4 book comments

So I'm in the process of trying to do a review of this book for Wildmind: Mindfulness For Dummies (Book + CD). I'm not against this kind of secular mindfulness. I think you can apply it to everything: stress, relaxation, pain management. It's a good thorough book.

Speaking of application of mindfulness, I've been reading two Thomas Bien books, applying mindfulness to psychotherapy and happiness. The Buddha's Way of Happiness: Healing Sorrow, Transforming Negative Emotion, & Finding Well-Being in the Present Moment is the book I was sent, and then that made me realize I had Mindful Therapy: A Guide for Therapists and Helping Professionals on my book shelf. There's a lot of good stuff in these books. I love the integration of psychotherapy and Buddhism.

And finally, I've finished Awakening Kindness which is a lovely exploration of metta. You can't get enough of this stuff, reading a book helps me to put my mind into thinking about this head space.

I've just bought The Art of Reflection (Buddhist Wisdom in Practice) and I look forward to reading this book. Supposedly it's the only book on reflection as a spiritual practice in the Buddhist tradition of English language books. I can't verify that that, but I became interested in it when Vajramati had us reading an excerpt to discuss on a rare sangha night that I could actually attend.

Thoughts and links

Thoughts:

Today I was plagued with spiritual envy. Thinking about my friend who has had a rich experience of meeting famous Buddhists, going on awesome long retreats with top teachers, and even editing books of Dharma talks. With my family and my own trajectory, that's just not possible for me, and maybe I'm a spiritual materialist, but I wouldn't mind collecting some peak experiences like that. Now another friend is going off to India for a month, and I'm very jealous. I have not been asked to join the order, so even if I could somehow get off to go, I am envious of those who can go to order conventions. I suppose that should focus me on working harder to deepen my practice, but the small me wants things without having to try harder than I already am.

I need to shift my meditation to night time. I've always loved morning meditation, but it's just not doable and I'm struggling to shift my meditation to evening before bed.

Finally, January 19th is Hakuin's Birthday.

Links:

A new update from the Preceptor's College.

Lokabandhu reviews the Essential Sangharakshita. Here's an exerpt of the review: "Vidyadevi, or Karen Stout as Wisdom preferred to refer to her, is an Order Member of many years’ standing and the book’s editor. She’s been working on it for the past 5 years and has clearly lived and breathed it for much of that time – starting by re-reading all Sangharakshita’s books and marking passages for possible inclusion with little sticky notes. That produced a vast amount of material which, after first presentation to Wisdom, had to be reduced by almost half – and which still left the problem of how to organise it all! In her Preface she writes of how she tackled the problems of selection and organisation – and her masterstroke of using the Mandala of the Five Buddhas as the organising principle for the book."

Trycle has interesting daily Dharma posts.

An article on Dalits and Ambedkar on BNN.

A new to me TV channel has some Milarepa songs read, after some introduction.

I haven't seen it yet, but there's a new documentary on PBS about India that includes some Buddhist stuff.

A Buddhist father misses his daughter.

An author plugs his excellent book that I recommend.