Hands down, this is my favorite English translation of the Ashtavakra Gita. I love how it offers the essential teachings of Advaita Vedanta with such elegant clarity.
These beautifully lyrical verses—on topics including knowledge, wisdom, Awareness, happiness, fulfillment, spiritual mastery, and stillness—express timeless truths with easy precision and untroubled directness. They deliver the strong medicine of nondual Truth in a way that goes down so easily you don’t know you’ve been healed until the job is done. How grateful I am for this sublime transmission!
The Ashtavakra Gita conveys with beauty and simplicity the essential teachings of Advaita Vedanta, the most influential of the Hindu philosophical systems. Composed by an anonymous master of the school of the great sage Shankara, it is a book of practical advice for seekers of wisdom as well as an ecstatic expression of the experience of enlightenment. In this simple, aphoristic version, the translator conveys the clarity and lyricism of the Sanskrit original with fluency and precision.
Playfully creative and profoundly irreverent, this book has emerged as my favorite among the eight that Wei Wu Wei (a pseudonym of Terence Gray) penned in the later stages of his life. I love its surprisingly direct statements of nondual Truth and the classic and modern parables that illustrate them.
I’m inspired by this book’s interweaving of insights from various nondual spiritual traditions—Taoism, Zen/Ch’an Buddhism, and Advaita Vedanta—in a contemporary idiom but always supported by quotations from acknowledged masters of the past. Overall, I appreciate that I can open any page randomly and find something that will (recalling Neo’s meeting with the Oracle in the movie The Matrix) well and truly “bake my noodle.”
Reading books is a kind of enjoyment. Reading books is a good habit. We bring you a different kinds of books. You can carry this book where ever you want. It is easy to carry. It can be an ideal gift to yourself and to your loved ones. Care instruction keep away from fire.
Among books that are quite challenging but totally worth it, this is a new favorite! I learned so much—and had some longstanding questions answered—via its presentation of Bon Dzogchen, an indigenous shamanic Tibetan religion that’s both a spiritual path and a deep and subtle philosophy.
I especially appreciated this book’s exploration of artful endeavor and spontaneity. And how it teases out the relationship between authentication (confirming the validity of an experience or a philosophical proposition) and authenticity (embodying and expressing one's insight and true nature without pretense or distortion). I also loved the discussions on how philosophical precision and metaphor/poetry/storytelling can be mutually enhancing.
Dzogchen, meaning "great perfection" in Tibetan, is an advanced practice associated particularly with Bon, the native religion of Tibet, and the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism. Both these traditions describe their teaching as comprising 'nine Ways' or paths of practice leading to enlightenment or realization, and in both classifications, Dzogchen is the ninth and highest Way. While its immediate associations are with these two traditions, Dzogchen is now taught in all Tibetan sects. In this book, Anne Klein, an American scholar of Buddhism, and Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, a native Tibetan who was the first to bring Dzogchen teachings to the…
This beautiful book of mine features simple practices to calm the mind, deepen insight, harmonize life-force energy, and integrate Taoist wisdom into everyday life—interwoven with inspiring quotations from the Tao Te Ching.
Its delightful explorations and meditations include, for instance: “A mayfly’s average lifespan is twenty-four hours. Large turtles can live five hundred years. This means that a single turtle can witness 182,500 mayfly generations! So, what’s the truth of a human lifespan: Is it long or short?”
And: “No matter how completely you describe yourself, there will always be something essential that evades description, which is inconceivable and inexpressible. What is this “something essential”? Don’t try to answer with your mind. Instead, find it in your inner experience right now.”
