History and What Makes You Not a Buddhist
What Makes You Not a Buddhist by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse
A guide to Buddhism for Westerners that's chock full of very hip, timely examples that will date the book within a year. Until I finished the book and was ready to drop it like a hot potato with its judgmental ending metaphor--that not believing the 4 noble truths is like reading a medicine bottle and not taking the medicine--I had not noticed the implicit judgment in the title itself. It actually tells the reader up front that you are not a Buddhist. This guy is to Pema Chodoron like kayaking the Colorado River rapids are to canoeing on a placid lake. I don't trust his take on emotions. I find this with a lot of men who write about Buddhism. They treat emotions like annoying children that just need discipline rather than potential sources of wisdom.
History: A Very Short Introduction by John Arnold
This couldn't be shorter, but it's chock full of good insights about why and how to do history. My favorite story within the book was about the multiple versions of Sojourner Truth's famous Ain't I a Woman speech, which appeared in both standard English and dialect versions. The dialect version captured the public imagination, but historians believe the standard version was more likely to be her actual voice. This begs all sorts of interesting questions about the appearance of authenticity and the question of accuracy. My favorite metaphor was that of history as a "foreign land," because I think this is how I orient myself to my historical work. I look at the past for moments when things changed, and then try to understand as best I can what happened in the "country" of the past such that the shift I've identified occurred.
A guide to Buddhism for Westerners that's chock full of very hip, timely examples that will date the book within a year. Until I finished the book and was ready to drop it like a hot potato with its judgmental ending metaphor--that not believing the 4 noble truths is like reading a medicine bottle and not taking the medicine--I had not noticed the implicit judgment in the title itself. It actually tells the reader up front that you are not a Buddhist. This guy is to Pema Chodoron like kayaking the Colorado River rapids are to canoeing on a placid lake. I don't trust his take on emotions. I find this with a lot of men who write about Buddhism. They treat emotions like annoying children that just need discipline rather than potential sources of wisdom.
History: A Very Short Introduction by John Arnold
This couldn't be shorter, but it's chock full of good insights about why and how to do history. My favorite story within the book was about the multiple versions of Sojourner Truth's famous Ain't I a Woman speech, which appeared in both standard English and dialect versions. The dialect version captured the public imagination, but historians believe the standard version was more likely to be her actual voice. This begs all sorts of interesting questions about the appearance of authenticity and the question of accuracy. My favorite metaphor was that of history as a "foreign land," because I think this is how I orient myself to my historical work. I look at the past for moments when things changed, and then try to understand as best I can what happened in the "country" of the past such that the shift I've identified occurred.
