Which books sit on your nightstand?

[HoldorFold]

Tao of Letting Go - Bruce Frantzis

[zerostao]

The Memoirs of Princess Daskova

Beyond Good and Evil

Crime and Punishment

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Leaves of Grass

Song of Myself

There Was a Child Went Forth

[RigdzinTrinley]

The root verses of "the beacon of certainty" by ju mipham Rinpoche

 

And the commentary by Khenpo Kunphel on it

 

(I'm traveling thats why only those two books are with me)

 

Otherwise

 

"The nectar of manjushries speech" Khenpo kunphels commantery on shantidevas bodhisattvacharyavatara

 

"Words of my perfect teacher" by dza Patrul Rinpoche

 

"The precious treasury of dharmadatu" by longchenpa

 

The above list didn't change for a looooong time

 

I recently re read Hesse's steppenwolf and narziss and goldmund

 

Poems by Kabir

[zerostao]

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by edward o wilson

[silent thunder]

Limits of Power:  Andrew Bacevich

[Old River]

The Memoirs of Princess Daskova

Beyond Good and Evil

Crime and Punishment

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Leaves of Grass

Song of Myself

There Was a Child Went Forth

 

Nice selection.  I read Volokhonsky & Pevear's translation of Crime and Punishment a few years ago -- one of my favorite novels (though I don't often read fiction).  And Whitman is like scripture to me (I'm not sure if I'm exaggerating when I say that!).

[Taomeow]

Chinese Characters: Their Origin, Etymology, History, Classification and Signification, by Dr. L. Wieger, S.J.

Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, by Ignatius Donnelly

Japanese Tales, edited and translated by Royall Tyler

Great Ideas in Physics, by Alan Lightman

[zerostao]

just finished rousseau's Confessions

jane austen Pride and Prejudice

and https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31270   Complete Writings of Thomas Paine

 

@ Old River,  welcome to TDB, have you found any of our poetry threads?

[Old River]

I'm finishing David Hinton's wonderful book Hunger Mountain today.  Very much my cup of tea!

 

At a slower pace, I'm reading Dante's Divine Comedy in conjunction with some free lectures on the Open Yale Courses website.  I'm just about to get out of hell and into purgatory.  It's actually quite enjoyable and thought-provoking.

 

And lastly, a biography on Jean Sibelius by Tomi Makela-- it's good for information, but there's something stilted about the writing-- it may be due to the translation?  

[Old River]

Sorry, zerostao, I meant to say also that, no I haven't seen the poetry threads except the ongoing haiku.  But what would a Daoist forum be without poetry?  I'll definitely get a round tuit, I know!  Thank you!

[Veezel]

I recently bought The Tao of Pooh.

[blue eyed snake]

Huxley, the perennial Philosophy, downloadable and worth reading

 

and (in repeat) the Tao of Pooh, heirloom of my mom 

[Old River]

Finished David Hinton's Hunger Mountain -- a book I did not to end. It had some great insights into Chinese culture and etymology-- a higly recommended read for anyone interested in Daoism.

 

Today I began delving into an anthology, Transcendentalism: A Reader, which covers not just the usual suspects (Emerson and Thoreau), but those figures who are less read today (Margaret Fuller, A. Bronson Alcott), as well as figures on the fringe of that zeitgeist (Dickinson, Douglass).

 

It gets off to a great start with a sermon by William Ellery Channing, who was a "proto-transcendentalist" so to speak-- you can see the themes that Emerson would later take up in his work. Such great insights, even if the theistic language seems foreign. But they were seeking something outside the unhealthy confines of Calvinism, but also the arid Unitarianism, groping for a different kind of metaphysical expression of humanity and nature.

 

An absolutely fascintating facet of American history that is overlooked far too much today. Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman encountered the Bhagavad-Gita and other Indian and Middle Eastern texts in translation which inspired them as well. They didn't know the Dao De Jing, but I imagine Thoreau would have nodded in approval.

[Old River]

^^^ re:Hinton --- "a book I did not want to end"

[Geof Nanto]

I very much like Hunger Mountain too. An all round excellent exploration of both the origins of the Chinese language and natural wilderness. My only reservation with David Hinton is his aversion to the reality of mystical experience. The front cover of the book even has this endorsement from Bill McKibben: "A gorgeous book, a book of power, the very opposite of mystical." Yet for me his experiences of the wilderness of Hunger Mountain are mystical.

