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I could have given this four stars. It's not riveting, but I'm in for the ride as Tara Selter finishes her second and begins her third year of being stuck in an eternal November 18.

The third volume comes out on — wait for it — Nov 18! I will be ordering it.

Given the title, and the endorsement by Sharon Salzberg, I had expected that this was going to be a hard-core Dharma book, perhaps with some in-depth accounts of Buddhist insight practice.

Instead, it’s more like a novel. It’s the author’s account of her attendance at a Theravada retreat center/monastery in West Virginia. it’s a romance novel First, you have to know that the author is taking a break from a horrendous marriage (she is Jewish and her husband has become a white supremacist). So there’s something almost desperate about her search. There’s the usual uncertainty of a newcomer at a retreat center — and this retreat center seems particularly austere — then her settling in and becoming more comfortable with herself.. She develops a romantic connection with a man who lives at the retreat center, and she also develops a devotional connection with Kuan Yin. Much growth happens, she develops more confidence in herself, and in her ability to let go of an unhappy marriage without providing any spoilers, there’s a happy ending and then less happy ending after that.

It’s probably best to think of this as a novel in the romantic genre that has a Buddhist setting.

To say that this book was not what I expected is not a criticism. There are people who will love this book. The leadership is probably what’s there going to be women who have either no or only a slight connection with Buddhist practice.

This morning I finished the second book in Octavia Butler's two-book Earthseed series: "The Parable of the Talents." It's a continuation of the story started in "The Parable of the Sower," where we first meet the central figure, the teenage Lauren Olamina.

In the first book, Lauren was forced to flee her home in a town outside LA in a rapidly collapsing United States in which there was massive income inequality, the vast majority of people lived in grinding poverty, and climate change was destabilizing everything. It's against this background that Olamina's walled community was destroyed by drug-fueled arsonist looters. She wandered north, gathering new friends, allies, and disciples for a new Earthseed religion she had started.

At the end of the first book they had arrived on land owned by her new husband, Bankole, only to find that the buildings had been burned down and Bankole's sister's family murdered. Nevertheless, they decided to stay and start a community called Acorn, based on Earthseed principles. Olamina's long-term religious goal is to get humanity to the stars, although at this point that aim seems like nothing but a dream.

While the first book, whose action started in 2024, was dystopian, the second book is even more so.

Acorn flourishes and prospers, and although it's in some ways primitive the community arms itself well against the inevitable incursions of thieves and murderers. But in a presidential election there is a choice between one candidate who is old, gray and insipid, and another (Jarret), who is a Christo-fascist with a "Make America Great Again" slogan. Jarret wins. The Acorn community, while strong, is no match for a heavily-armed and disciplined Christian militia of Jarret's followers, who fence in the land, turning it into what they call a "Christian reeducation camp." In reality, however, it is a brutal slave-labor camp where the inmates are killed, tortured with shock-collars, and often raped. All the children are taken away to be brought up by "good, Christian families," including Olamina's baby daughter, Larkin.

After a 17 month ordeal, during which Bankole dies, the camp inhabitants manage to kill their oppressors and escape, fleeing in various directions.

Olamina changes her strategy, realizing that "heretic" camps are not feasible in Jarret's America. Instead she becomes a kind of itinerant evangelist for the Earthseed religion, meeting people where they are — in the country, in towns and cities. Some of them are rich and well-connected, and she becomes increasingly influential. Her dream to get humanity to the stars begins — and here we're in something like 2090 — to become real.

This book, like the first, is a sort of epistolary novel, created mainly from Olamina's journal entries. An added layer of interest comes from the fact that the glue holding these journal extracts together is the narration of Olamina's kidnapped daughter, who never met her mother until she was in her 30's. She is bitter and angry at her mother, who she has been poisoned against all her life. In fact she'd been told her mother was dead. She is jealous of Olamina's other child — Earthseed. Having the journals framed by the writings of an unreliable narrator whose story we only gradually learn adds an extra layer of fascination (and humanity) to the book.

Yet another layer of interest comes from the fact that Olamina's half-brother, who had also escaped the destruction of their LA home, and who Lauren rescued from sexual slavery, becomes a nationally famous preacher in Jarret's church. He lies to Olamina, saying he doesn't know where Larkin ended up. He is the one who lies to Larkin (renamed Asha Vere by her adoptive parents), telling her that Olamina is dead. There is much betrayal in this book, and a contrast between the brother's denial even when he learns that the church he preaches in runs slave-labor camps, and Olamina's simpler and more honest spirituality. And yet, even when the brother acts badly, we understand why.

