Buddhist cyberpunk?

"As a child I’d believed there was an essential person, a sort of core personality around which the surface factors could evolve and change without damaging the integrity of who you were. Later, I started to see that this was an error of perception caused by the metaphors we were used to framing ourselves in. What we thought of as personality was no more than the passing shape of one of the waves in front of me. Or, slowing it down to more human speed, the shape of a sand dune. Form in response to stimulus. Wind, gravity, upbringing. Gene blueprinting. All subject to erosion and change."

Altered Carbon  


I can't say I expected to encounter the Buddhist doctrine of anatta (no-self) in a cyberpunk novel! 

When Asia was the World

When Asia Was the World: Traveling Merchants, Scholars, Warriors, and Monks Who Created the 'Riches of the East
© 2009 Stewart Gordon
256 pages

When Asia was the World revisits, through the lives of traveling monks, traders, and warriors,  the extraordinary vistas and cultures of greater Asia from 500 to 1500 A.D.   It is not a conventional history of Asia before the ascendancy of Europe,  but allows the reader to play the part of historical tourist, tagging along with various men traveling circuitous routes from Iran to China. Some are traders, bringing to life a robust economy that nearly covered a hemisphere,  Others are pilgrims -- Buddhist monks, traveling from China to India and back, visiting every monastery they can and soaking in wisdom -- Muslims, too, made treks to learn from courts afar. These men circulated not only spiritual insight, but secular knowledge, connecting courts across the continent.  Others are Mongolian raiders,who don't bask in civilization so much as incinerate it.  This is ideal reading for someone who has a vague interest in Asia, or in global history in general, but who doesn't want to deal with an actual history book. Here, the history is absorbed through men of zeal and ambition, willing to transverse epic mountains, forbidding deserts, lush forests, and pirate-filled sea planes to see what's beyond the horizon.

Related:
The Spice Route, John Keay
A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, David Bernstein

On Desire

On Desire: Why We Want What We Want
© 2007 William Irvine
337 pages

Why do we want what we want? William Irvine’s On Desire examines the nature of desire, exploring first how profoundly it affects our lives, then surveying psychological inquiries into its basis before at last turning to consider how religions, philosophies, and odd ducks have attempted to grapple with it.  Irvine is author previously of A Guide to the Good Life,  a manual on the practice of Stoicism, and the two works have a common subject and a likely audience.  On Desire  is one part science and another philosophy,  thorough but concise. 

We are not merely what we think deliberately;  anyone can realize their mind has a life of its own with a simple experiment: simply shut your eyes and attempt to count slowly to ten.  The count will not even reach five before thoughts start floating up and competing for attention. Where do these distractions come from?  After a brief introductory section in which Irvine comments on how profoundly our life can be changed by desires beyond our control --  falling in love, for instance --   the second part of the book offers that desires are ultimately the result of our instincts, a kind of biological incentive system that’s had a cobbled-together evolutionary history. 

That our minds are driven by evolutionary forces is natural, but not ideal;  following every desire is not the road to happiness. Indeed, even if the desires didn't lead to our immediate destruction (like the urge to pet a sleeping lion), heeding every impulse leaves a person constantly in need of stimulation. That in mind, it is no accident that virtually every religion, and most moral philosophies, have addressed the matter of desire, and in the third section of the work Irvine examines Abrahamic, Greek, and Buddhist approaches. While the Abrahamic religions typically couch mastery of desire so that people can attain heaven and everlasting bliss,  the Greek schools (Stoicism and Epicureanism) and Buddhism have a more this-worldy approach:  desire is countered to achieve tranquility or to maximize enjoyment.   After surveying the advice given to students by such luminaries as Augustine,  Seneca, and Henry David Thoreau,  Baxter notes that despite the variety of contradictions, there are some common lessons that can be distilled.

The foundational observation is that desires should not be trusted. If we practice mindfulness, we will immediately realize their impermanence;  like a child blowing bubbles,  one desire will be a phantasm among dozens, constantly moving, eventually fading. Desires compete with one another, and so thick are they that our intellect is crowded out; it plays 'second fiddle'. The most potent desires are the ones we have the least control over, but no desire is really insatiable.   Even though they cannot be fulfilled, they can be resisted; our biological incentive system may try to punish us, but it's not the end the world. Ultimately, the only way to truly fight desires is to change ourselves to learn to appreciate -- through philosophy, religion, etc -- what we have, to  use techniques both ancient and modern to strengthen our minds against the distractions of the moment.  Irvine covers a lot of varied practices within the text for those who develop an interest.