 

(Mystical definition - Having an import not apparent to the senses nor obvious to the intelligence; beyond ordinary understanding.)

[doc benway]

The Practice of Dzogchen in the Zhang Zhung Tradition of Tibet - John Reynolds

The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep - Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

The Path to Tranquility: Daily Meditations by the Dalai Lama - His Holiness the Dalai Lama

... and several transcripts from Bön Dzogchen retreats

[9thousandthings]

Having two young kids I don't get to read much of my own choosing these days.  This isn't always bad though!  There are an incredible amount of amazing children's books out there (this maybe deserves a thread....I'll get on that)!  And my daughter is now old enough (at 6) that I can read to her a fair amount of non-kid material.  Last year we made it through almost the entire volume 1 of the Anthony C. Yu series of Journey to the West.
 

However, every few months I get the bright idea that I will actually make it past the first page or two of something.  So hold on let me go check....okay, here is what has - as I've fallen asleep - slipped down between the bed and the baseboard heater this month:

 

Zen Flesh Zen Bones

2312 - Kim Stanley Robinson

The Method of Freedom: An Errico Malatesta Reader

 

On the couch there's my really, really, beat up copy (i think it was my parents') of Feng/English's Chuang Tsu that my 3 year old has been alternating between staring at the photos, and using as building material for what I think is an mothership/castle/forest...

 

In the bathroom, dangerously close to damp tub, I found Qigong Empowerment: A Guide to Medical, Taoist, Buddhist and Wushu Energy Cultivation which I had been reading last week during a pre-dawn tea session and then lost...where it was between then and now nobody will admit knowing...

 

Also, funny, I have David Hinton's Hunger Mountain on request from the Library...so it will be on deck to befall a similar fate as the above listed soon enough

Edited April 19, 2016 by 9thousandthings

[Old River]

I very much like Hunger Mountain too. An all round excellent exploration of both the origins of the Chinese language and natural wilderness. My only reservation with David Hinton is his aversion to the reality of mystical experience. The front cover of the book even has this endorsement from Bill McKibben: "A gorgeous book, a book of power, the very opposite of mystical." Yet for me his experiences of the wilderness of Hunger Mountain are mystical.

 

(Mystical definition - Having an import not apparent to the senses nor obvious to the intelligence; beyond ordinary understanding.)

 

This is certainly a criticism to bring up.  Here's just my own thoughts on that...

 

The word "mystical" is one of those words that unfortunately covers such a broad range that it almost always requires some kind of clarification, from the "rational mysticism" of Nagarjuna to the wild visions of Hildegard von Bingen.  I'm not opposed to the word "mysticism" myself per se, but I generally don't like to use the word myself for its ambiguity (for similar reasons, I usually don't use the word "spiritual").

 

Personally I prefer the word "ontological" instead (which, incidentally Hinton does as well)-- which centers around (ontological) Being rather than (empirical) beings-- this is, as you clarify "not apparent to the senses nor obvious to the intelligence ; beyond ordinary understanding."  So (as I see it), "ontological" and "mystical" are largely synonymous.  "Ontological" is an imperfect word also, for a different reason: First, "ontological" is such a horribly clumsy word, but, more importantly, it tends to overshadow the vital experiential aspect which is central to "mysticism." 

 

But all this is to say, I do get where you're coming from.  Words are just such bloody clumsy, blocky things-- especially when it comes to any metaphysical issues.  All that said, I do think McKibben is mistaken in speaking of Hinton's book as antithetical to mysticism.  Hinton is dealing with ontology throughout the book, which does mean he is dealing with what could very well be called "the mystical."  The book has much in common with Emerson and Thoreau, who also saw nature as being fully imbued with that sense of the numinous-- an emphasis on immanence of "the divine" (so to speak) IN the whole of nature rather than apart from it or "beyond" it.  "Mysticism" need not always be tied to the "supernatural" in this respect, and I feel this is where Hinton is coming from.  For these reasons, I think it's largely a semantic issue myself. 

 

(and besides, I really hate those endorsement blurbs on books anyway! lol)

[Captain Mar-Vell]

...

 

I don't have any books on my nightstand.

 

Sorry.

 

Huxley, the (P)erennial Philosophy, downloadable and worth reading(.)

