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Your favorite books that youve learned alot from ?
banned_crab
Veteran
If you guys can suggest some great books for me that have changed you alot and might change me as well that would be great.Im very interested in any book you suggest as long as you briefly describe it. Preferably a book that is relatable to what we speak about on this board . I also prefer you do not list a book that is a novel, I dont feel like reading a novel.
How about carl jung the red book? anybody heard of that ? been meaning to give it a chance does anybody know whats good about it?
How about carl jung the red book? anybody heard of that ? been meaning to give it a chance does anybody know whats good about it?
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'The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying' - Sogyal rinpoche
'The "Awakening" Trilogy' (Three books) - Lama Surya Das.
profound yet light, anecdotal, interesting and at times, humorous. but very good.
I still think you need to lighten up and not be so intense, though.
These books are Guides and suggestions, not hard and fast rules and regulations.
Be kind to yourself, relax, ease up.....
If im too kind to myself I end up losing myself and then I end up indulged in useless idle thoughts.
How can I lighten up without losing mindfulness
The Word of the Buddha by Nyanatiloka, which you can find for free here:
http://www.urbandharma.org/pdf/wordofbuddha.
It contains the major teachings of the pali suttas in an orderly way. There are more books that do this, but this one is very compact and in general I like the translations a lot.
For learning about meditation:
Mindfulness, Bliss and Beyond by Ajahn Brahm, to which you can find the first four chapters here:
http://www.dhammatalks.net/Books11/Ajahn_Brahm-Mindfulness_Bliss_and_Beyond-Chapters1-5.pdf
It is the most useful book on meditation I have ever seen - then again I've seen very little others because this was my first book on meditation and I've never really needed to look any further. From the initial stages of meditation to the culmination of meditation, all the way until enlightenment, you'll find it in here. The part on the hindrances I think is the best.
You have a complete and total misconception of what Buddhism asks of you.
You're trying too hard and making everything a grinding chore.
You are your own worst enemy, because this is not how it's supposed to be.
Mindfulness is light, accepting and gentle.
Not intense, anal and strained.
Effort should be Right, not Excessive.
This must be agony for you - but you're just doing it to yourself.
It takes time. Don't be so hasty.
I think Pema Chödrön refers to mindfulness (although she doesn't really call it that) as "touching a bubble with a feather" or something. This excerpt may be helpful.
Anyways, the books that have helped me in various ways are:
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki; Everyday Zen by Charlotte Joko Beck; A Still Forest Pool by Ajahn Chah/Jack Kornfield; and Song of Mind by Sheng Yen; Buddha of Infinite Light by DT Suzuki; and The World's Religions by Huston Smith.
Imo, study is the easy part of Buddhist practice. I love reading books! But taking that information and applying it... especially beginning to apply loving kindness as a natural response... that takes a lot more time. I often find myself rereading books and finding amazing insights in words I totally missed because I just wasn't far enough along to understand when I first read them. So, you know, I guess all I'm saying is... the OPs probably just got to work through this stuff in his own way with his own understanding.
....."there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison."
ROSENCRANTZ
"Why then, your ambition makes it one."
(Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 2 Scene II)
If you perceive 'bad' in yourself, that's your own evaluation; a harsh judgement nobody else prescribes to.
And I believe your judgement is both warped and flawed. You are who you are.
And yet, you are also not who you believe yourself to be.
Because every day brings development, evolution, change.
What are you improving from?
What is there to improve?
Why do you feel it MUST improve?
Forcing yourself to feel things is a false premise.
I cannot force myself to feel something either.
Who says that's a pre-requisite?
Who is "us people"...?
Emotions are not there to be controlled, necessarily. They are there to be witnessed, allowed, acknowledged, honoured and felt.
What is damaging, is permitting them to dominate and over-whelm.
But they have a right to be there....
These books are Sufi in orientation but not only relevant to Islam, if at all. The books deal with the mistaken idea that everyone is capable and willing to engage in a spiritual path that is viable for them. It also deals with a prescriptive and scatter (many impacts from varied directions) approach that creates a mature spirituality.
It is very different to Buddhism but applicable. For example the virtuous behaviour (sila) that is seen as a great achievement in Buddhism is seen as basic civilised humanity. Insight is gained by learning from every day experience and not techniques.
Improvement in Mindfulness, Concentration and Insight may be a prerequisite but these things take time and natural development; they cannot be 'forced' or coerced into being hurried.
You want it all, and you want it now.
I have been practising Buddhism for over 20 years now, and know for a fact I do not have these three factors right at all, but I will say that with gradual development and measured practise, they have doubtless improved....
Your desires to feel free, is actually what is keeping you trapped..
