If the Buddha Dated: A Handbook for Finding Love on a Spiritual Path Review

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(More customer reviews)I have read more than my share of self help books but this is the most helpful book I have ever read. It started out slow - in the first pages I was rolling my eyes because I felt like it was simple stuff I already knew, but by page ten I was engrossed and thrilled. It is simple, straightforward, fun reading, it makes complete sense and helps clarify the issues that come up in every kind of relationship, from partners to potential partners, to family and friends. I could not put it down. I had an 'aha' every few pages, found it joyful and affirming and incredibly helpful. When I was halfway through it I bought 8 more copies and gave them to eight friends. They all loved it and have all given copies to their friends and family. I quickly saw my relationships to others and to myself start to change, I actively used the theories to improve my dynamics with others and one day read just one sentence and completely let go of some pain I'd been carrying for days over a conflict with a friend. Poof - it was gone and I was looking at it from a whole new place and learned a lesson I have used again and again since that day. I also re-established contact with a friend who I'd parted ways with years ago and in one easy conversation we came together again resolved the problem, laughed over how big we'd made it and have had a healthier, happier and closer friendship than ever since. I am back today to order 3 more copies for three more people - one of them is the new man in my life whom I feel this book was intrumental in helping me find. I'm choosing differently, approaching things differently and what's more - I'm happier and feel more clear and peaceful about relationships than I ever have. Get this book and a few extras for the people you love - you won't regret it. And grab your highlighter- there are gems on every page.

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In this practical, playful, yet spiritual guide, Charlotte Kasl, author of the highly successful Finding Joy: 101 Ways to Free Your Spirit and Dance with Life, shows you what it would be like to have the ancient wisdom of the Buddha to guide you through the dating process. Kasl brings a compassionate understanding to the anxiety and uneasiness of new love, and helps readers discover their potential for vibrant human connection based on awareness, kindness, and honesty. She approaches the dating process as a means for awakening, reminding us that when we live by spiritual rules, we bring curiosity and a light heart to the romantic journey. Filled with quotations from Zen, Sufi, and other wisdom traditions, and informed by the experiences of people from all walks of life, here is a relationship book that will appeal to readers looking for more than a Venus-meets-Mars solution to the complex affairs of the heart.

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Sayings of the Buddha: New Translations from the Pali Nikayas (Oxford World's Classics) Review

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(More customer reviews)Unlike the Abrahamic religions, Buddhism does not have an equivalent to the Torah, the Bible or the Qur'an. What we know of the Buddha's teaching comes largely from a vast collection of writings called the Tipitaka ("three baskets") in an ancient Indian language called Pali (thus, the Tipitaka is also referred to as "the Pali canon"). Of these, the second basket - the Sutta Pitaka ("Basket of Well-Spoken Utterances") - is the most famous. It contains the purported discourses (in Pali: suttas) of the Buddha himself, and are the oldest remaining documents in an Indian language to preserve his philosophy. Readers now have at least three very good English-language anthologies of suttas to choose from. By far the most comprehensive is Bhikku Bodhi's In the Buddha's Words. The other anthology of note is John J. Holder's scholarly Early Buddhist Discourses.
This new anthology is by Rupert Gethin of the University of Bristol, and current president of the Pali Text Society. It also happens to be an especially attractive edition, part of the newly revamped Oxford World's Classics series. As one would expect from both Gethin's credentials and the Oxford series, the introduction, explanatory notes and supplementary materials are scholarly and insightful, aimed toward a discriminating general reader more so than a Buddhist practitioner. Gethin is positioned at the forefront of Buddhist scholarship and, if you are interested in historical Buddhism, you will find his insights extremely fascinating.
The book includes a highly informative general introduction in which Gethin bypasses the mythology surrounding the Buddha's life for a refreshingly spare exploration of the development of Buddhism in India. Each sutta is prefaced with an insightful introduction outlining its content as well as its relative importance within the Pali canon. The translations of the suttas themselves are beautiful: modern, vivid and refreshingly free of archaism. Buddhists as well as the general reader have much to gain from Gethin's transparent translations. Scholarly translations of Pali literature can sometimes be unreadable. See, for example, John Ross Carter and Mahinda Palihawadana's translation of The Dhammapada (also in the Oxford World's Classics series), which is probably among the most accurate available but unfortunately incomprehensible in places. Gethin strikes the right balance between readability and accuracy.
Readers new to Buddhist scripture may be surprised to find a rich and vivid literature of fascinating and compelling characters. Stories in which, for instance, a distraught king travels to the Buddha with five hundred wives each mounted on one of five-hundred she-elephants on a beautiful moonlit night. Or the Buddha's exhortation to his monks to observe the various stages in which a corpse decomposes. Or a vivid and touching portrayal of an aging and ailing Buddha anticipating the coming of his own death. What also comes across in Gethin's translations that sometimes gets lost in others is a characteristic humor. For example, in the discourse entitled "The Fruits of the Aescetic Life", the aforementioned king has asked guru after guru what the rewards of a life of renunciation would be in the here and now. All except the Buddha give him a longwinded exposition of their respective philosophies. The king remarks, "it is as if someone asked for an explanation of a mango gave and explanation of a breadfruit." (Get it? "Fruits" of the Ascetic Life? Well, I found it funny.)
The selection of suttas is strategic: included are the Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta ("Turning the Wheel of Truth" - the Buddha's first teaching in which he outlines the middle path and the four noble truths, the Samannaphala Sutta ("The Fruits of the Ascetic Life"), the Mahaparinibbana Sutta ("The Buddha's Final Enlightenment"), as well as the invaluable Satipatthana Sutta ("Establishing Mindfulness") among many, many others. The anthology as a whole culls from four of the five of the nikayas ("collections"), opting to skip out on material from the Khuddaka Nikaya (the so-called "minor collection"). Gethin's aim appears to have been to offer a representation of Early Buddhism as a whole, as opposed to a streamlined collection for Buddhist practitioners. What emerges is a Buddhism that is somewhat intermediate between indigenous Indian spirituality (there is much talk of karma, reincarnation and gods and demons - largely missing from many of the more Westernized introductions to Buddhism) and the agnostic/nontheistic adaptations of Buddhism developing later.
Of the three anthologies mentioned, Holder's would probably make the best textbook for a university course. It is scholarly, but much better focused on the philosophical foundations of Buddhism. Bhikku Bodhi's collection is indispensable for practitioners - the commentary and translations are extremely insightful. Gethin's lies somewhere in between: not as scholarly as Holder's and not quite as focused and streamlined for the modern-day Buddhists as Bodhi's. Still, I recommend it to anyone interested in getting a more accurate view of what early Buddhism may have looked like. The readability of the translations themselves are certainly worth the price of the volume.


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Biblical Quotations for All Occasions : From the World's Greatest Source, Over 2,000 Timeless Quotes to Enrich Your Message Review

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(More customer reviews)I got this book for Christmas and have enjoyed just browsing through it, though I expect it to be useful as a reference book as well. I think the author (or maybe the publisher) did a neat job of updating the King James Version so that the quotes sound poetic but are still easy to understand. (They did away with all the words like 'thee' and 'thou' and so on.) I have recommended this to people in my church because I think its topical arrangement makes it easy to find what you're looking for in practically any subject area.

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