These books attempt to describe the indescribable, pointing to the unknowable, only the living of which makes living living. What they have in common is that they invite us to practice along with the author, not giving any answers, but inviting us to look. I fell in love with Awareness Practice in my youth and through the decades that love has only deepened. I continue to love this journey of exploration and I hope the books that I have written contribute to that same experience for others. There is nothing more magical than having a direct experience of encountering who we really are, beyond ego’s dualistic world of opposites.
I wrote...
There Is Nothing Wrong with You: Going Beyond Self-Hate
By
Cheri Huber
What is my book about?
If you have been successful with what you have been taught about how life works, and if you have been satisfied with what society has given you, please don’t read this book. It would be a waste of your money to buy it and a waste of your time to read it.
HOWEVER, if you have spent a good deal of time, energy and money trying to improve yourself, wondering what is wrong with you and trying to change yourself in order to make your life work, this is the book for you. We will attempt to explain that you have been unable to fix yourself because there is nothing wrong with you, but there is quite a bit wrong with what you have been taught to believe about yourself and your life. Most people live and die completely trapped in self-hate and never know it. So much more is possible. This book reveals how self-hate works and how to let it go.
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The Books I Picked & Why
What Is Zen?
By
D.T. Suzuki
Why this book?
As I began my search to make some kind of sense of my life, I started with philosophy and moved to religion. When I came across this book, I intuitively sensed that the author knew what I wanted to know. I had no idea what he was talking about but my heart sang with every page. This was my first experience of being taken to the “place” from which the author wrote. Reading it was like sitting at the feet of the Master, aware of a lack of comprehension while witnessing a living example of what the heart intuitively knows.
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Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings
By
Paul Reps,
Nyogen Senzaki
Why this book?
This was my second foray into fascination with what I knew I didn’t understand but desperately sought to. The way this book is written is the method to the understanding it represents. It invites a practitioner to stay with it to receive its gifts and makes for an enduring companion. This book has traveled with me through decades. Each time I read it, it mirrors for me the depth of understanding that is current and what there is to look forward to.
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My Religion, What Shall We Do? & The Journal of Leo Tolstoi
By
Leo Tolstoi
Why this book?
When a clearly enlightened spiritual master speaks to us, our first reaction is often resistance because the message is designed to end the reign of egocentricity and return us to Authentic Being. To me, everything Leo Tolstoy wrote in his maturity offers the same possibility, but none so starkly as My Religion. As with reading Mahatma Gandhi, we have the opportunity to witness the deep practice of an aspirant grappling with transcending the suffering of the human condition, in much the same way John of the Cross describes the “dark night of the soul.” It illustrates every person’s spiritual journey and the uncompromising nature of the path to awakening.
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Self-Awareness Practice Instructions
By
Ramana Maharshi,
Nisargadatta Maharaj,
Sankara,
Annamalai Swami,
Muruganar,
Sadhu Om,
Anonymous Awareness
Why this book?
If Japanese Zen is best expressed through haiku, Bhagwan Shri Ramana Maharshi’s teachings are the Vedantic equivalent. Simple, direct, straightforward – just the bare minimum a person needs to practice to awaken. This little book distills his teachings and takes the practitioner into a process designed to, as D.T. Suzuki might say it, “grasp the ungraspable nature of the ungraspable.”
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A Gentleman in Moscow
By
Amor Towles
Why this book?
What originally drew me to spiritual practice was the desire to know that I would be ok if I were ever in a wheelchair or a concentration camp. If I were trapped without an ability to escape my circumstances, could I be happy? A Gentleman in Moscow is, to me, a beautiful exploration of the answer to that question. Count Rostov is given a life sentence: confinement to the hotel where he lives. His story is an articulation of how one, moment by moment, accepts, adapts, and thrives when one’s basic choices are removed. In essence, the book is a how-to manual for the transcendence of the spirit over circumstances.
