First, there are two things this book isn’t: dogmatic or proselytizing. I want to be clear about that, because I think there might be a tendency to assume any book about faith must be. It isn’t particularly New Agey, either. (Or maybe that’s just me, revealing my bias.)

What it is: a personal examination of faith, belief, and the struggle to make meaning and deal with suffering. Salzberg is a Buddhist and a meditation teacher, and she shares the story of her spiritual development. She doesn’t present her path as the “right” path or the the only path; she presents it as her path, and encourages readers to explore the possibility and power of faith for themselves.

Early in the book, she relates this story:

The Buddha once told a story about faith: A herd of cows arrives at the bank of a wide stream. The mature ones see the stream and simply wade across it. The Buddha likened them to fully enlightened beings who have crossed the stream of ignorance and suffering. The younger cows, less mature in their wisdom, stumble apprehensively on the shore, but eventually they go forward and cross the stream. Last come the calves, trembling with fear, some just learning how to stand. But these vulnerable, tender calves also get to the other side, the Buddha said. They cross the stream just by following the lowing of their mothers. The calves trust their mothers and, anticipiating the safety of reunion, follow their voices and cross the stream. That, the Buddha said, is the power of faith to call us forward.

I’m not sure I can explain why, but this passage strongly affected me.

Salzberg’s journey from bright faith, through verifying faith, and how faith works through fear, despair, and into action just makes sense to me. I hadn’t considered before that faith isn’t something that you have or not but that it is something you do (in languages other than English, faith is a verb), and that is a powerful idea.

You don’t need to be a Buddhist to get something from reading this book. (Salzberg says in her introduction, “Faith does not require a belief system, and is not necessarily connected to a deity or God, though it doesn’t deny one.”) I think what is required is a willingness to investigate spiritual principles with an open mind; if you have that, you’ll enjoy the journey.

Is this a business book? Marketing? Should it be in the (cringe) self help section? It’s tempting to say all of the above. I wrote a blog post about this book last week, describing the main ideas with this venn diagram:

So the book is about asking yourself tough questions: What the fuck am I doing? Why? What am I not doing? Why not? It’s entertaining, if unsettling reading:

The freedom of the new kind of work (which most of us do, most of the time) is that the tasks are vague and difficult to measure. We can waste an hour surfing the ‘Net because no one knows if surfing the ‘Net is going to help us make progress or connections.

This freedom is great, because it means no one is looking over your shoulder; no one is using a stopwatch on you.

This freedom is a pox, because it’s an opening for the resistance. Freedom like this makes it easy to hide, easy to find excuses, easy to do very little.

I read that and… ouch.

Godin is on a mission to get each reader to believe it’s up to you — your work is up to you, not your employer, not anyone else. An important part of the message is that security isn’t what you think, not any more. Keeping your head down, following the rules, putting in your time; today that behaviour doesn’t come with guarantees. Being emotionally invested in what you are doing, working for a mission not a job description, and shipping — that’s what counts now. That’s your work; that’s art.

Some of these ideas may sound familiar to readers of Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind — and certainly if you liked that book, you’ll probably find this more pointed take on work today worth your time. Speaking of other books, if Godin’s criticisms of education resonate, I’d recommend Walking on Water by Derrick Jensen. And it seems all thought-provoking nonfiction I read I can connect to Thomas King’s The Truth About Stories, so I’m going to suggest you read that, too.

The stories we tell ourselves, the education we get or fight to get or fight to undo, the willingness to stop drawing a bright line between personal and professional — they are all part of becoming a linchin.

The authors have turned the notion of “this is going on your permanent record” on its head: what’s on your record is something to embrace, not fear. You should seek to embrace and expose — help write your own record. Comments are open.

Given how long we’ve used the metaphor of paper for the web (it’s all pages, right?) it’s not that surprising. Chris and Julien (their tone is so conversational and approachable, referring to them by last name seems wrong and oddly distancing) make sense. They offer encouragement and practical advice about using social tools, but they don’t walk you through every step, just the key points.

That’s what I want to focus on, the (for me) key points in the book:

“Writing everything online, where it is eternally visible to everyone, forever, has value.” It’s an opportunity — even if only a few people see it, to “build up influence”. And it scales: you write once, post it online, and it becomes discoverable and infinitely shareable.

It’s not about being perfect, it’s about being human. “Since most of the Web isn’t trying to complete a transaction (things like spam not withstanding), people have the tendency to feel closer to each other there. People speak like humans on their blogs … Though it’s a part of trust many don’t take into consideration, intimacy is one of trust’s most powerful elements.”

The importance of being a real person online shouldn’t be obscured by the network: “Social networking is not about getting attention for attention’s sake, but rather about being a part of the network, making other people aware that you are there — and that you’ll be there in the future, too.” This reminds me of my favorite definition of community — you are part of community if they’ll go looking for you if you are missing.