In many ways Butler was astonishingly prescient. She was a keen observer who projected trends from the present into the future. The point is not whether she was correct in every detail, because they were written as warnings. The events she outlines for us are the kinds of things that can happen when incompetent governments fail to tackle problems, and when people, seeing chaos around them embrace an authoritarian leader. The similarity of her plot to modern events is a sign we have failed to learn from her predictions. The differences may be a sign that we have learned something.

Both books are about keeping hope alive in very difficult circumstances. They're about keeping a vision alive of a better society and a sense of humankind having a destiny among the stars. At every point in the book until the end, Lauren's dream of taking humankind to the stars seems like a futile dream, and yet she shapes events in such a way that this happens.

These are books about change and responding to change. Olamina's philosophy begins with:

All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change.

Change is inevitable. The important thing is that we respond to change rather than merely be a slave to it. To respond to change we have to have values and a goals. To respond to change in useful ways we have to understand it.

The lessons are: Don't let go of your dreams. Keep working toward them. Keep adjusting your strategies.

So there is much that is Dharmic her. The books are a teaching on impermanence, karma, wisdom, and faith.

The projected third book, sadly, was never written.

I do recommend both books. They are gut-wrenching, and there is much suffering. But there is also much heroism and hope. And much to learn.

I'm fascinated by shows such as "The Walking Dead" and the BBC's 2008 "Survivors," which is about the small fraction of the population who remain after a man-made virus wipes out 99.9 percent of humanity. These shows create circumstances favorable to psychopaths (he who kills without hesitation has an advantage over anyone with a conscience), and put good people in the position of having to decide how best to use force in order to stay alive without killing their own humanity.

The Parable of the Sower is in a similar vein, but it's more realistic than the two shows I mentioned. There's no pandemic and no zombies. The "big bad" is a societal collapse in the US caused by climate change and corrupt and inept government. Society has become stratified into the super-rich, who we never see in the novel, except for a mention of them flying around in helicopters; "middle class" people who have jobs but who are barely scraping by, who are forced to grow much of their own much food, and who live in improvised walled communities comprising a few houses or part of a neighborhood; people who are essentially enslaved by corporations; and the mass of humanity who are starving or killing themselves with drugs.

A sheriff's badge is a license to steal. At best the police will show up late and charge you a fortune. (Everything is privatized; water costs more than gasoline, and no one can afford gasoline as well as water.) The police are just another gang. States have hardened their borders against influxes of refugees from other parts of the country. In effect there only nominally a United States. (Still, the US government has a Mars program!)

The book is the journal of Lauren Olamina, a teenage girl whose father is a preacher and a college professor with a PhD. Her stepmother also holds a PhD. This means they are middle class, which means they are poor. The Olaminas live with a number of other families who are barely getting by, in a walled community trying to defend themselves against raids by the hordes of the desperate poor that live around them.

At age 16, Lauren, seeing that everything is getting worse, knows that her community is doomed, and secretly plans to hit the road as soon as she turns 18. As it happens, her community is wiped out before she can make her planned departure. She and two other survivors hit the road with the hope of finding somewhere better up north. Unfortunately, so are many thousands of other people, many of them with evil intentions, and many of them taking drugs that drive them to violent acts.

This is a story about good people gathering together for safety, trying to defend themselves against the desperate and the evil. How to decide who to trust? Lauren's group grows slowly but steadily.

This story is about people who hold onto a shred of hope in a society that seems hopeless. This resonates today.

The Parable of the Sower opens in 2024. Butler even has a president whose slogan is "Make America Great Again." It was written in 1993. It's all too believable as a portrait of societal collapse.

The extract from Lauren's writings (a compilation of poems and reflections she calls "The Book of the Living") is the nucleus of her religion: Earthseed. She says she hasn't invented this religion, but discovered it through observation.

Change is everything. But we can choose how we interact with this constantly changing world. And what we change changes us. This is a teaching on karma.

Lauren has the long-term aim of getting humanity to the stars. On one level that's a ridiculous notion. Even the US's remaining space program is likely to be scrapped by the next president. Lauren's first step toward that goal is simply to establish a Earthseed community, growing its own food and protecting itself from the world. Even that is monumentally ambitious in the time she inhabits. As I said, this is a book about hope.

Does Lauren ever make it to the stars? I don't know. There are two Earthseed books, and I plan to start on the second, "The Parable of the Talents," as soon as possible. There was to be a third book, but alas Butler never got the chance to write it.

The title is a reference to the new testament parable of someone sowing seeds, with some of them falling on stony ground, or being outgrown by thorns, yet others landing in fertile soil. Hope is a kind of soil in which many things can live. We need to have hope, but we also need to plant seeds in it, and to tend them as they grow.

I'm not going to say much about this. It's beautifully written, and I will definitely be reading the other six volumes — eventually. In fact I've ordered Part 1 in paperback even though I already have the ebook version. Part 2 is on its way to me.