On Desire is a superb work,  quite attractive to anyone with an interest in mindfulness. My own Stoic leanings predispose me to enjoy it, of course, but I think it laudable also for demonstrating how our evolutionary history has consequences in our present life; although we'd like to think that natural history is history, a closed book, in truth we are driven by the same instincts today that wrote that book. The thoughtfulness of a work such as this gives us the ability to avoid much of the suffering that nature's book is replete with.  

Related:
Irvine's own The Good Life: the Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, any book in Stoicism

This week at the library: the cosmos, Jane Austen, zombies, and the Middle Way

-- Minireviews -- 

Some zombies like to lurch about groaning for brains. Some zombies like to ride the escalators, listen to Frank Sinatra, and daydream about their past life. That's R,  a zombie who has forgotten most of his life, even most of his name.  R is of the mobile damned shambling around a ruined Earth, living in a hive of the undead in an abandoned airport. He sometimes goes into the remains of civilization to find someone to nibble on. Brains are especially fun, because eating them allows the diner to experience the memories of the dined-upon. It adds a bit of color to the zombies' dreary, grey not-lives. But when one young man dies saving his girlfriend's life and R munches down on his memories of growing up with her, R unexpectedly develops a crush -- and instead of turning her into a second course, he totes her home and hides her from his moribund brethren.  Such is the beginning of Warm Bodies, a novel of the living and the damned, and the bridge between them.  I checked it out not because I like zombies, but because a friend of mine -- a mature, knows-how-to-manage-her-time-well friend -- stayed up all night reading it. While the premise intrigued me, the humor and earnestness of a zombie yearning for more, even love, snookered me completely. I read it in one sitting, as it's the kind of novel that doesn't let you go away: it continues to rise in intensity until the very end.

                                                             

With Warm Bodies out of the way, you know now that the title does not refer to my reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies again. My Jane Austen reference was to The Jane Austen Book Club, a novel  which covers the stories of five women and one man who get together once a month and discuss a given Jane Austen novel, each taking it in turn to host. As a guy who has read Pride and Prejudice, I thought it might be fun to see another fellow go through it. His responses aren't all that remarkable. I hate to admit it, but this is the rare instance wherein a book doesn't compare favorably to its movie  Admittedly, I saw the movie before reading the book, and in fact read the book after finding out it was the source for a money I thought hilarious. (The Austen-reading man is developed far better in the movie: he's a riot: I screamed in laughter at the faces of the women as he, an SF buff, tried to compare the plot of an Austen title with the development relationship of Luke and Leia through the original Star Wars trilogy.  Great movie, all-right book: I might have enjoyed it better had I actually read more than one Austen novel. It made me feel guilty, actually..

I also read Buddhism without Beliefs by Stephen Batchelor, which wasn't as ferociously compelling as I thought it might be, possibly because I've taken Buddhism's extrareligious applicability for granted for a few years now.  Batchelor treats Buddhism as a practice in response to certain realities, and invites readers on meditations to cultivate a sense of compassion within them. Batchelor's philosophical explanations sometimes seemed like vague esoterica (the chapter on emptiness, for instance), others were eye-opening, like the section on no-self. He compared us to clay spinning on a wheel:  the thing that emerges is the result of a lot of actions acting in concert: the constituency of the clay, the pressure, the wheel; there is no ideal Pot that will suddenly materialize there. The same is true for us: there is no ideal Self floating around inside us, or out in the ether: we as beings are being constantly created by drives internal and external.

And on a final note, a book I need to re-read because it's been a few months since I finished it:  The Universe Within reveals the profound connectivity of the universe, exploring the ways our biology has been shaped by astrophysics and geology. But it's not actually about us: his account demonstrates how all of nature is bound together in cycles -- water evaporating into the air, then returning as rain; sea crust being formed at ridges, and dissolved again in volcanic explosions --  and how no field of science can exist without connection to another. A rock can tell you about physics, chemistry, and biology.  Had the book been about the interconnectedness of the sciences, it would have been a triumph. It's supposed to be about how these processes have shaped human beings, though, and the human connection is added in only tangentially at the end.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Today I also received two books through interlibrary loan: Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire, which examines human-plant coevolution, and Garbage Land by Elizabeth Royte.  I'm looking forward to both:  Pollan is a weird author in that I'll finish his books regarding them too problematic to recommend, and yet I never stop thinking about them. Neither The Omnivore's Dilemma nor In Defense of Food are never far from my mind.

