The Cow in the Parking Lot

A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger

By: Leonard Scheff, Susan Edmiston

Narrated by: Bill Mendieta

Length: 4 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

Imagine you're circling a crowded parking lot. Just as you spot a space, another driver races ahead and takes it. In a world of road rage, domestic violence, and professionally angry TV and radio commentators, your likely response is anger, even fury. Now imagine that instead of another driver, a cow has lumbered into that parking space and settled down. Your anger dissolves into bemusement. What has changed? Not just the occupant of the space but your perspective on the situation.

We're a society swimming in anger, always about to snap. Using simple, understandable Buddhist principles, Scheff and Edmiston explain how to replace anger with happiness. They introduce the four most common types of anger (Important and Reasonable, Reasonable but Unimportant, Irrational, and Impossible), then show how to identify our real unmet demands, dissolve our anger, and change what happens when our buttons are pushed. We learn to laugh at ourselves, a powerful early step, and realize that others don't make us angry. Only we can make ourselves angry.

©2010 Leonard Scheff and Susan Edmiston (P)2010 HighBridge Company

Excellent Narration! Great Info!

I’m a quiet, usually smiling, cheerful sort of person with some stomach problems that were getting worse. I’ve been trying for quite some while to figure out why. One day recently I discovered I am angry! This actually came as a big surprise to me. If you imagine the spray of a fire hose hitting an animal cracker (because I don’t want to injure any real animals in this analogy) you’ll have a good idea of the force of this realization to me. Once realized, I knew I had to help myself. I got this book.

It took me a long time to finish the book. In the beginning, after about five minutes of listening my jaw began hurting or I grew nauseous as the anger clenched up in me. But I kept on and gradually began trying the suggestions offered.

It’s not easy, but the author doesn’t claim that it is, and that understanding on his part helps. The narrator has a wonderfully soothing tone and I appreciated him varying his voice to reflect persons being quoted. That gave the listening a conversational quality. I liked that, and I liked that this book did not have a preachy feel to it. I felt the author’s own struggles with anger. This helped me not feel alone in this.

I am practicing many of the suggestions in the book now. I wish I could say that all of my problems are solved. Hahaha! Wouldn’t that be great? They aren’t. But what is better is that I no longer feel so out-of-control. I am not so insignificant as I used to be. I don’t know if I can convey this or not but...I used anger to give me volume and I needed volume because I didn’t feel anyone heard me otherwise.

Of course they just tune me out when I use volume because who wants to be shouted at? But I didn’t see that before listening to this book. What l saw was that I am a quiet, usually smiling, cheerful sort of person. Well, turns out that I am that...but I sure haven’t been BEHAVING like that. Hmm...

I’ll probably listen to this book again. It’s got good ideas. A couple of goals seem a bit too lofty to me at this point in my life. There’s plenty for me to start with though.

I appreciate the author and narrator and all others concerned with presenting this information for getting it out here on Audible. I definitely find it useful.

Brilliant mindfulness book

Easily digestible advice on small things that cause anger. Lovely comparisons and really fitting stories used to show or explain a point. Even if the content is educational I was entertained for the whole book. A must read for open minded individuals interested in zen teaching and mindfulness practices.

Very helpful

I found the first analogy so helpful with my bouts of unreasonable anger such a game changer that I lived a better life for about a month on it's teaching alone! I'm probably just a cheap date but, I found each progressive chapter to be just as valuable and gently mind changing as the next. I'm no yoga but I am an Improved version of me. thank you Buddha. name she y'all.

Great, if you are trying to change your mind about anger

I have already decided I don’t want anger in my life so I was looking for more skills to help when I feel anger. There are some peppered throughout the book, but this is more about why anger is bad for your life.

Good and profound, but inconsistent performance

The book itself provides very good and useful information that I found very relevant to my situation. While it isn't necessarily groundbreaking, it puts a lot of good, common sense teachings into bite-sized pieces that are easy to understand and apply. My only complaint with the book itself is that, despite the author's disclaimer that this book is not about teaching a religion, it focuses very heavily on Buddhism, to the point that "This is how Buddhists do it" tends to distract from the central point of anger management that this book is written for. The teachings are good, just a bit tilted, IMO.

As for the performance, it was quite inconsistent. You can clearly hear frequent edit points and re-recordings, where the narrator's voice changes sometimes dramatically in the middle of a sentence or paragraph (in places where such a change doesn't make sense, e.g. when personifying different characters in a dialogue). Background noises and zero space are distracting when listening on headphones. Despite this, I was able to absorb the material quite well.

read again and again

life giving
insightful
well done
only read if looking to improve yourself
life changing
beautiful

Annoying reading, but solid information

The voices made by the narrator are way too stylized and distracting. The Buddhist standpoint is valuable though.

Good lessons for anyone to learn.

When I first read the title of this book, images of angry people with bulging forehead veins came to mind, but really this book is for everyone. Anger and frustration are part of the human condition - to ignore it is wrong and to indulge it is wrong too - so what can we do? This book attempts to tell you.

Overall this book was pretty good but obvious - lacking philosophical depth. I liked the parables and quotes from Buddhist teachers, but I didn't find the author's own experiences very compelling. The chapter on how to handle angry people was, I thought, the weakest in this regard. e.g., see things from their perspective - don't jump to conclusions - try not to get angry back. Not bad messages but really - who doesn't know these things? I would have appreciated more Buddhist philosophy and less weekend-seminar style anger management.

The narrator talked slowly and sometimes his accents sounded funny but he was not terrible.

Overall not bad. Helpful to an extent - especially if you are prone to anger or frustration.

A Zen Review

Would you try another book from Leonard Scheff and Susan Edmiston and/or Bill Mendieta?

yes

Would you be willing to try another book from Leonard Scheff and Susan Edmiston ? Why or why not?

yes

Did Bill Mendieta do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

no

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

no

Any additional comments?

Although the zen method for handling anger was presented the actual application seemed to be missing.It would be better to give actual ways to use this method.

Good principles but poor performance

This books material is well written, offering good insight. However the narration includes strange stereotyped voices when relating quotes from individuals who are of diverse backgrounds. It is the same voice as the rest of the book but with an affected accent.