 

 

In regard to few professional philosophers and men of letters is there any evidence that they did very much in the way of fulfilling the necessary conditions of direct spiritual knowledge. When poets or metaphysicians talk about the subject matter of the Perennial Philosophy, it is generally at second hand. But in every age there have been some men and women who chose to fulfil the conditions upon which alone, as a matter of brute empirical fact, such immediate knowledge can be had; and of these a few have left accounts of the Reality they were thus enabled to apprehend and have tried to relate, in one compre- hensive system of thought, the given facts of this experience with the given facts of their other experiences. To such first- hand exponents of the Perennial Philosophy those who knew them have generally given the name of 'saint' or 'prophet/ ' sage ' or ' enlightened one/ And it is mainly to these, because there is good reason for supposing that they knew what theywere talking about, and not to the professional philosophers or men of letters, that I have gone for my selections. 

 

The Perennial Philosophy is the Eternal Way.

 

It looks like a good read bes, I hope you enjoy it.

 

I always liked dear old Aldous.

 

...

[Nikolai1]

I was thinking the other day...I've been a serious reader for about twenty years - sice I was about 18.  In all that time, a lot of writers have come and go and I have had many inspirations.

 

But there is only one, just one writer, who is as dear to me as he was then.  It seems like he stands for something perennial.  I never tire of reading him, there always seem to be an insight there to strike me afresh.

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson!

 

So good to hear Old River singing the praises of the Transcendentalists!

[9thousandthings]

So good to hear Old River singing the praises of the Transcendentalists!

 

Yes indeed!  Growing up, before I had heard squat about eastern thought / philosophy, I caught profound glimpses of the Tao from Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, and company.  I need to return to them someday soon, it's been a long time....  

[Nikolai1]

I think Emerson was a highly realised man. And he had such love and respect for Thoreau that I think Thoreau must have been pretty remarkable himself.

 

But we must be more specific: the Oversoul Self-reliance, Spiritual Laws and The Poet are probably my favourite essays!

[Old River]

I'm happy to see other readers of old Ralph, Henry, and Walt.  

 

Nikolai1, I'm with you on the Emerson essays you've mentioned, and would also add these: "Compensation" (which really illustrates the principle at work in DDJ chapter 2), and also "Circles."  And Thoreau is great too -- many people miss his dry sense of humor in Walden, and mistake him for a mere crank.  This is not the case however.  There is a slim volume, called The Heart of Thoreau's Journals which is a great way of first exploring him.  

 

Incidentally, 9thousandthings, they were familiar with some eastern thought: the Bhagavad Gita was a favorite text of all three, and they also had familiarity with the Upanishads and (I believe) the Dhammapada.  I don't think they were familiar with the Dao De Jing or Zhuangzi (not sure what, if any, English translations existed then).  

 

One of the reasons I value these writers (and those who were later influenced by them one way or another, such as John Muir, Robinson Jeffers, W.S. Merwin, Mary Oliver, and Annie DIllard) is the similarities and overlapping with some Daoist thought.  To be sure, there are differences as well (certainly the "flavor" of the writings), but I like how they reached some similar thoughts independent of Daoism (at least in any direct way), and how they can shed a different perspective on Daoist thought.  I love discovering such hidden connections like this, and to me there is a great deal of resonance with the Transcendentalists.  

[Geof Nanto]

I haven't read any Emerson, but after reading your endorsements I've just now ordered Essays and Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The book description says this edition contains his major works, including Nature, the essays "Self-Reliance," "The American Scholar," "The Over-Soul," "Circles," "The Poet," and "Experience, " and such important poems as "The Rhodora," "Uriel," "The Humble-Bee," "Earth-Song," "Give All to Love," and the well-loved "Concord Hymn."  - so hopefully this edition will give me a core selection of his work.

 

[Old River]

I haven't read any Emerson, but after reading your endorsements I've just now ordered Essays and Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The book description says this edition contains his major works, including Nature, the essays "Self-Reliance," "The American Scholar," "The Over-Soul," "Circles," "The Poet," and "Experience, " and such important poems as "The Rhodora," "Uriel," "The Humble-Bee," "Earth-Song," "Give All to Love," and the well-loved "Concord Hymn."  - so hopefully this edition will give me a core selection of his work.

 

 

Sounds like a good representative sampling of his best work.  I hope you get something of value from it!