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Back in 2003 my friend Jane Dobisz, a Zen master up in the Boston area, wrote a book called "The Wisdom of Solitude: a Zen Retreat in the Woods." It was published by Harper, it did modestly well, and then it went out of print.

When good books go out of print, alert publishers figure out ways to repackage them, and now, thanks to Wisdom Press, Jane’s book is about to reappear, retitled "One Hundred Days of Solitude: Losing Myself and Finding Grace on a Zen Retreat."

I’m glad it’s back because it’s a wonderful book, but I find myself somewhat bemused by the repackaging. The first title was very straightforward. What is the book about? A Zen retreat. It didn’t promise the reader anything, although in fact it delivered a lot — it’s very difficult to write clearly about practicing in solitude and silence, and Jane’s book is miraculously clear and quite wonderful. I have recommended her book for years because when you read it you really do find out what it’s like to sit a 100 day solo Zen retreat.

Even better, she makes it sound do-able — if you can’t find 100 days, maybe you can find 30, or 7, or 3… Reading Jane’s book, you come to believe that, whoever you are, you too can do serious spiritual practice for an extended period. She doesn’t set herself up as any different from anyone else. She is very practical and down to earth about the tribulations of chopping wood and hauling water and making do with a slop bucket in a cabin with only a wood stove during a cold Massachusetts winter while getting up at 3 a.m. every morning to do 300 prostrations.

I remember a long time ago hearing Barbara Rhodes, a Zen master who taught both me and Jane, and a hospice nurse in her civilian life, talking about her first long solo retreat and how she really noticed her tendency to not meticulously close the sock drawer. Every day many times a day she’d walk aroud and around in her little cabin for walking meditation and there would be that sock drawer … She would talk about that sock drawer and it was better than any disquisition about karma or mindfulness. Because there it all was, right there in that sock drawer, and you knew that you had to change your own life.

Listening to Bobby (as everyone calls her) talk about that sock drawer you couldn’t help thinking, “Hey, I could do that too.” Jane’s book is also like that. You just want to get out there and do it. It doesn’t have to be Zen practice, either. Whatever practice you have, you want to go do it; and if you don’t have a practice, you can see the value of having one, not because anyone is telling you 50 reasons to find a practice, but because Jane is simply telling you what she did, day by day, and you find yourself wanting to do it — or something like it — too.

But in the repackaging — and may it be successful, may Jane find lots and lots of readers! — something has changed. There is now a result: Jane will lose herself and find grace. And there is a kind of expectation that by reading this book this grace, this losing, will rub off on the reader, as if spiritual grace and losing the self could ever rub off simply from reading. One of the blurbs the publisher is sending around reads “The quote, the lesson of each small chapter will embrace you, and provide you with a small Zen moment to relax with after a long hard day.”

I read that and, dear reader, my heart sinks a little. As my teacher used to say, “If you want to relax, go to the movies.” There is a place for relaxation. God knows we destroy not only ourselves but everyone around us when we act on our tensions and fears. But relaxing for a few moments after a long hard day during a Zen moment (whatever that is — try substituting “Christian moment” or “Jewish moment” or “Muslim moment” or “Hindu moment” to see what the problem is), fine as that may be — well that’s not what Jane’s book is about. Jane’s book is a record of hard spiritual practice. She wrote it so people would have an idea what such practice is like, because there’s so much intimidating or silly or downright false stuff out there about it. And, most important, she wrote it to encourage other people to practice, whether for 100 days or 100 minutes. That’s really all a spiritual teacher can do, in fact that’s the best thing she can do: encourage other people to practice.

So I encourage you to read Jane’s book and then, if you haven’t already, incorporate some kind of daily practice in your life. If you’ve already done that, then I encourage you to find a dedicated period of time in which you have no obligations or distractions to take you away from your practice. And if you’ve already done that, then I encourage you to continue to find these dedicated periods of time. Over and over. For the rest of your life. As they say in Buddhism (even if it isn’t true it’s a great image), life after life. Why not? You have everything to lose, and in losing it, may indeed find grace.