A Temporary Affair is a collection of talks given at Sunday morning sittings at the Ithaca Zen Center by Yoshin David Radin, abbot and founder of the Ithaca Zen Center for the past 40 years. The talks contained here were given at a time when Yoshin's health was severely compromised by end stage renal failure. In February 2019, he received a kidney transplant from a member of Ithaca Zen Center, to whom the publication is dedicated.

The collection of 31 talks contains the insight of the individual dharma talks themselves, as well as the underlying story of how the dharma teachings helped the author cope, and even thrive, with his continuing loss of kidney function. The talks go right up to the days before he was admitted to the hospital. The comfort and guidance he received from the dharma during the times when he was most ill have been a great inspiration to all who know him, as they will to readers. In his own words, "How extraordinary, how blessed, how wonderful, to have met the teachings that free us from suffering when in difficult places." Through these talks the reader can clearly see how he put that wisdom to use in his own life situation, and how they can do so as well.

A Temporary Affair: Talks on Awakening and Zen, David Radin, Monkfish Book Publishing, Paperback, 144 pp, $15.95

Yoshin David Radin was born in 1946 to a seventh-generation Lithuanian rabbinical family in New York City. He attended Cornell University, but after traveling around the world, abandoned his plans to become a lawyer and joined a hippie commune instead. He began studying with Zen master Joshu Sasaki Roshi in 1976 and trained with him until Roshi's death in 2014. Radin was ordained by Roshi as a monk in 1982 and an Osho in 1989, and received the name Yoshin, which means "Light of the Heart-Mind."

Radin founded Ithaca Zen Center in Ithaca, NY, in 1978, and moved the center to the nearby town of Spencer in 1987. Today he gives regular dharma talks there and intermittently at Rinzaiji Zen Center in Los Angeles, his teacher's home temple. Radin's writings, which attempt to express the love between the spiritual seeker of light and the light itself, have been recorded in four collections of songs and spoken-word poems, including Love Songs of a Zen Monk. He has also edited two books on Joshu Sasaki Roshi, including The Great Celebration. He lives in Spencer, NY, with his wife Marcia, who is a Zen Buddhist nun.

CONTENTS: A Temporary Affair
	Dedication and Introduction	xiii
	Preface	xv
1.	A Temporary Affair	1
2.	You Will Be a Beacon	3
3.	All Peace Breaks Loose	7
4.	Bearing the Pain and the Insult	10
5.	Fellow Forms of the Most Miraculous Assembly	14
6.	Saved from a Superficial Stay	17
7.	The Great Goodness of Existence	24
8.	When the Inner System is Broken	27
9.	When the Muzak Stops	31
10.	Never Separate	35
11.	The Protection of the Dharma	38
12.	A Flawed Agenda	42
13.	Signing on to Suffering	46
14.	A Guide for Your Mind	50
15.	Skywriting in the Mindspace	54
16.	The Mistaken Seat of Consciousness	62
17.	Completion Comes from Gentleness	67
18.	What's Next?	71
19.	In Humility, Not in Things	76
20.	Nancy and Charlie	79
21.	Mind Is the Holy Land	85
22.	Here I Am	89
23.	Don't Let Yourself Off the Hook	92
24.	The Mirror of Your Body	95
25.	The Blessed States	98
26.	What Is Zen?	103
27.	Falling out of the Garden of Eden	108
28.	Waiting for the Prison Bars to Melt	111
29.	Stand in the Presence of Ego	115
30.	What Is the Address of Love?	119
31.	The Most Precious Thing Is You	123
	Epilogue	127
	About the Author	129