So, it’s a philosophy of altruism. Self-interested altruism? “… helping others is probably one of the most effective ways of helping yourself. By spreading ideas that help others, you get credit and people get the help they need. It’s win-win. What a change from the scarcity mentality most people live with everyday, isn’t it? And that’s one of the best things about the social web; people are deeply interested in sharing with each other.”

All this new stuff — twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, blogging, etc. — is disruptive. What it is disrupting is an artificial way of doing things. We have the ability to move away from the old permanent records you feared because you couldn’t see or control them, and transparently write our own. As Chris and Julien put it, “Why we trust people is the same; it’s only the ways we come to be trusted that have been changing. And that’s because communication has been changing.”

That’s the philosophy. The book offers a framework for action based on it. There’s six pieces to it:

• Make Your Own Game Decide which rules are relevant, and which ones you need to create for yourself.
• One of Us Act like you belong, and you will. You do.
• Archimedes Effect Leverage. Understand it, how to use it.
• Agent Zero Have a wide network, by connecting with several smaller groups.
• Human Artist Treat people right, always.
• Build Armies Think you don’t scale? You do if you can train, inspire, and lead others.

I think the framework is solid because it isn’t based on the latest and greatest tech, but on behavior. By being mindful, paying attention to the right things, taking small actions that matter, staying in learning mode — that’s how to understand and take advantage of new tools, instead of being put off or baffled by them. They are preaching to the choir with a reader like me, though.

Their ideas may not appeal to everyone, but for folks trying to get their heads around how the current crop of web-based communication tools can help them, or working through what web 2.0 stuff means from a practical or business (vs technical) perspective, I highly recommend it. Anyone looking to be persuasive and use new/emerging tools should pick up Trust Agents. It has the virtue of seeming like common sense when you read it.

I am not a reader of self-helpy type books. I’m not trying to cast aspersions on folks who are, though it is true my desire to make it clear I’m not generally a fan of the genre does probably have something to do with the idea that anonymous people on the internet who stumble over this review thinking I might be that kind of reader makes me cringe. [Insert obvious joke about perhaps needing self-helpy books here.]

The other reason to make it clear is that this is not a self help book. Sylvia Boorstein is a Buddhist teacher, a psychotherapist, and Jewish grandmother. While she does seem more patient and calm than the average bear, she’s no saint. This makes me trust her. She says, in her introduction:

I also thought about how easily my mind forgets what it knows, how easily it falls into confusion and out of caring connection. So I decided to write this book–not about avoiding confusion, because we can’t–but about becoming unconfused and restoring connection because it really is the best way to live.

I believe her. Meaning, I recognize that sort of confusion in my own life, it seems common sense that you can’t avoid it, and I think she has more practice than I do “becoming unconfused”.

What she does in this book is share the lessons learned from her practice. In a relatable, non-preachy way, she uses the Buddhist teachings of Wise Effort, Wise Mindfulness, and Wise Concentration (the middle steps of the Eightfold Path–and no, it doesn’t matter if you know what that is or not) as her framework. She tells stories about her friends, her husband, how she goes off track and gets back on again. I imagine she’d be a wonderful person to sit and share a cup of tea with on a rainy afternoon; her writing style makes her books feel like conversations.

If you are looking for an in-depth introduction to Buddhist principles and thought, this isn’t the right book. If, on the other hand, you are curious about Buddhist principles or what contemporary practice might look like, you’ll probably enjoy this. I don’t think you need to have an interest in Buddhism to get a lot out of this book, however. All you really need is an open mind, a willingness to listen, and perhaps a belief in the possibility of adjusting your attitude, because it is an inside job. Highly recommended.

I wrote a blog post not too long after I finished reading this book pulling together examples of connections I had noticed as a result of reading it. That’s probably the best evidence I can offer that the book is worth reading: it will lodge itself in your brain and affect how you see and think long after you’ve put it down.

I’m a fan of Weschler’s work, so I knew I’d love this book. Take the appreciation of the unexpectedly marvelous from Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, add in the odd connections made in Vermeer in Bosnia and mix with liberally with images and you have Everything That Rises. The book might not be as portable as those two (with its pleasing square, nearly coffee table book proportions) but that just means the images are reproduced at a size you don’t need to squint at.

In “The Graphics of Solidarity” a key point of Weschler’s most clearly emerges: people are prepared for images. This is not a revolutionary insight, but it is an important one — we are prepared for images by other images. In his discussion of a famous photograph that depicts something contrary to what most people remember (most people remember the woman in the image carrying a flag, but it was carried by a man behind her), he compares the photo to Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. It is that painting, he explains, that sets the stage for the misremembering:

I am convinced this particular photograph, rather than any of the innumerable others taken that day, was the image Poles came to remember because, in a strange sort of way, they already knew it by heart.

I’ve recommended Weschler’s work before. Having read this book, I’ll recommend it even more highly. His thinking takes unpredictable turns and reveals things you won’t have quite thought of in that way before, but make perfect sense now.