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When one encounters a piece of artistic, highly symbolic work-a graceful poem, a delicate painting, an elegant building-there is often a question: should it be analyzed, reviewed and deconstructed, or should it be simply experienced, permitted to flow inwards and resonate with the strings of the self? Such is the case with Barnea-Astrog's book. The language and the melody of the book is both highly poetical and theoretically profound. Since psychoanalysis is a combination of both poetry and analysis, of being and doing, of permitting and resolving, of experiencing and analyzing, I will try to convey the experience of the book as well as deconstruct the message implied by the author. It should be noted, however, that although the content of the book can be outlined, the true beauty of it is the form, the language how it is written, which can hardly be conveyed.
The first interaction with the book starts when you read the title. For some readers, Buddhism is a word which might evoke many controversial feelings and sometimes even hesitation to investigate the topic altogether. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon to encounter a layer of resistance or bias against the eastern concepts, especially in the western culture. On a closer look, however, one might discover that the psychoanalytic theory of mind and the Buddhist theory of mind are not necessarily incompatible or completely contradictory. In fact, one can actually find many interesting intersections (Rubin, 1998; Hoffer, 2015). On a practical level, there are many examples which demonstrate the importance of the balance between western and eastern philosophies. A simple one: when a person with obsessional psychology, driven and often tormented by the need to control and calculate things, starts to become interested in the eastern philosophies, the letting go of things, the transience of things-it is often a sign of progress and a forerunner of relief. In one way or another, the reader might benefit from expanding the