Which books sit on your nightstand?

[Sealestr]

My nightstand is kinda small, so I keep only the Tao Te Ching and The Art Of War on it. 

[sagebrush]

Tom Bailey

 

the Grace that keeps this world

 

 

there is a poem in the beginning of the book(I presume where the author gets the title)

 

do not think me gentle

because I speak in praise

of gentleness, or elegant

because I honor the grace

that keeps this world. I am a man

crude as any, gross of speech, intolerant, stubborn, angry, full of fits and furies.

That I may have spoken well at times, is not natural.

A wonder is what it is.

 

Wendell Berry

" a warning to my readers"

 

I know how I came to know about Wendell Berry-

 

one thing is for sure

I cannot edit my life

[Taomeow]

Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission Through Myth,

by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend

 

I'm going to have so much fun with this one.  Both brilliant and scholarly, this book is one of those rare and precious ones that provide a whole higher education (a compromised term, but I'm using it in its original sense) to those who (like I) have lost their religious belief in the modern folk myth of the "scientific method."  The method it uses is the same I use in my investigations:

 

1. Go to the source, not to the later interpreters thereof; start from scratch, don't drag into your inquiry the burden of careers, ambitions, ulterior motives and ineptitudes that have cumulatively shaped the "currently accepted model."  Go to the oldest scholars (historically, not biologically) and treat what they had to say with respect. 

 

2. Apply interdisciplinary integration, don't get pigeonholed into what an "expert" clueless or wrongfully dismissive of the world outside his area of expertise invites (or forces) you to see through his pinhole. 

 

3. Don't rush it.  Knowledge is not a box of lego blocks shoved your way by the creators of the orthodox model.  Knowledge is a mighty oak growing out of a humble acorn.  Plant it, water it, fertilize it, let it grow, watch what happens.  Meditate in the shade.  Do the opposite of what the pigeonholed scholars had to do. 

 

Unless the first few pages and a fascinated leafing through what's yet to come have misguided me.  Don't think so though, I smell yum.     

[Taoist Texts]

Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission Through Myth,

by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend

 

 

Unless the first few pages and a fascinated leafing through what's yet to come have misguided me.  Don't think so though, I smell yum.     

That book is so superb, i am almost jealous of anyone who gets to read it for the first time,  it is really old school.

 

If  books had  twins separated at birth , this would be yin to Hamlet's Mill yang

 

Edited February 18, 2017 by Taoist Texts

[Pilgrim]

This came as a bit of a surprise this morning but a welcome one.

Last Friday morning while talking to Sri Mukherjee in India via Skype he informed me his two volume book would be published at the end of the month.

Evidently the person helping him completed the edits early and both volumes were published today on Amazon as both Kindle and Paperback.

I have began reading Volume 1 and so far it is the same as being with him in person. Surprisingly so. If a person reads these books he or she will come away with the personality of the Author amazing how he managed that with help from editors.

It looks like he is kicking out all the stops and has written things exactly as he taught them including material only discussed in person as well.

Anyone interested can find the books here.

Original Kriya Yoga Volume I: Step-by-step Guide to Salvation

https://www.amazon.c...alvation kindle

& Here:

https://www.amazon.c...alvation kindle

Kindle which for some reason is not linked with the paperback.

https://www.amazon.c...alvation kindle

& Here

https://www.amazon.com/Original-Kriya-Yoga-Step-step-ebook/dp/B06W9N9CX3/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487600304&sr=8-1&keywords=Original+Kriya+Yoga+Volume+2%3A+Step-by-step+Guide+to+Salvation+Kindle+Edition


 

Edited February 20, 2017 by Pilgrim

[s1va]

Besides 3 books on yoga, the following two are the latest addition to my bookstand.

 

These two are borrowed from the library.  Most likely, I may be purchasing the first one from Amazon.

 

Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender - by David R. Hawkins M.D. Ph.D.  (Amazon Link)

 

Healing and Recovery - by David R. Hawkins M.D. Ph.D.  (Amazon Link)

[neti neti]

Dattātreya, The Way and the Goal - by Sri Jaya Chamarajendra Wadiyar Bahadur

 

Kaivalya Navaneeta, Cream of Liberation - by Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi

 

Happiness and The Art of Being - by Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi

 

The Gnosis or Ancient Wisdom in the Christian Scriptures: Or the Wisdom in a Mystery - by William Kingsland

[Bai lang]

Jerry Alan Johnson's Neigong book

Tao te ching

Lohikäärmeen lääketiede 2 by Elina Hytönen(Dragon's medicine 2, a book on acupuncture points and meridians)

I tend to alternate a lot but these three have been on my nightstand for close to 3 months now. 

[silent thunder]

...

