Hidden Spring: A Buddhist Woman Confronts Cancer

To an outsider, Buddhist meditation can appear self-indulgent, time frittered away buttressing an intransigent ego. To an insider, such as Sandy Boucher, the dividends of meditation can come at unforeseen times, under extreme circumstances, such as facing down malignant cancer. Boucher, a counterculture patchwork of pursuits and causes, sews together a memoir of suffering to rival any proof of the Buddha's first noble truth. Although her surgery is a success, like so many other cancer victims Boucher's battle with chemotherapy causes the most damage. Having lost her home, her lover, and her health, Boucher collapses into the spiritual arms of her longtime meditation teacher Ruth Denison. Parallel to the drama of the cancer, we are treated to a minibiography of Denison, who proves to be an oasis of sanity in the desert of Boucher's life. Honest, occasionally compelling, and often unusual, Boucher's story contains glimmers of Buddhism's light amid many shadows of human frailty. --Brian Bruya