Look for more food books as the spring matures!

Siddhartha

Siddhartha
© 1922 Hermann Hesse
119 pages

Once in India there lived a young man whose life was everything one might dream of. Not only did he come from a wealthy family, but people loved him for who he was; a handsome, kind, and wise personality in their lives. Despite all this, young Siddhartha felt a yearning for more -- and so he left everything behind him to search for enlightenment. Becoming a penniless ascetic, Siddhartha journeys throughout the land, among the poor and the rich alike, befriending the craven and the spiritual, always looking for answers to the meaning of life and suffering. Originally written in German, this translation by Sherab Chödzin Kohn is both spellbinding in content as well as in style.

There are few novels which have placed me so intimately inside the head of a character as this. It follows Siddhartha's story throughout his life, as he attempts to learn from the teachings and practices of others, and from the circumstances of his own life.  Siddhartha is a deeply introspective individual with an intense hunger for ultimate release from himself, from his ego. His years spent with the monks does not satisfy, and he cannot help but note the age of some of the monks present, who have spent decades living their doctrines but seem as constricted as he is. Even the words of Gautama Buddha, the great teacher of the age,  seem flawed. Ultimately, as his life wears on, Siddhartha finds the answers he once searched for...from an unexpected corner. Without spoiling anything, he realizes the preeminent importance of experience: even those who have found enlightenment cannot readily pass it on to students, because enlightenment comes not from books but from living life and responding to it. As each person's mind and life are unique, only we ourselves can learn the path particular to us; only we can plumb our own depths.

I found the book provocative and centering; definitely one worth mulling over.

Dhammapada

Dhammapada, Annotated and Explained
© 2001 translated Max Müller, annotated by Jack Macguire
129 pages

Yesterday I drove to the state capital, Montgomery, and while there visited the main branch library. I noticed they offered several versions of the Dhammapada, one of the oldest and most accessible portions of Buddhist scripture. It contains some 400+ verses; short aphorisms on the way of enlightenment. Compasssion, self-discipline, and meditation are mainstay themes of the verses. The wisdom expressed here is universal: you don't need an education in Buddhism to grasp the essential messages. On the off chance that you are utterly and completely ignorant as to what Buddhism is about,  this translation comes with an introduction that sets things in context and is fully annotated to explain themes in Buddhist thought, or references to Indian culture those outside it might miss. The authors also occasionally include quotations from other Buddhist sources (other works, as well as living teachers like the Dalai Lama), separated from the main text, so that readers may examine a theme from multiple angles. The combined result is a great success. When I decide to purchase a copy of the Dhammapada for future reference and inspiration, this will be the version I will look for.

God is Not One

God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Rule the World and Why Their Differences Matter

© 2010 Stephen Prothero

400 pages

Despite the promises of modernity to drive religion out of the human mind, the New York City skyline bears witness to its continuing relevance. While religion can serve as a force for good,  it’s a master at nurturing the darker sides of human nature, and the good religions have achieved is often a testament to the moral courage of humans who have fought to push these systems of thought beyond their origins.  Some have gone so far as to say that the differences between religions are unimportant, that they are merely different paths up the same broad mountain which arrive at the same place. Stephen Prothero says different.  None of this tearing-down-the-walls-that-divide-us nonsense for Prothero, he intends to prove that religions are all rigidly disconnected boxes, and that while we may choose to shake hands with or shake fists at the fellows in the other boxes, we can only do it through tight little windows.

I looked forward to grappling with this book, largely because my own mind is so divided on the subject: while I believe that all religions were created by human beings to understand the world and perhaps to better themselves,  I also know that some religions are so defined by their aggressive assertions that they cannot easily find peace with other.  I found God is not One to be an unsatisfactory sparring partner, however, being  frustratingly simplistic, and ultimately disappointing.  In the first eight chapters, Prothero analyzes eight  of the the world’s major religion’s through  four-points:

• a problem
• a solution
• a technique
• an exemplar

He believes each of these religions (Islam, Confucianism, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Yoruba, Taoism, Hinduism) attempts to address one of eight different problems in human nature, and offers eight fundamentally different approaches to life based on that problem.  This analysis is entirely too simplistic for the problem at hand, however. While it’s possible to identify characteristics within a religion that make them unique, those characteristics do not constitute the religion. This eight religions, eight boxes organization ignores the more fundamental similarities religions might have:  the constant cycle of life/death/rebirth in Hinduism and Buddhism, for instance, and the hateful split between the material and spiritual worlds that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are so keen on convincing us of.