You have a little bird in your hand, and you're urging it to flap its wings and soar - but you're holding onto its little legs and impeding its freedom.
being aware of things isn't meant to make them go away; it's meant to make you conscious of them, and accept them as part of progress. Gradually, the more you notice them, the less significance or hold, they have over you. Your focus is not to dispense with them; your focus is to acknowledge, accept and cradle them. In time, they will leave of their own accord.....
You have this all wrong.
And THAT - is the truth.
(I repeat my question: Who is "us people"...?)
WY Evans Wentz
Stanislav Grof
Terence McKenna
Ken Wilber
Some would say that Buddhism is great because you don't need faith, at least not in a personal god. I would beg to differ. Buddhists have faith in the teachings of the Buddha, the truth of the Dharma, and the strength of the Sangha.
In my own life, this faith plays out more or less like this quote: -- Mary Jean Irion
"Compassion is based on some sense of a 'soft spot' in us. It is as if we had a pimple on our body that was very sore-- so sore that we do not want to rub it or scratch it. During our shower we do not want to rub too much soap over it because it hurts. There is a sore point or soft spot which happens te be painful to rub, painful to put hot or cold water over it.
That sore spot is an analogy for compassion. Why? Because in the midst of immense aggression, insensitivity in our life or laziness, we always have a soft spot, some point we can cultivate-- or at least not bruise. Every human has thtat kind of basic soft spot including animals."
Chogyam Trungpa in his book Training the Mind
http://buddhistbooksblog.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/what-the-buddha-taught-by-walpola-rahula/
it was the first book on Buddhism I read . . . not sure when.
We would visit, I would read.
How many times? not sure.
Back to basics. Now the equivalent is probably 'Buddhism for Dummies'
Any book someone suggests might speak to you, but it would be helpful to know if you have already chosen a tradition or not, and if you are looking more for beginner and introductory material or sutras/suttas or something else... Just sayin'.
I read (past and present tense) books from many schools but my focus is Tibetan so that is the majority of what I read and study. Tibetan Book of Living and Dying is excellent, as was already recommended. I enjoy many books from Thich Nhat Hahn and find him and Pema Chodron easy to understand at an early level and yet still good to read as you go along. Right now I am considering getting Chogyam Trungpa's Ocean of Dharma series, as I am greatly enjoying a couple of his books.
But the most helpful for me have been many translations of The Bodhisattvas Way of Life/Way of the Bodhisattva and Thich Nhat Hahn's The Heart of the Buddha's Teachings.
Even though I study Tibetan Buddhism, I honestly have a hard time reading HHDLs books, yet many people really love them. Oddly, I love to hear him speak but I find his books dry for some reason. Maybe I've made bad choices in books, lol. It might be best to take a list of books suggested here and go to the library and see what you can find and look over because investing in them. You will probably find that some speak to you immediately, and some that you maybe even hoped would speak to you, do not.
Lama Yeshe books are quite nice
Lama Zopa Rinpoche offers plenty
Solitude and Loneliness: A Buddhist View was excellent
Walden
The Way of the Bodhisattva by Shantideva
...and certainty read, in silence, your mind...observe it daily.
Thanks
All i can find is some other language
Carl Sagan, Cosmos
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (seconding @Foruilive 's suggestion)
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Seneca, Letters (which I find very inspirational)
Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding
Laozi (attributed), Dao De Jing (I like Red Pine's translation)
And one novel and one short story:
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (Pevear and Volokhonsky's translation)
Raymond Carver, "Cathedral" (the short story)
Pick up just about any book from one of these authors and you'll learn a lot IMHO.
As Carl Jung was Swiss-German, it's not likely to be published online in a translated version.
you'll have to seek a hard-copy translation.
Once more - who is "us people".....?
I ask because it makes it sound as if you believe you're from some 'elite' group.....?
:scratch:
The Tao of Pooh - Benjamin Hoff.
Where There Is Light - Paramahansa Yogananda.
Living Buddha, Living Christ - Thich Nhat Hanh.
The Book On Taboos Against Knowing Who You Are - Alan Watts.
The Sermon on the Mount According to Vedanta - Swami Prabhavananda
The Bhagavad Gita
The Gospel of Matthew. 'Mark' is supposed to be better, but I just always liked 'Matthew'.
"us humans"
You are like no other human on this board.
I have never encountered anyone who feels so intensely that everything he does is wrong, is a struggle, is a handicap, is a hurdle that he must somehow overcome, fight, wrestle with, toss and turn with, and intensely conquer.
