Surfing is like baseball. Both engender an almost mystical devotion in their fans and both generate good writing, reading that draws in even those who have never engaged in either sport.

Among the most recent examples is Jaimal Yogis' "Saltwater Buddah: A Surfer's Quest to Find Zen on the Sea." (And yes, Jaimal is his real name; in fact, his full name is Baba Jaimal Yogis, the first two names being that of an Indian saint, the last a shortened version of his Lithuanian grandparents' name. He was born, he said, in his parents' "full-fledged hippie stage.")

A Zen Buddhist, Yogis writes a series of fast-paced essays that are both a surfing biography and philosophical treatise. The book begins when, as a rebellious, fish-out-of-water high school junior living inland and longing for the beach, he hijacked his mother's credit card and bought a one-way ticket to Hawai'i. "I had some dreams that led me to believe that I need a change and I could not make it here," reads a part of the note he left his worried-sick parents.

In characteristically self-effacing fashion, he acknowledges the mixture of high-mindedness and rebellion that characterized this act: "I was fed up with the endless cycle of suburban trivialities — especially my midnight curfew." His primary goal, he said, was to learn to surf.

This is one of the great attractions of the book: Yogis' self awareness and his willingness to be vulnerable.

Each collection of essays is introduced with two or three quotes from sources as varied as Jack London and the Tao Te Ching, Sogyal Rinpoche and Woody Allen. And he peppers the book with quotes from Zen practitioners, Japanese poets, Hawaiian proverbs and famous surfers. And the parallels are there, unstretched.

Throughout, he finds parallels between the sea and life, surfing and Zen practice. At the most literal level, the two practices may have been born about the same time and both were almost lost due to political and cultural upheaval, he reports.

Zen surfing, as he calls it, happens only when you stop trying, stop struggling, accept the dangers, accept the power of the sea. "When I accept the fact that I can't mark my place, can't predict where I'm floating to, it becomes fun in a different way: completely intuitive."

It certainly helps that Yogis has had an interesting life. After he was hauled back from Hawai'i, he finished out his senior year, toeing the line, and then was allowed to choose where he would study. Hawai'i's boarding schools were too expensive, so he chose France, where he was introduced to Zen Buddhist practice by a transplanted Vietnamese master, Thich Nhat Hanh. The monk's lectures so influenced him that he decided to become a monk, too. This he did at a Chinese monastery in Berkeley, Calif.

After a year, he realized (as did the monastery's abbot) that he wasn't monk material. He left, but then, he reports in a three-line chapter, "It was awful." He didn't know how to be a monk, but he didn't know how to be an ordinary American college student, either.

He returned to Hawai'i, trading work for shelter and food at Kalani Honua, an alternative retreat center on the Big Island. And finally, really learning to surf. He meets a young Hawaiian who offers a little advice and warm if offhand friendship. He meets a "wizard" who teaches him the science of surfing and the sea. He rides his first big waves, terrified, chanting a mantra, the Chinese name of the Buddhist bodhisattva of compassion, hearing the sea and its monsters whispering in his ear, "We will kill you. Go back."

Yogis' diffidence and truth-telling make him an attractive character, one a reader is happy to follow through the peripatetic life of one who is always yearning for the next wave. The scene in which he surfs in the snow off the 98th Street beach in Brooklyn (yes, Brooklyn, New Yawk) is masterful. It's called "Not Dead," and with good reason.

In the end, he makes peace. The boy who ran off to Hawai'i gives way to someone who is content to be more and do less, to have a girlfriend, a little house, to write and surf and perform zazen at a nearby temple.

A weekend with this book is well spent: There is wisdom, there is humor, there is learning and, above all, there is sincerity.