A second problem with this is one Prothero tip-toes around: although the eight religions he identifies here do have many varied differences, they are not necessarily hostile.  Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism have all existed in China together for centuries, for instance: they each have different offerings, and people happily sample beliefs and practices from each table, cafeteria-style, arriving at a worldview that meets their needs. Prothero speaks of religions ruling the world like hostile nation-states, but not all religions are as imperialistic (and therefore, conflict-prone) as the dominant forms of Christianity and Islam.  The Asian triplets point out the greatest problem with this book, Prothero’s sinister attitude about the relationship between humans and religion.  He would have us owned by religion, forced to live within that particular religion’s box. In the beginning, he snorts that attempts at interfaith dialogue which ignore the walls of differences are “disrespectful” of religion. I say poppycock. Why should we be respectful of religion and let it lie like a dusty rug? We should pick it up, bring it into the sunlight, and then beat it vigorously until all the dirt has fallen away and nothing but beauty remains. Why should we, the living, be content to breathe the dust of our ancestors?

Although Prothero’s thesis never grows legs to stand on here, the book may have some use for those interested in learning about other religions. He shows no bias toward one religion over another, though I advise nonreligious readers to steer well clear. He is bizarrely hostile toward humanists and atheists, dedicating an entire chapter to calling the ‘New Atheism’  a religion and its advocates hypocrites and plagiarists. This is stupidity, of course: religions are organized systems of beliefs, while atheism is a single belief -- and Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are no more plagiarists for making the same criticisms of religious assertions that Bertrand Russell did than is the second man in the crowd who dared to say the emperor had no clothes on.

I’m ultimately disappointed with this book: while it has its uses for comparative religion readers, there are assuredly superior books out there on that subject. I daresay even The Complete Idiot’s Guide to World Religion or some similar work would be better. I despise the spirit that sees the maintenance of religions as more important than the good we might do by overcoming our differences.

Source

Related:

• The Evolution of God, Robert Wright
• A History of God, Karen Armstrong
• The Faith Club,  Ranya Indliby, Suzanne Oliver, and Priscilla Warner
• The Great Transformation: the Beginnings of our Religious Traditions, Karen Armstrong

Living Buddha, Living Christ

Living Buddha, Living Christ
© 1995 Thich Nhat Hanh
240 pages

One interpretation of Jesus that I've grown used to seeing in books writing on the necessity for religious pluralism is his depiction as an enlightened teacher in the same manner as Buddha, hoping to improve the quality of human life radically with his teachings centered on love. This is essentially the tack Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk, took in writing Living Buddha, Living Christ.  He compares the Buddhist idea of mindfulness and the Christian "Holy Spirit", regarding them as accomplishing the same thing: "being one with the spirit" translates in his opinion to being mindful. It's..an odd idea, but somewhat useful, I think. If Christians take it to heart, they could adopt meditation and mindfulness into their own tradition without practicing them and wondering if it makes them hellbound.

For the non-Christian reader, there's not a lot of content here other than a few contemplations that reminded me of the Dali Lama's own work in An Open Heart. The book is essentially readable, although sentences tend to be short and choppy -- perhaps a product of the translation. It focused less on the historical persons of Jesus and Buddha than I had hoped, but the book should be of some interest to Christians interesting in makming their own tradition more responsive to the needs that mindfulness meets.

Taming the Mind

Taming the Mind

© 2004 Thubten Chodron

217 pages

I judged a book by its cover when I read this one. Oh, I looked it up on Amazon to see what readers were saying about it -- my substitute for thumbing through the book, which I cannot do when requesting books through an online library catalogue -- but really, I checked this book out because I liked the cover. The scene looks simple, natural, and tranquil -- and that's the neighborhood I like my mind to live in. The book is apparently written as a sequel to a beginner's guide to Buddhism, although I'm not sure why -- as this book seems to cover the basics. Chodron gives a history of Buddhism, comparing its schools of thought to one another, explains the essential teachings, and then applies them to parenting or employment.

