The Dhammapada [Translation by Gil Fronsdal]

‘The Dhammapada’ is the principal spiritual scripture of the Theravada tradition. It’s an anthology of 423 verses that were originally written in Pali. These verses were compiled by the early disciples of the Buddha, who transcribed from memory the essence of their Master’s message – the path to liberation. Liberation in two senses - freedom from rebirth upon dying, as well as living in wisdom in the present life.

Gil Fronsdale has divided his translation of the Dhammapada into twenty-six chapters. Some excerpts:

“Irrigators guide water;

Fletchers shape arrows;

Carpenters fashion wood;

Sages tame themselves.”

(from ‘The Sage’)

“Through many births

I have wandered on and on,

Searching for, but never finding,

The builder of [this] house.

To be born again and again is suffering.

House-builder, you are seen!

You will not build a house again!

All the rafters are broken,

The ridgepole is destroyed;

The mind, gone to the Unconstructed.

Has reached the end of craving!”

(from ‘Old Age’)

Gil Fronsdale’s elegant translation of the Buddha’s doctrine evinces his training in the Zen tradition, as well his academic credentials. He is both a practitioner and teacher of Vipassana, who received his Ph.D in Buddhist Studies from Stanford University.

Walden by Henry David Thoreau

In the July of 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved into a small cabin that he had built on the shores of Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. Thus was started one of America’s most famous experiments in the art of simple living. For two years and two months, Thoreau lived off the land, restricting his needs to the bare essentials of life. This allowed him the freedom and the solitude to commune with Nature, to read, and to contemplate on the mysteries of life and human needs as opposed to human desires. 

Some excerpts –

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.”

“The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what we do; and yet how much is not done by us!”

“To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.”

“The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?”

‘Walden’ is considered both a literary classic, and a philosophical treatise on the alternative to the usual American Dream; it’s a repudiation of rampant materialism, the usual charge made against America.

My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor

On the morning of December 10, 1996, Jill Taylor woke up with a piercing pain in her head which accelerated rapidly, diminishing her physical and cognitive abilities. It was some time before Jill realized what was happening to her - she was in the process of experiencing a stroke. Her reaction:

“Wow, this is so cool!”

An atypical reaction, but then Dr. Jill Taylor happened to be a neuroanatomist who was on the staff of the Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry. She had spent most of her adult life trying to understand the intricate functioning of the miracle that is the human brain. She also served as a member of NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), and advocated the value of brain donation to assist in research that would benefit the psychiatrically distressed.

What happened to Jill following her stroke was as awe-inspiring as it was awful. ‘My Stroke of Insight’ chronicles that experience.

The book is well-written, and Dr. Taylor writes with the awareness that most of her readers have neither her academic background, nor a very accurate idea of the workings of the human brain. She explains with simplicity and clarity, in language that both moves and inspires.

Jill’s stroke occurred in the left hemisphere of the brain – the area that predicates logic, language, memory, ingrained responses, likes and dislikes, awareness of time as divisible chunks – in short, the area that is “the home of your ego center.”

This left her at the mercy of her right hemisphere that is the seat of intuition, imagination, and awareness that the time is always now.

“The present moment is a time when everything and everyone are connected together as one. As a result, our right mind perceives each of us as equal members of the human family. It identifies our similarities and recognizes our relationship with this marvelous planet, which sustains our life. It perceives the big picture, how everything is related, and how we all join together to make up the whole. Our ability to be empathic, to walk in the shoes of another and feel their feelings is a product of our right frontal cortex.”

Dr. Taylor lost the ability to walk, talk, read, write or recall any aspect of her life. It took eight years for her to completely recover all her physical and mental abilities. But what she gained in the process is immeasurable.

This book highlights both the fragility of the human body that is dependent upon a mind which can disintegrate with devastating suddenness, and, the invincible power that sustains us from within and without – orchestrating life, or its termination.

