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Seeing into the Life of Things: Imagination and the Sacred Encounter
The author of The Jew in the Lotus seeks to answer the Dalai Lama’s question.
Rodger Kamenetz, author of international bestseller The Jew in the Lotus, about a pilgrimage of rabbis to see H.H. the Dalai Lama (a historic dialogue between Jewish and Buddhist masters), watched as the rabbis asked H.H. in Dharamsala, “How does your spiritual practice purify afflictive emotions?” Rodger explains in this book, “This is the most fundamental question we might ask of any spiritual practice, any religion or philosophy of life. How do your practices help you purify afflictive emotions such as anxiety, envy, resentment, and shame?”
Kamenetz sets out to answer this question experimentally, in spiritual practice, through the contemplation of images in memory, dreams, perception, and prayer. These practices lead to a life of feeling which displaces negativity and reactivity.
Seeing into the Life of Things will help readers cultivate these skills—perception, memory, dreams, and prayer. The book is structured as a commentary on these practices building step-by-step from the simple “count your blessings” to more difficult images in dreams. Kamenetz shows how to use dreams as prompts and scripts, in order to learn how to experience feelings by acting them out.
Memoir and narrative threads also run through the book, revolving around the author’s relationship with Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi—the most important Jewish teacher of the 20th century and the anchor of that trip to Dharamsala in 1990.
Rodger Kamenetz, author of international bestseller The Jew in the Lotus, about a pilgrimage of rabbis to see H.H. the Dalai Lama (a historic dialogue between Jewish and Buddhist masters), watched as the rabbis asked H.H. in Dharamsala, “How does your spiritual practice purify afflictive emotions?” Rodger explains in this book, “This is the most fundamental question we might ask of any spiritual practice, any religion or philosophy of life. How do your practices help you purify afflictive emotions such as anxiety, envy, resentment, and shame?”
Kamenetz sets out to answer this question experimentally, in spiritual practice, through the contemplation of images in memory, dreams, perception, and prayer. These practices lead to a life of feeling which displaces negativity and reactivity.
Seeing into the Life of Things will help readers cultivate these skills—perception, memory, dreams, and prayer. The book is structured as a commentary on these practices building step-by-step from the simple “count your blessings” to more difficult images in dreams. Kamenetz shows how to use dreams as prompts and scripts, in order to learn how to experience feelings by acting them out.
Memoir and narrative threads also run through the book, revolving around the author’s relationship with Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi—the most important Jewish teacher of the 20th century and the anchor of that trip to Dharamsala in 1990.
224 pages, Paperback
Published November 4, 2025
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December 19, 2025
Seeing into the Life of Things: Imagination and the Sacred Encounter is a contemplative, searching, and deeply experiential exploration of how spiritual practice can transform the inner life. Rooted in the fundamental question posed by the Dalai Lama how spiritual disciplines purify afflictive emotions this book moves beyond theory into lived practice, inviting readers to engage imagination as a sacred faculty.
Kamenetz approaches spirituality not as doctrine, but as an embodied process of perception, memory, dreams, and prayer. His central insight is both subtle and powerful: emotions such as anxiety, resentment, envy, and shame are not overcome by suppression or abstraction, but by cultivating a life of feeling that can hold and transform them. Through contemplative exercises that progress from gratitude practices to the more demanding terrain of dream imagery, the book offers readers practical ways to displace reactivity with presence.
One of the book’s great strengths is its integration of memoir with instruction. The narrative thread of Kamenetz’s relationship with Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi lends the work historical depth and spiritual lineage, grounding these practices in a living tradition of Jewish renewal while remaining open, interfaith, and inclusive. The legacy of The Jew in the Lotus is clearly felt here, not as repetition, but as maturation an inward turn toward the imagination as a meeting place between the human and the sacred.
Kamenetz’s prose is reflective, patient, and invitational. Rather than prescribing outcomes, he models a way of paying attention that allows meaning to emerge organically. His use of dreams as both prompts and scripts is especially compelling, reframing the unconscious not as something to decode intellectually, but as something to inhabit emotionally and ritually.
For readers drawn to spirituality that honors imagination, interfaith dialogue, and emotional transformation, Seeing into the Life of Things is a thoughtful and nourishing work. It is a book best read slowly, practiced alongside, and returned to one that gently reshapes how readers encounter their inner world and, through it, the sacred.
Kamenetz approaches spirituality not as doctrine, but as an embodied process of perception, memory, dreams, and prayer. His central insight is both subtle and powerful: emotions such as anxiety, resentment, envy, and shame are not overcome by suppression or abstraction, but by cultivating a life of feeling that can hold and transform them. Through contemplative exercises that progress from gratitude practices to the more demanding terrain of dream imagery, the book offers readers practical ways to displace reactivity with presence.
One of the book’s great strengths is its integration of memoir with instruction. The narrative thread of Kamenetz’s relationship with Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi lends the work historical depth and spiritual lineage, grounding these practices in a living tradition of Jewish renewal while remaining open, interfaith, and inclusive. The legacy of The Jew in the Lotus is clearly felt here, not as repetition, but as maturation an inward turn toward the imagination as a meeting place between the human and the sacred.
Kamenetz’s prose is reflective, patient, and invitational. Rather than prescribing outcomes, he models a way of paying attention that allows meaning to emerge organically. His use of dreams as both prompts and scripts is especially compelling, reframing the unconscious not as something to decode intellectually, but as something to inhabit emotionally and ritually.
For readers drawn to spirituality that honors imagination, interfaith dialogue, and emotional transformation, Seeing into the Life of Things is a thoughtful and nourishing work. It is a book best read slowly, practiced alongside, and returned to one that gently reshapes how readers encounter their inner world and, through it, the sacred.
Displaying 1 of 1 review