Chodron takes Buddhism very seriously -- judging from their works that I have read, more seriously than the Dalai Lama. What I like about the Buddhist tradition is its emphasis on rationality and skepticism, and parts of this book made me uncomfortable in their apparent failure to live up to that standard. Siddhartha is viewed as less a wise teacher and more a demigod, and Chodron's advice to practicing Buddhists to avoid people who don't take the teachings carries a whiff of isolating fundamentalism. The book doesn't seem to mesh together very well, aside from being about Buddhism in general. There are chapters on Buddhist history, Buddhist culture, and other assorted topics that don't seem to go with "Taming the Mind". That book is in here -- some of the introduction, and the two beginning sections of "Our Relationship with Others" and on habits -- but there's a lot of information that distracts from that and absorbs space that perhaps should have gone to expanding the aforementioned sections.

Parts of the book are better than others, but I can't say I would recommend it. And I'm sorry to say that, because I never like reading a book and not being able to get anything out of it.* I'm going to try the author again, though.

* Save this, from "Dhammapada 165":

By ourselves is evil done;

By ourselves we pain endure.

By ourselves we cease from ill;

By ourselves become we pure.

No one can save us but ourselves;

No one can and no one may.

We ourselves must walk the path,

Buddhas only point the way

The Beginner's Guide to Zen Buddhism

The Beginner's Guide to Zen Buddhism
© 2000 Jean Smith
190 pages

Not knowing what distinguishes Zen Buddhism from Buddhism as a whole, I decided to read this quite accessible little book about the basics. Author Jean Smith does this fairly well, I think. Although I would be made to claim a comprehensive knowledge of Buddhist beliefs and practices, I've never encountered anything in another book that was not at least mentioned here. Perhaps appropriately, she begins the book by concentrating on the practice of zazen, or Zen meditation. This is a particular form of meditation relying on particular sitting positions and techniques and must -- according to her -- become part of daily, or at least weekly. Illustrations are used effectively: what pictures that are here are used directly by the text, instead of functioning as "extras" that give the reader a rest from nonstop text. The first pictures used are of the author (I presume) demonstrating several appropriate sitting positions for zazen.

She then moves onto the importance of the sangha, or community, and the Zen practitioner's relationship with his or her teacher. Smith places a lot of emphasis on the need for a teacher, which I found surprising. She then includes a short history of Buddhism's spread and development from India into China, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, and finally the United States, after which she writes on the Four Noble Truths, the Eight-Fold Path, and other teachings. This approach -- specifics before background -- is the reverse of what I expected, but I think it works. It is here that she states that what makes the separate schools of thought in Buddhism distinct from one another is which parts of the Eight-Fold path they place emphasis on. Zen's emphasis, she explains is on "right mindfulness and concentration". The book ends with thoughts on Zen in everyday life and a chapter of frequently-asked questions. Smith includes a list of suggested reading and a directory of Zen centers in the United States.

Overall, I found the book to be enjoyable and informing reading. I was surprised by the picture of Zen painted here: I did not anticipate the importance of ritual and such. My only detractory comment would be that Smith doesn't seem to offer any explanation for the preservation of rituals and chants and so forth aside from "It's part of the Zen Tradition." I know of possible explanations for these things -- chants serving to quiet the mind for the purposes of meditation, for instance -- but they were not mentioned.

Buddha

Buddha

© 2001 Karen Armstrong

205 pages

Karen Armstrong's Buddha is a concise biography of Siddhartha Gautama, otherwise known as (the) Buddha. The book, divided into five key sections, begins with Armstrong introducing the texts she uses as her sources -- vouching for or admitting potential weaknesses in them. Because Gautama is known solely as a religious figure, the book is written about that figure and the chapter titles reflect that. Armstrong begins by writing on the Brahmin religion and the beginnings of the Axial Age in the region that Gautama grew up in, writing on the communities of monks who had "gone forth", abandoning their homes to live in the forests or to travel through the land looking for spiritual teachers. Although she wrote of this in The Great Transformation, it's so different from the reality I know that it still strikes me. According to Armstrong, these people were not looking for bliss or contentment -- they were looking for freedom from the cycle of life. What I didn't know was that they believed even the gods yearned to be free from the cycle of life, death, and rebirth -- that the gods themselves wanted to achieve Nibanna/Nirvana. Nothing save freedom from the cycle was worthwhile.