The Katha Upanishad by Ekanath Easwaran (from "The Upanishads")

The foundation of Hinduism are the four Vedas – Rig, Yajur, Sama, and, Atharva. These together contain both the ritualistic form of the Hindu Religion, as well as its mystical essence. “Vedanta”, means the end of the Vedas. The Vedantic texts expound the philosophy behind the practice, and are also known as the ‘Upanishads’. Though the exact number of Upanishads has not been formally agreed upon, tradition considers 108 to be most worthy of being called Vedanta. 

The ‘Katha Upanishad’ is to be found in the Yajur Veda, and is one of the popular ones for exposition, perhaps partly due to its narrative form. A young boy, Nachiketa, witnesses his father giving away cows too old to produce milk. Dismayed, he requests his father to give him away too. In a fit of rage, the father consigns him to death: To death I give you!

Unperturbed, Nachikata sets off for the abode of the Lord of Death, Yama. But Yama is not present to greet him, and Nachiketa has to wait for three days for him to make his appearance. Slighting a guest is an egregious offence in Hindu culture, and mindful of this, the courteous Yama offers him three boons. The first two are easily taken care of. But when the boy makes his third request – to be told the secrets of the immortal Self – Yama demurs and tries to put him off, by laying forth an array of worldly temptations. Nachiketa bushes this aside,

These pleasures last until but tomorrow…How can we be desirous of wealth when we see your face and know we cannot live while you are here?

[The inference here is that one who is still swayed by the attractions of the world is by no means ready to receive the sacred secret. But once Death has tested Nachiketa, he finds him a worthy student. The caveat of Hindu spirituality is that wisdom can only be transferred when both Teacher and Student are equally ‘worthy’, meaning that the former is ripe to impart wisdom, and the other is ready to imbibe it.]

            Pleased with Nachiketa’s ardor, Yama begins his instruction. Though the path to be followed is laid out for the Seeker desirous of Enlightenment, the Katha Upanishad seems to lay emphasis on the over-riding nature of Divine Grace,

…behold the glory of the Self through the grace of the Lord of Love.

The Self can be attained only by those Whom the Self chooses. Verily unto them does the Self reveal himself…

            Easwaran remarks on Nachiketa’s shraddha (intense and abiding faith) in his commentary. His commentary of the Katha Upanishad is replete with shraddha as well - scholarly, yet remarkably free of any flights of philosophical fancy. That the Upanishad itself is deeply esoteric is however the very nature of Vedanta.

A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle

 Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth” is a compelling follow-up to his transformative book, “The Power of Now”.

Tolle has a gift for distilling the essence of the world’s philosophies into one lucid synthesis. He is able to reconcile the wisdom of the Zen masters, Jesus, Vedanta, and Sufism, without watering down the originals.

In this book, he touches upon the Ego: its nature, its many manifestations, and awareness of the ego, as its best cure. He presents his statements as simple, irrefutable truth, with no effort to convince or persuade.

The book is lightened, and the reader enlightened, by the inclusion of simple, and often humorous, anecdotes that beautifully illustrate his perspective.

Some excerpts:

“Strictly speaking, you don’t think: Thinking happens to you. The statement “I think” implies volition…For most people this is not yet the case…Digestion happens, circulation happens, thinking happens.”

“The ego could be defined simply in this way: a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment.”

“…there are two ways of being unhappy. Not getting what you want is one. Getting what you want is another.”

“Nonresistance, nonjudgment, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.”

“…Not everybody however will have to go through drastic change in their external circumstances. At the other end of the spectrum you have people who stay exactly where they are and keep doing whatever they are doing. For them, only the how changes, not the what. This is not due to fear or inertia. What they are doing already is a perfect vehicle for consciousness to come into this world, and it needs no other. They too bring into manifestation the new earth.”

Embraced by the Light by Betty J. Eadie

“Embraced by the Light” is the author’s first person-narrative of her near-death experience. “Near Death” is not an accurate term, since technically she was dead, probably, for a couple of hours.

On Nov. 18, 1973, 31-year-old mother of eight, Betty Jean Eadie, entered a hospital to undergo a partial hysterectomy. Because of ensuing complications, she died in the hospital. This book is her account on what she underwent following her death.

Ms. Eadie was born of Sotch-Irish and Sioux Indian parentage. Her parents’ separation led to her being placed in a religious boarding school, which derided her Native American heritage and fostered images of a wrathful, unforgiving deity. It did not however, kill her spiritual hunger, which sent her to various churches, but left her with a vague sense of unfulfilled yearning.

In her after-death experience, she speaks of the presence of guardian beings who have watched over her, of concepts of space-time different from what we experience on Earth, her meeting with Jesus Christ, and what he revealed to her about the secrets and laws behind creation:

“By understanding these laws we are better able to serve those around us. Whatever we become here in mortality is meaningless unless it is done for the benefit of others. Our gifts and talents are given to us to help us serve. And in serving others we grow spiritually.

Above all, I was shown that love is supreme. I saw that truly without love we are nothing. We are here to help each other, to care for each other, to understand, forgive, and serve one another.”

Ultimately, Ms. Eadie’s life is not so much about death, as about life.

The Essential Teachings of Ramana Maharshi

“Because people love mystery and not the truth, religions cater to them, eventually bringing them around to the Self. Whatever be the means adopted, you must at last return to the Self; so why not abide in the Self here and now?”

Bhagavan Shri Ramana Maharishi was born Venkatraman Iyer in 1879 in a small village in South India. For the early part of his life, he lived an unremarkable life till he left home at the age of sixteen to live as an ascetic in the hills of Arunachala. Neither building ashrams, nor assiduously collecting followers, the silent sage of Arunachala was nevertheless a lodestone attracting devotees and seekers from all walks of life.

‘The Essential Teachings of Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi’ is a compilation of Bhagavan Ramana’s aphorisms. Endowed with the grandeur of the Divine and stark as the naked truth, each of these pithy sayings is worthy of being called a ‘Mahavakya’. They invite contemplation, inspire joy, and urge the Seeker to stay true to the path till the goal reveals itself.

“There is no greater mystery than this: Being reality ourselves, we seek to gain Reality. We think that there is something hiding Reality and that it must be destroyed before the truth is gained. This is clearly ridiculous. A day will dawn when you will laugh at your past efforts. What you realize on the day you laugh is also here and now.”

The Celestine Prophecy – an Adventure by James Redfield

Published in 1993, James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy condenses some of the ideals of the New Age Movement. While we’re on the topic, a word about ‘New Age’ - this term was used as early as 1809 by the mystic English Poet, William Blake. The ideology behind the movement is believed to have had its inception as early as the 1600s. So, perhaps it’s time to coin a more fitting label to describe this philosophy that draws inspiration from many ancient spiritual traditions, and finds common ground among practitioners of different faiths.

The story begins with the unnamed Narrator meeting with an old friend, about a mysterious Peruvian manuscript containing Nine Insights, the sequential realization of which will lead to the spiritual transformation of humanity. On the trail of these insights, the Narrator sets off for Peru, and comes across sudden perils, unexpected friends/guides, and an awakening awareness.

The book touches upon many issues fundamental in spirituality – an awareness of the role of destiny in lives, the realization that each individual is part of a grander design, and, that oneness with the Universe is inseparable from Love. These beliefs are not new, in the same way that Truth is not new, and is ever worth re-telling.

The author shares other insights with regard to diet, environment, parenting, intuition, and power plays within human relationships. Interestingly, each particular insight is relayed to him through a messenger who might be considered most apt to talk on the subject. Most of them are academics. Two of them are priests, and one is the mother of a small child.

 Like, Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, the book takes the form of a parable, a modern fantasy adventure with a hero in search of his own personal Holy Grail. The Nine Insights are interspersed over nine chapters, with no bold font or italics to cue in the inattentive reader. Though the style is light and undemanding, the writer needs to be lauded for whetting our curiosity, and allowing the narrative to gradually draw us in, enveloping us in the unfolding tale.

The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

Khalil Gibran was a Lebanese American writer and artist. His most well known work is “The Prophet”, a collection of mystical poetic essays published in 1923.

The book begins with the Seer, Al Mustafa, ‘the Chosen and the Beloved’, waiting for the ship that will carry him back to his homeland. While he waits, the people of the town of Orphalese, gather around; and beseech him for his parting words.

The book takes the form of a series of discourses imparted by the Prophet to the townspeople. He speaks of Love, Marriage, Food, Shelter, Friendship, Religion, and Death among other topics. Here are a few examples:

On Children: “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself…You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.”

Of Freedom: “…I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff…you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to seek freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.”

Of Pain: “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.”

Of Beauty: “…beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil.”

Of Self-Knowledge: “…the soul walks upon all paths…[it] unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.”

Gibran’s writing too gives us a glimpse of a soul that has walked upon all paths. Born into a predominantly Muslim nation, as part of the minority Christian community, he yet seems to have embraced the sacred essence of the world’s faiths. The author’s original works of art illustrates the sonorous language of this book.

The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra

“As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”


- Albert Einstein

“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.”

- Niels Bohr

These two giants of Modern Science discovered the conundrum that inspires spiritual seekers to discover a greater Reality than can be discerned through our intellectual equipment.

The author of ‘The Tao of Physics’, Fritjof Capra, himself a physicist, had an epiphany on a beach where he was able to experience his entire environment as a dance of vibrating molecules and atoms. This led him to explore the parallels between the different philosophies of Eastern Mysticism and Physics - “the endeavor of seeing the essential nature of all things”.

The author avers that the underlying unity of all things, though it is chiefly considered an Eastern belief, has also manifested itself in Western Philosophy, only to be discarded in favor of a dualistic approach that attempts to distinguish between Matter and Spirit, Individual and Universe.

This book reveals the harmony between the intuitive wisdom of the East, and the empirical findings of Science. The wisdom expounded in Eastern Philosophies is one that is beyond both sensory perception and intellectual cognition. However, Science in its relentless pursuit of Knowledge has reached an approximation of the great truths in its own way. Its boundaries are being pushed ever farther to accommodate ‘new’ findings.

Fritjof Capra compromises neither his spiritual inclinations nor his scientific training. The latest findings of particle physics affirm that all measurements of space and time are relative; that ‘solid matter’ is in fact, a continuous dance of energy – a process of endless creation and destruction; that matter is inherently inseparable from force, both being “different aspects of the same phenomena”; and, that there is an interconnection between all matter, that the properties of one part are determined by those of all the others.

This is in harmony with the Spiritual understanding of Brahman/Dharmakaya/Tao – different names for the same underlying Universal principle that is indivisible, all pervasive, and beyond Time, Space, Matter, Energy, and Consciousness.

“…space is nothing but a mode of particularization and it has no real existence of its own…Space exists only in relation to our particularizing consciousness.”

“…space and time co-ordinates are only the elements of a language that is used by an observer to describe his environment.”

Can you guess which of the two statements above was made by a mystic, and which by a physicist?

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki

This book is a collection of a series of discourses given by Shunryu Suzuki, who started the first Soto Zen Monastery in the West, the Zen Center at Tassajara, and the Zen Center in San Francisco. For the purpose of this book, the talks were compiled and edited by Trudy Dixon.

Suzuki-roshi beautifully captures the essence of Zen in the very title. To have a Zen Mind is to have a Beginner’s Mind –

“…an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”

The book has been divided into three Sections – Right Practice, Right Attitude and Right Understanding, “roughly corresponding to body, feeling, and mind.” To sum up, if these three are correct, we are in a state of Zen, regardless of whether or not we assume the actual physical pose.

In some ways, I found reading this book akin to a meditative session – letting go of preconceptions, dropping the argumentative intellect, and accepting that which seems oblique at first glance. There is a gentleness to the philosophy expounded in this book, a complete lack of effort to persuade, convince, or convert.

Suzuki-roshi does try to make a nice distinction between Zen Buddhism as opposed to earlier Hindu systems of thought. However, within its vast embrace, Hinduism comfortably includes many diverse and apparently contradictory modes of belief. A student of Hinduism may find that Zen is merely Advaitic Vedanta spoken with a Japanese accent.

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

No, this is not a book about the life of the Buddha, though it’s natural to anticipate that given the title, and most of the accompanying book covers. Nobel Prize winning author, Herman Hesse’s epochal work was first published in German in 1922, and was translated into English in 1951.

“Siddhartha” is the fictional story of a contemporary of the Buddha, looking for his own enlightenment. Born the ‘son of a Brahmin’, he rejects the way of ritual and worship -

“Why must he, who was without blame, wash away sin day after day…Was not Atman within him…This was what must be found…All else was searching, detour, confusion.”

He treads the path of austerities and finds no answers there either. Coaxed by his friend, Govinda, he goes to meet the Buddha, only to declare to the Master,

“No one will ever attain redemption through doctrine!”

The Buddha tells him serenely to beware “the thicket of opinions and quibbling over words”.

However, this meeting with the great Master brings about an awakening, and with this newfound awareness, he embarks on the life of the world. Alternately amused and disparaging of the trivial concerns of materialistic living, he nevertheless pursues a relationship with the beautiful courtesan, Kamala, thinking himself the master of wealth and pleasures, only to discover that he has allowed himself to be enslaved by them.

Driven to self-loathing and despair, he is on the brink of suicide when he meets an unexpected new mentor. Siddhartha has many more lessons before he dissolves into undifferentiated Oneness, beyond dualities, where all contradictions are reconciled.

The proud, intellectually superior young ascetic is very different from the Siddhartha towards the end of the book, softened and humbled by attachment, love, loss and dawning self-awareness. The “searching, detour and confusion” of his myriad experiences are each as precious and relevant as one bead of a rosary after another.

It is no co-incidence that our hero has the same name, Siddhartha (meaning ‘one who has accomplished his aim’) as the Buddha. He is every aspirant discovering that whether one follows many paths, one, or none at all, enlightenment is not only for the chosen few - it is the ineluctable destiny of all.

He and I

‘He and I’ by Gabrielle Bossis

‘He and I’ is the chronicle of one woman’s rapturous relationship with the Eternal Beloved.

Gabrielle Bossis was born into a privileged French family in 1874. Recognizing her innate spirituality, her family priest tried to guide her into convent life. But she resisted this attempt. Nor did she ever marry. Blessed with many talents, she lived a full life, enjoying the life of the world, while living the essence of the spirit – shining in many endeavors, but dedicating herself to the service of her Lord in thought, word and deed. From 1936 to her death in 1950, ‘He and I’ is the narration of this deeply intimate association with the Divine.

This book, taking the form of conversations between the author and Christ, is infused by Mlle. Bossis’ love for her Redeemer Christ, who offered his life as the supreme sacrifice for humanity. It is this love of her Savior that inspires her to live her life in the spirit of constant service, yielding all to him:

“Look at the stained glass windows. Some are in the shadow and have kept all their colors to themselves. Others have surrendered to the sun and are completely lost in its light.”

Though Spirituality is supposed to transcend Religion, it is but natural if our spiritual journey is experienced through the prism of the faith that we are born into. We must row our fragile vessel of individual consciousness, before allowing it to dissolve into the ocean of the Universal.

Lovers of devotional literature will find echoes of Mirabai’s poetry, Andal’s ‘Thirupaavai’, and the songs of the Sufi saints in this book.