgiving as his spiritual teachers. The push and pull of right and wrong through the eyes of Buddha, about his personal, often gory experiences as a cop, take you on a journey of self awareness, forgiveness, compassion, extreme anxiety and mental suffering. From the outside, you’d never know he was struggling, which may (or may not) have lead to his eventual suicide.The teachings of his realizations are sure to capture the interest, curiosity and need of so many readers, who they themselves, may feel a desire to “make sense” of this crazy world we live in. But none quite as manic or dangerous as the dirty and crime filled streets in the heart of Fresno, Ca. Read more