The book records Gautama's call go "go forth" and his journey -- exploring the various traditions of the teachers he meets. According to Armstrong, he realizes early on that if he is to find Nibanna, he must find a way that is demonstrably true: accepting things on faith will not do. Eventually he realizes the way of Nibanna and the book switches to the growth of his Sangha as depicted in the Buddhist scriptures, even mentioning an attempt to seize power by one of his disciples. The book ends with his death.

Buddha was a tidy and helpful biography. Armstrong establishes the context, fits Buddha's story within it, and tells that story well, sometimes examining controversial subjects like misogyny in some of the Buddhist texts. Although most of the information in here I've gleaned from other source, I think its presentation here is sharp and reccommend it for someone curious about Buddha.

The Great Transformation

The Great Transformation: the Beginning of our Religious Traditions
© 2006 Karen Armstrong
469 pages

I looked forward to reading this book, and my expectations were met. Karen Armstrong's The Great Transformation is a historical narrative detailing the creation of four of the most influential religious and philosophical traditions to date -- Confucianism and Taoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, transcendental monotheism in Israel, and rationalism in Greece. She begins by examining the state of the "axial peoples" who lived in a time of transition -- when cities were becoming civilizations, and the thoughts of a few becoming the codified belief-systems of a few. The book is both a history book in its own right and one on the formation of these religious and philosophical traditions.


She begins where civilization began -- the plains of the Tigris and Euphrates -- and moves to Iran before focusing on the first axial people, the Indian "Aryans". Beginning with the chapter "Ritual", Armstrong devotes a single chapter each to a number of themes that may sum up the growing traditions -- detailing thoughts on knowledge, suffering, cosmic unity, and the like. Each of the four civilizations gets its due in every chapter, although some traditions may dominate a given theme: the teachings of Buddha, for instance, are covered in more detail than the others in "Suffering". The book ends with comments on how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each built on parts of those traditions, connecting ancient religions to more contemporary ones. (Armstrong's treatment of Israel reminded me of Isaac Asimov, and like him she makes a distinction between early Hebrew monotheism (which he called "Yahvism") and Judaism. The book's ending chapter. Also in the interests of connecting the old with the new, Armstrong summarizes her books and emphasizes the common themes that connected the axial traditions -- particularly empathy for all humans.

Armstrong writes quite well, creating a compelling narrative that seems to be quite well-informed. She keeps her various chapters and sections-within-chapters connected to one another in such a way that the reader doesn't lose focus, but instead keeps her thesis in mind. I enjoyed the book very much. I think I may obtain a personal copy sometime in the future.

The Universe in a Single Atom

The Universe in a Single Atom: the Convergence of Science and Spirituality
© 2005 Tenzin Gyatso
224 pages

This week marked the first time that I read something by the Dalai Lama that was not concerned primarily with ethics. The book begins with "Reflections", as author Tenzin Gyatso tells of how he became fascinated by the world of science and technology. He then launches into the book proper, looking for connections between Buddhism and modern science. His opening chapters deal with "Emptiness, Relativity, and Quantum Physics", which reminded me of Doug Muder's essay Humanist Spirituality in which he begins by dispelling the idea that quantum mechanics is mystical. (I have run into this attitude myself, in meditating with a friend. When I asked him to explain his belief in chi, he asked me if I believed in quantum mechanics.) His next chapters deal with the evolution of sentience and cosmological evolution, in which he compares the Buddhist idea of the "beginningless universe" to the big bang. Several chapters on consciousness follow, and he ends with a chapter on the ethics of genetic manipulation.

It's hard to comment on the book: doing so would require greater understanding of the ideas he is comparing. I thought the chapters on consciousness were interesting, and he seems generally fair about the idea of genetic engineering in plants. He's also critical of "scientific materialism" and enjoys using "reductionism" and variations thereof. I didn't find what I was expecting in this book, namely biological reasons for acting ethically. I suppose I shall have to stick to Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, since in it he explores the idea of altruism being beneficial to us.

Transforming the Mind

Transforming the Mind: Teachings on Generating Compassion
© Tenzin Gyatso 1999
168 pages

This book was not written as a book: it is, rather, the transcript of a series of lectures Gyatso gave in London. According to its introduction, many people asked for a print form of the material and Transforming the Mind is that. Because this was not meant as a book on its own, it can't really be compared to Ethics for a New Millennium or The Art of Happiness. It reminds me of An Open Heart in that it focuses more on religious practices and less on secular ethics. Gysato explains the Four Noble Truths and their relation to transformation, and one of the book's three parts features commentary on an eight-verse prayer related to the subject. The text of question and answer sessions is also included, as is a brief lecture titled 'Ethics for the New Millennium". I think this book would mainly appeal to those who wanted the lecture transcription, as the book's religious material is dealt with better in An Open Heart and its ethical material in Ethics for a New Millennium.

