Here I’ll put up notes and thoughts on relevant books I’ve read.
Gil Fronsdale – The Issue at Hand
This book is amazing. I like the writing style a lot. It is crisp and clear and well-paragraphed. I think this helps to communicate ideas that can be difficult to understand.
I think the first essay, on the four noble truths, has probably been the most helpful explanation of the four noble truths I’ve read so far.
One interesting point: He formulates the second noble truth differently from Thich Nhat Hanh. Fronsdale frames it as stating that the cause of suffering being craving, but TNH frames it as only stating that suffering has a cause, writing that craving is only one of many causes. I’m not quite sure on the significance of the distinction, to be honest.
Thich Nhat Hanh – The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching
I first borrowed this book from the library on the recommendation of a Buddhist monk who came to speak at my local Buddhist group. I found it so helpful and illuminating that I ended up buying my own copy.
As a preliminary note, I found it helpful to know, based on the initial pages with publishing information, that the text had not been prepared originally as a single book. Rather, the book comprises essays of TNH in various languages translated and compiled by others. There is some discontinuity between chapters, particularly in that latter portions of the book. However, overall, each chapter makes sense as its own self-contained text, and together, they form a mosaic that depicts some really helpful ideas.
[More to come…]
David Foster Wallace – Infinite Jest
This book doesn’t directly discuss Buddhism very much (though Wallace does mention it elsewhere – see his Kenyon college commencement address).
But it does provide some incredibly insightful and lyrical discussions of the psychology of happiness, pleasure, addiction, and self-discipline. Basically, I think it’s a very illuminating analysis of how craving works in our society, and the costs a failure to understand it brings.
I think Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is also a great resource on these themes, and I might write something about that book as well.
(more to come on this).
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