Tag Archives: books
Little or a Lot
Excerpted from What Makes You Not a Buddhist, ©2008, by Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche: One day a monk noticed a tear in Gautama Buddha’s robe and offered to stitch it, but Buddha refused his offer. He kept walking and begging alms in his torn robe. When he headed toward the hideout of a destitute woman, the …
One by One
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.” ~Charles Mackay, in Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowd ©1841, available for free at Project Gutenberg
Consequences
This was excerpted from The Last Stand by Nathaniel Philbrick, ©2010. He was writing about the difficulty in finding accurate historical depictions when taken years after an event, but he could just as easily have been writing a treatise on karma: “We interact with one another as individuals responding to a complex haze of factors: …
Shhhh…
Excerpted from the book Natural Great Perfection: Dzogchen Teachings And Vajra Songs by Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche, ©2009: Even in this world, and even now, there are said to be many hidden yogis or discreet yogis, called bepay naljor in Tibetan. It means those realized ones who are not generally recognized as great spiritual sages or …
The Pinnacle of Evolution
“Each people is, I believe, inclined to believe it is the purpose of history, that all that has happened is leading to the now, to this world, this country. Few of us see ourselves as fleeting phantoms on a much wider screen, or that our great cities may someday be dug from the ruins by …
We do not at present educate people to think but, rather, to have opinions…
Excerpted from Education of a Wandering Man: A Memoir by Louis L’Amour ©1989: Acquiring an education has many aspects, of which school is only one, and the present approach is, I believe, the wrong one. Without claiming to have all the answers, I can only express my feeling that our methods of instruction do much …
An Incomplete Education
“Unfortunately, in most of our schools the history of Europe and North America is taught as if it were the history of the world. The rest of the world is referred to only when Europeans or Americans were invading or trading. There has recently been a small change for the better but not nearly enough.” …
Time
“A mistake constantly made by those who should know better is to judge people of the past by our standards rather than their own. The only way men and women can be judged is against the canvas of their own time.” ~from Education of a Wandering Man: A Memoir by Louis L’Amour ©1989 Paul Laurence …
No Limit
“It is often said that one has but one life to live, but that is nonsense. For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.” …
Joy
I was given a copy of The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, and I looked forward to reading it. I admire both of those men, and was sure they had insights I would find helpful. Their days are striking similar. Tutu begins his day …
Dismantle
Excerpted from The Heart Is Noble: Changing the World from the Inside Out by Ogyen Trinley Dorje, ©2013. It’s the last paragraph that really stands out: In 2001, the huge Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan were intentionally demolished. From a certain perspective within Islam, these statues were offensive instruments of idol worship, while to Buddhists …
“He just didn’t know any other way.”
Steve Parish was a roadie for the Grateful Dead and manager for the Jerry Garcia Band. His 2003 autobiography, Home Before Daylight: My Life on the Road With the Grateful Dead, is about his own life and experiences. It’s not a tell-all by any means, but of course his story overlaps with theirs. His stories …