An Open Heart

An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life
© 2001 the XIV Dalai Lama
191 pages

Because I enjoyed The Art of Happiness so much, I decided to continue reading the Dalai Lama's thoughts. An Open Heart is considerably more short than The Art of Happiness, but its singular topic is much more narrow. The book repeated a lot of what was in The Art of Happiness, but this book is different in that it focuses more on ideas to meditate on to cultivate feelings of compassion for everyone. He combines the material from The Art of Happiness and these meditative techniques with explainations of Budhhist concepts like karma, no-self, and reincarnation and of how they apply to what he is teaching. I had a fairly simplistic understanding of karma (what goes around comes around), but the idea he espouses is more severe. If you steal, he says, not only will you suffer the consequences in this world, but when you are reborn you will be reborn lower and will have to fight a greater urge to deal while being stolen from. I imagine if you steal again you'll be reborn lower and will have a still greater urge to steal, which to me sounds like a negative feedback loop. I still don't see how the idea of "no soul" works with reincarnation. What exactly is being "reincarnated"?

It was an interesting read, but inferior to The Art of Happiness from my view.

What the Buddha Taught

What the Buddha Taught
© 1974 Walpola Rahula


I'm a member of a philosophy group on YahooGroups, and this book came up in discussion. Since my knowledge of Buddhism is quite limited, I decided to indulge in a little literacy-expanding this week. The work was introduced to me as an introduction to Buddhism, which seems appropriate given how little I know. It's famous enough that it has merited its own Wikipedia entry. Rahula begins by introducing the reader to the beginning of Buddhism and to the Buddhist mind, devoting a chapter to its ideals of tolerance, conditionality, compassion, and so on. An interesting element is that the author holds that doubt must be vanquished from the mind for someone to use a truth. I disagree: I think something can be "true enough" for our purposes.

Having introduced Buddhism, Rahula then deals with the foundational principles of Buddhism, the "Four Noble Truths". He devotes a chapter to each one. The concepts he deals with did not originate in an English-speaking culture or into a culture that English derives from, so often he has to use Hindi words or make up English approximations. He then examines the Eight-Fold Path (the practical side of the philosophy). The next two chapters are on specific topics in Buddhism, namely the doctrine of no-self/soul and meditation. According to Rahula, human beings in Buddhism are seen as not having an exterior Self, but I don't understand how that holds true given reincarnation. Rahula tried to explain it in the section of the Four Noble Truths, but so help me I couldn't really understand. The chapter on Meditation is quite free of mystical terminology. The last chapter addresses Buddhism in the modern world. Interestingly, the revised version of the book supplements the text of the book with selected texts from the Buddhist "canon" (if there is such a thing). I found parts of the text to be quite interesting and other parts not so much.

The book is apparently quite well-received: the people who review it on Amazon are nuts about it and recommend it as the introductory book to Buddhism for beginners and students of comparative religion. Having never read any other introductions to Buddhism, I can't say the same. It was sometimes thought-provoking and sometimes confusing for me, but in general I enjoyed the read. Here are a few quotations from the book I found interesting enough to write down.
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"There is no unmoving mover behind the movement. It is only movement. It is not correct to say that life is moving, but life is movement itself. Life and movement are not two different things. In other words, there is no thinker behind the thought. Thought itself is the thinker. If you remove the thought, there is no thinker to be found."

"Two ideas are psychologically deep-rooted in man: self-protection and self-preservation. For self-protection man has created God, on whom he depends for his own protecting safety, and security, just as a child depends on its parent. For self-preservation man has conceived the idea of an immortal Soul or Atman, which will live eternally."

(From a collection of Siddhartha Gautama's sayings)
"Better is it truly to conquer oneself than to conquer others. Neither a god, nor an angel, nor Mara, nor Brahma, could turn into defeat the victory of a person such as this who is self-mastered and ever-restrained in conduct."

"Make haste in doing good; restrain your mind from evil. Whosoever is slow in doing good, his mind delights in evil."