You over-do EVERYTHING and in spite of many telling you that you need to release, relax and just be comfortable, you argue and counter-discuss, because this inexorable struggle you're always having with yourself, compels you to be a a perfectionist and you HAVE to realise one thing:
it will never, ever, ever BE - PERFECT.
The more you struggle, the harder the progress will be.
THAT - is YOUR reality.
Your real fight is actually to quit fighting.
I dont understand this concept of acknowledge ,accept and cradle. What is the difference between awareness and conscious thought?
Stop dramatising things excessively.
This constant striving for answers, which people give you, and you do not seem to get, because you believe that to stop fighting, is to give up...
What is this 'It' that you'll be consumed by?
You don't get that it's your fighting "it" that actually keeps it alive,.
You are creating your own mess, here.
It's existent because with your constant insistence, you nourish it.
I think you need therapy.
I really do.
I think the desire you're talking about and struggling with can be normal at the beginning of any spiritual practice, but the level you're exhibiting (at least here on these forums) does seem a bit worrisome. I'd see a chaplain or counsellor if I were you.
As for the difference between awareness and conscious thought - to me, awareness is just being aware of something without judging it. You know it's there, but you don't really do anything about it. Conscious thought is when you exert effort into picking something apart or scrutinizing something.
Then you should increase in your battle, in fact you should fight so hard that you can think of nothing but winning.
What were you hoping to win? How does this avoid suffering, or is that unimportant?
I've mentioned it in this forum in the past....
(Remember) Be Here Now by (Baba) Ram Dass.
Absolutely life changing, for me, anyway.
If there is an obstacle, go around it rather than through it. Quick realisation is possible but it is always unexpected never planned.
Keep fighting, but keep calm. Save your energy, it is that which will push you beyond.
and I prefer you guys mention books and than briefly describe them or else I wont have any interest in them
This book is a difficult book to recommend to people because one will either "get it" or not. Not because the message is particularly difficult to get, (its not, really) but because one needs to view the book as an actual "journey" to understanding the message. (If that makes any sense! LOL)
It was written back in the very early 70's (I think 1971?) ... right around when the whole Woodstock/Hippie/drug experimentation/ search-for-spirituality age pretty much hit its peak for a few years...
The book itself is filled with art. Lots of drawings and little doodles in margins, between words or phrases, or smack dab in the center of pages.
The words on the pages were often not written in a linear pattern from left to right. Sometimes the words spiraled from the center of the page outward- or sometimes inward.
Sometimes the words were written in hand script, sometimes mechanical type, sometimes small, even tiny, sometimes large, even huge!
Reading the book according to how it (each page, each word) was written; emphasizing in your head the large words/thoughts; following the spiral as if following a path (of words) towards reaching or understanding something.
There was a reason for writing/drawing/spiraling the words the way they were written.
It was really a matter of applying more than ordinary reading comprehension to the text of the book- one had the 'experience' of reading the book and 'getting' the messages.
Overall, the messages in the book were simple, and yes, very "Buddhist" like. Practicing Mindfulness. Setting aside expectations. Acceptance. Selflessness. Love, Love, Love for all things great and small. Respect for the Earth. Setting aside fears. Eliminating judgement. Respect for humanity..... and so forth.
I was taken by complete surprise the first time I sat down to read Be Here Now. Even though I was told by friends (further along the spiritual path than I was at the time) ahead of time how to read the book with the understanding that it WAS a journey... and not just a book to read.
I planned ahead so that I could immerse myself into this book and read it carefully and completely in one sitting. I have no IDEA how long that took. Two hours? 4 hours? More than that? No clue.
I laughed, cried, got the chills, nodded in complete understanding, felt absolute Awe and inspiration, and yes, felt a little baffled here and there as well. But it was a life changing experience, for sure.
I have since read the book two more times; many years after that first reading. Knowing what to expect, I wasn't as gobsmacked as the first time, but I was still impressed and very much spiritually refreshed just the same.
The whole point of even mentioning a book, is to communicate that it had an effect on us. That alone, is of significance.
What effect, is unique to us. It doesn't mean it will have the same effect on you.
And Spiritual Development is largely down to personal progress.
You pressure yourself too hard already.
I have already expressed the opinion that you need therapy, or counselling, because you are super-intense' to the point of extreme excess.
Don't pressure us to feed that aspect.
Well, personally, I didn't mind (at all) explaining to @heyimacrab my take on a book that he/she has read but didn't get anything from.
Not sure I understand why such an interjection was needed.....
http://www.gnosis.org/library/The-Red-Book.pdf
. . . Jung was a speculative alchemist
. . . is that a good thing? Maybe . . .
. . . here is my 'green stone' working of alchemy/Rasayana - not for everyone . . .
http://tinyurl.com/odj6bnx
:wave: