Book Review - Letting Go of the Person You Used To Be

Photograph taken by David Wilder.

Lama Surya Das, an authorized lama in the Dzogchen lineage of Tibet and author of the best-selling book Awakening The Buddha Within, offers practical advice about dealing with change, loss, and spiritual transformation in the book Letting Go of the Person You Used To Be.

The book is broken into sections that focus on different aspects of the main topic, such as "Naming Our Losses", "Letting Go of the Person You used to Be", and "Being Heroic in the Face of Loss". Each chapter opens with a thought-provoking and inspiring quote from the likes of Buddhist teachers, Mark Twain, Charlie Parker, and Philo. The words by these wise people offer an excellent introduction to the chapter's topic and serve as a mindfulness reminder before the reader begins the chapter.

Following the opening quote, each chapter launches into a discussion of the topic and includes anecdotes from Buddhist teachers and friends of Surya Das. The chapter then closes with a spiritual or meditation practice that can be cultivated to work on and integrate the topic.

I read Awakening The Buddha Within several years ago when I first became interested in meditation and only had a preliminary interest in Buddhism, and really enjoyed it. I was unaware that it was the first book in a trilogy until picking up this book and reading a bit more about it. This has definitely sparked my interest in reading more by Surya Das!

Overall, I found the book to be extremely valuable and easy to read. I marked inspiring stories, quotes, and pieces of advice to return to later, and also plan to explore the meditation practices included at the end of each chapter. I would recommend this book for anyone, regardless of whether they desire a change or are currently experiencing loss, because both are things that we will all come across during our lives.

4/5 stars. 224 pages.

Book Review - Ishmael

Ishmael is a philosophical novel written by Daniel Quinn that was published in 1992. The story begins with a newspaper ad: "Teacher seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person." The unnamed narrator decides to check it out and finds himself in a room with a telepathically-communicating gorilla named Ishmael. The basic plot of the book involves a Socratic dialogue between Ishmael and the narrator focusing on "how things came to be this way" for humankind.

The concepts covered during their conversation include an exploration of the mythological thinking that forms the underpinning of our modern civilization's consciousness and consequential actions, that humans are not the pinnacle of evolution (nor exempt from the laws of nature or the rule of the Gods), and how the story we have chosen to enact has contributed to our ethical understanding of the world and a potential societal and environmental collapse that lurks just beyond today's horizon. There is also a story woven throughout the main Socratic dialogue that features Ishmael's history as a member of a menagerie and adoption by a wealthy benefactor.

Some of the major themes in the book include the idea that the Book of Genesis from the Bible truly refers to the decimation of nomadic hunter-gatherer societies by agricultural societies, that eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil convinced modern humans that they have the right to decide which species live and die, and that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with people—rather it is the story told for the last ten thousand years by Mother Culture that has been enacted that is harmful. This last aspect of the book really reminded me of Charles Eisentein's The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible, which echoes and expands upon a lot of the points Quinn makes about that story.

Following Ishmael are two books penned by Quinn that form a loose trilogy: The Story of B, a 1996 spiritual sequel, and My Ishmael, a 1997 followup. So far I have only read the first book in this trilogy, but hope to make my way through the rest of it in due time.

I greatly enjoyed this novel. Early on, it reminded me of Sophie's World, a novel by Jostein Gaarder that was the center of discussion during an International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge course in high school. I suppose I drew that comparison due to the format of the book—a wise teacher with an understanding of philosophy uses the Socratic dialogue method to teach philosophical concepts to a pupil. The method involves the pupil working through the concepts "out loud" throughout the book's pages, which allows the reader to absorb them in a different manner than if they had been presented directly from the teacher. Another book I have read that uses the same style is Plato's The Republic. Although it isn't my favorite format, I think it may be growing on me because I really enjoyed Ishmael, and a major reason for that was the way the book allowed me to work through the concepts alongside the pupil. There is quite a bit to absorb from this novel, and it definitely warrants a re-read at some point.

Overall, I found Ishmael to be an excellent book and would recommend it to anyone frustrated with the current state of the world, an interest in human and evolutionary history and/or philosophy, and environmental activists that would like to see positive global changes come to fruition. With knowledge like this in our toolbox, I firmly believe humanity could rethink its position in nature's hierarchy, construct a new story for modern culture to enact, and reverse its course for the betterment of all life on Earth and beyond.

5/5 stars. 263 pages

Book Review - Tibetan Peach Pie

This book contains a collection of stories about the American icon and bestselling novelist Tom Robbins. Having spent the past few years reading through Robbins' fictive works, I was excited when I heard that he was releasing a somewhat-less-fictive account of his life in autobiographical/anecdotal form.

Fortunately, I was not let down! This book has some great stories about what it was like to grow up in the first half of the 20th century, just a few hours away from where I was born and raised. For those unfamiliar with Robbins' prior works, they can be described as intellectual, hilarious, confusing, psychedelic, weird, wild, philosophical, and unusual tales that include outrageous characters like a hitchhiking cowgirl with enormous thumbs, a conscious and mobile can of beans, and a former football star turned drug dealer who stumbles upon and infiltrates a group of Catholic monks working as hired assassins for the Vatican.

Robbins' own life, detailed in these pages, is oddly similar to some of the more eye-opening portions of the his novels. He weaves together the most entertaining accounts of his life, including his boyhood and adolescence in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina and Virginia, all the way through to his globe-trotting adventures and wicked events from his adult life.

If you have read any Robbins, be it Another Roadside Attraction, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, or my personal favorite, Still Life with Woodpecker, you owe it to yourself to check out Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life. Even folks who aren't privy to Robbins' former works would love this set of raucous tales. I sincerely enjoyed getting a sneak peak into this literary legend's life, and I am confident that you will too.

4/5 stars. 384 pages.

Book Review - The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

I had been interested in reading this book since it was published in 2006, which was around the time that I was consuming a lot of atheistic and scientific materialist content from the likes of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. I imagine that if I had read the book back then, I would have found it more entertaining, and I wanted to like it more than I did—but I couldn't.

The book is incredibly tedious and repetitive, and runs out of steam fairly quickly. I will admit that it did make me chuckle a few times in the beginning, but as I read further into the book I found myself being frustrated and bored.

The basic idea behind the book is that it is the gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the sarcastic equivalent of God, or the creator of our universe. It is meant to be a humorous attack on religious and non-scientific thinking, and I imagine it would appeal to scientific materialists and atheists alike. However, that line of thinking no longer resonates with me, and I ended up disliking the book almost entirely.

I wouldn't really recommend that anyone read this book. If you're interested, go for it, but don't expect anything that clever or funny. I did have that sort of expectation, and was severely let down and felt like I wasted the time I spent reading it.

2/5 stars. 169 pages.

Book Review - Manna by Marshall Brain

Marshall Brain (founder of HowStuffWorks) and his novel Manna: Two Visions of Humanity's Future were recently featured on KMO's C-Realm Podcast. In episode 457: Techno Extortion, KMO and Brain talk about the book as well as the United States' current trajectory with regard to jobs, automation, profitability, and societal well-being. I was intrigued by the conversation and decided to read Manna. Although the book is available for free at the above link, you can also purchase the Kindle version for $0.99, which is what I did.

Manna shows us two very different worlds. Each is possible for us to create (or find ourselves in) from the current world we live in. In the first world, robots begin eliminating human jobs in places like retail stores, fast food restaurants, construction sites, and transportation. The key technology that fuels this is inexpensive computer vision systems, and more than half of the jobs in the United States are eliminated. Tasks like restocking shelves, cleaning bathrooms, and taking out the trash are dictated by a management software called "Manna" that speaks through an earpiece each employee wears while on the job. All human managers are eventually replaced by this software. Without getting too much into detail about this world, it could be described as dystopian, and it certainly seems plausible to me, especially because I have experience working in similar jobs. I could definitely see how the management team could be stripped from the job and replaced by a cheaper, more efficient, less forgiving computer system.

The second world is more of a utopian society, where robots are not in control of the humans. Instead, the humans control the robots and use them to make life easier. People living in this world must agree with the following core principles of that society:

1. Everyone is equal.
2. Everything is reused.
3. Nothing is anonymous.
4. Nothing is owned.
5. Tell the truth.
6. Do no harm.
7. Obey the rules.
8. Live your life.
9. Better and better.

There are drastic differences in economics, transparency, energy usage, ownership, honesty, and life quality between the two worlds. It certainly seems to me like we are headed more in the direction of the dystopian world rather than the utopian world, but in the book's Postscript, Brain mentions that the utopian world is still a possibility for us to manifest.

I enjoyed the book. It's a very quick read, and it is thought-provoking. The writing left a little to be desired, because it seemed a bit over-simplified and repetitive to me. I've tried my best to not give away too much of the plot in this review, because there isn't much plot or character development to find in the book itself. I would definitely suggest this book though, because I imagine that it would be eye-opening for the average person. For me, it painted a stark contrast between the two different roads our global society could take, and highlighted a lot of the current issues that we face.

4/5 Stars. 79 pages.