Edited August 14, 2021 by silent thunder

[Stumpich]

currently reading

 

creative visualization by Shakti Gawain

 

&

 

Adelaide Bry - Directing the Movies of Your Mind

Edited April 10, 2017 by Stumpich

[Aletheia]

I'm reading Babbling Corpse about Vaporwave

 

[sagebrush]

(* *)

  II

Edited May 2, 2017 by sagebrush

[silent thunder]

Stranger in a Strange Land.

[blue eyed snake]

I grok...

 

rereading castaneda, worthy reading,

I get much more out of it then 20 years ago

[silent thunder]

Husserl:  Ideas

 

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

 

and just ordered my first play in a few years... The Seafarer by Conor McPherson

Edited July 7, 2017 by silent thunder
typo

[Miffymog]

Currently - Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne.

[steve]

Several right now:

 

Songs of Spiritual Experience compiled by Thupten Jinpa

 - marvelous collection of songs and poems by spiritual seekers of the Buddhist tradition compiled and translated by a master

 

Chen's Tai Chi Old Frame One and Two by Chen Zhenglei

 - wonderful introduction describing the path and skill of taijiquan followed by step by step form instruction (a great study aid, although I wouldn't recommend trying to learn solely from a book - any book) by a Grandmaster of the style

 

The Heart of Meditation by the Dalai Lama

 - succinct and profound exposition on dzogchen theory and practice through the Dalai Lama's teachings on The Three Keys written by the 19th century master Patrul Rinpoche. This is one to read over and over again, always going deeper into the meanings and yourself

 

My Notebook - me    For my occasional dabbling in poetry

 

[9th]

On 6/23/2017 at 9:02 AM, blue eyed snake said:

I grok...

 

rereading castaneda, worthy reading,

I get much more out of it then 20 years ago

 

Quote

 

You say you've heard that the masters of Eastern esoteric doctrines demand absolute secrecy about their teachings. Perhaps those masters are just indulging in being masters. I'm not a master, I'm only a warrior. So I really don't know what a master feels like.

 

It doesn't matter what one reveals or what one keeps to oneself. Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. If we have enough of it, one word uttered to us might be sufficient to change the course of our lives. But if we don't have enough personal power, the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and that revelation won't make a damn bit of difference.

 

- Castaneda

 

 

 

[silent thunder]

This Is It by Alan Watts

Emptiness Dancing (reread) by Adyashanti

Don't think of an Elephant by George Lakoff

and Sacred Geometry: Philosophy and Practice by Thames & Hudson

 

[nohbody]

The Evolution  of  Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things by AW Moore and Crow with No Mouth by Ikkyu

[Taomeow]

Behind the Green Mask: UN Agenda 21 by Rosa Koire

Continuing education in "what's really going on."

 

Seeking the Spirit of the Book of Change, by Zhongxian Wu

Shamanic roots of the I Ching explored. 

 

The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects, by Alexandra David-Neel and Lama Yongden

Old stomping ground (from before taoism) I feel like revisiting because of a quote I came across that intrigued me, concerning  the nature of Time (perennial stomping ground). 

 

Poems by Nikolay Gumilyev (n Russian)

 

Chinese Characters: Their origin, etymology, history, classification and signification, by Dr. L. Wiegler.

First published in 1915...  the original and, according to some scholars, the best.   

 

 

 

[Aletheia]

I just downloaded, Queering Richard Rolle: Mystical Theology and the Hermit in Fourteenth-Century England

 

This book examines three aspects of Rolle’s thinking used throughout this work: his ontology, phenomenology, and sound ecology. These facets of his work invoke both a way of understanding being in the world, an opening up of the body in queer ways to experience the divine, and a way to consider divine contemplation in terms of singing the body. 

 

Queering Richard Rolle considers how Rolle navigates queer, eremitic conduct in order to create an identity always in process

[Aletheia]

And I'll give that book a miss after looking at the phenomenology section -

 

Object-oriented philosophers and theologians such as Graham Harman and Adam Miller assist
me in thinking about the phenomenon of objects in metaphorical and theological contexts.

 

Harman is a complete moron and object-oriented philosophy is stupid. God, good way to ruin a good book!

 

Graham Harman writes that “the key to phenomenology is the notion of intentionality: the well-known axiom that consciousness is always conscious of something.”

 

Yawn!

 

 

 

Edited August 20, 2017 by Aletheia

[nohbody]

The profession of shaman has many advantages. It offers high status with a safe livelihood free of work in the dreary, sweaty sense. In most societies it offers legal privileges and immunities not granted to other men. But it is hard to see how a man who has been given a mandate from on High to spread tidings of joy to all mankind can be seriously interested in taking up a collection to pay his salary; it causes one to suspect that the shaman is on the moral level of any other con man.
But it's lovely work if you can stomach it.

- Robert Heinlein 

[9th]