Manual of Insight
A section of this book was recommended in Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. It was the most the theological Buddhist book I’ve read. It quoted canonical texts and taught me which concepts are part of the canon. Overall it was very slow to read because it seemed quite abstract and repetitive, but I […]
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The Way of Men
This book was about the ways in which modern society is unnatural for men. It discusses how it is more natural for men to form tribes or gangs and how modern society expects everyone to be more docile and feminine than men naturally would be. Although the book makes good points and it can be […]
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The Righteous Mind
This book talked about the moral foundations that produce different political views. It says that the morality of liberals is based on care/harm and fairness/cheating, whereas the morality of conservatives encompasses those plus authority/subversion, loyalty/betrayal, and sanctity/degradation. Haidt suggests that these are genetic traits that evolved to adapt to our ancestor’s environments. He also seems […]
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The Body Keeps the Score
Very interesting and informative book about psychological trauma. I think it may be applicable to many people who don’t believe that they’ve been traumatized because trauma is a strong word, but the experience of trauma is probably more like a spectrum in which everyone has some degree of it. It explains some of the science […]
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Smart and SeXy
This book is one of the most information dense books I’ve read, it felt like almost every sentence was providing a new fact and there are a ton of citations. Also one of the least politically correct books I’ve read. The first half of the book goes pretty deep into genetics related to sex chromosomes […]
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The Coddling of the American Mind
I didn’t really learn much new from reading this book; just reading the summary online covered most of the points, and I expected this, but I decided to read it anyways because I became more interested in the topic and wanted to use the book as a way to help me ponder it a bit […]
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The Mind Illuminated
This is probably the best book I’ve read for practical meditation advice. It’s pretty slow and feels repetitive, but it really seems like a thorough guide to the stages of meditation progress. It goes on at length about the kinds of challenges you will face in each stage and techniques for dealing with these challenges. […]
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Mahamudra for the Modern World
This is a 38 hour long course on Mahamudra, which is a type of Tibetan Buddhism. It mixes dharma-style explanations with guided practice. The explanatory parts tend to be quite long-winded and sounded like rambling to me. He also didn’t seem very concerned about making them sound scientific as there was a hint of mystical […]
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Dzogchen: The Self-Perfected State
This book had more mystical and religious content than other books on this topic that I’ve read. Aside from a few good points which can be found elsewhere, this book wasn’t very helpful.
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Roaring Silence: Discovering the Mind of Dzogchen
I heard about Dzogchen from Sam Harris’ book Waking Up in which he said that it was the best form of Buddhism that he came across because it was the most direct and had the least religious distraction. Roaring Silence seems mostly consistent with that. The biggest thing I learned from this book was the […]
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