ZEN AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND OTHER PHILOSOPHICAL MUSING BY A STUDENT OF ZEN BUDDHISM
Available in publisher's website (CambridgeScholars.com), Amazon Books, and other outlets.
Search: Paul Andrew Powell
This book is a stimulating and off-beat philosophical tour that will challenge how the reader looks at things.
“An engaging cauldron of ideas.”
Kurt Borchard, PhD
Author, The Word on the Street and Homeless in Las Vegas
“Entertainment for the thinking person (Buddhist included).”
Felicia Furman
Filmmaker, PBS documentary, Shared History
"There is so much more that could be said about this stimulating book but I will leave it there. If you like to explore contemporary cultural issues in contemporary language, but would appreciate the flavour of Zen and non-duality, instead of the sometimes turgid refractions of standard post-modern theory, then this is a book for you."
--- Urthona, a Journal of Buddhism and the Arts
THE REALITY MECHANIC
Available in Amazon Books, and other outlets.
Search: Paul Andrew Powell.
Hang on for a wild ride with a therapy group whose reality is questioned by a mysterious stranger struggling to help ordinary people accept the reality of—Nothingness.
--- from a review
A Postmodern collage: cowboys, Fallen Angels, UFOs, Zen monks, the Logos, insubstantial emanations, satori, autopsies, God as sub-atomic algorithm, tedious, long-winded, bizarre sermons on language, the origins of consciousness and self-awareness; juvenile nonsense, often naive, sentimental, silly and pretentious; mysticism, magic, meaning and meaninglessness, life, death, poetry and song---this and more as we encounter the private lives of five individuals in group therapy: Wanda Willoughby, the anxiety ridden teenage polymath; Charles Hartley, the mop-haired, avuncular Vietnam vet; fragile Vivian Stubbs, the grossly overweight single mom; Gordon Povich, the unemployed handyman with a long-standing annoyance with the world; Dr. Furman, the pretty, young intern presiding over the group, and, of course, Sam Paradise, The Reality Mechanic who plans to save them all with his rheomode. A Zen koan, a Necker cube, a Rorschach test, The Reality Mechanic is not a story, it's an experience; it does not ask the reader to suspend disbelief; it asks the reader to suspend certainty and play with possibilities.
The unusual, the difficult, the lengthy, the intransigent, and above all, the interesting, should expect to find their audience.
---Elizabeth Hardwick
