Much easier on the brain than Sartre's original tome!

One final complaint...the author chooses to use the word immature for "samsara, kingdom of the devil"...
I give the book an E for effort, it's not terrible but I would rather recommend a more run-of-the-mill book as an introduction to Buddhism for newcomers, theists or otherwise.

I tried. I failed.

Excellent! Very concise and readable overview of the main Buddhist schools of thought on emptiness.
Helped my understanding a lot, especially his comments on Prasangika and Shentong were very interesting.

Excellent!

"...our uniqueness arises from our distinctive, ever-shifting, and infinite array of connections with other beings. We are unique and important, but we do not own our uniqueness. We have no intrinsic core...without the open sky of emptiness, the rest of the world could not shine into and through us, and we could never be what we are-living beings making choices that matter."
P. 95

"The Lithuanians in the Middle Ages are said to have made their beer over-night and drunk it next morning. Beer of this primitive kind was best sucked up through a pipe."
I bet!
"the characteristic essence of the worship of Dionysos...was intoxication...a divine madness." cf William James discussion of similar ideas in his Varieties of Religious Experience.
I skim read large sections but this one on intoxication in Harrison's book, along with most of the sections on Orpheus and Aristophanes were probably my favourite.

"The relative and the ultimate do not exclude each other; and it should be understood that it is precisely due to their own nature (emptiness) that conventional phenomena are able to appear."
p. 214
Wonderful! :)

Disappointing, Dumoulin just couldn't shed his Jesuit skin...I think this book would be misleading to a Christian reader if on their first look into Buddhism. Also unfortunate is that the author did not make any mention of Tibet or Tibetan Buddhism although he refers to several other types of Buddhism.

Interesting, easy to read...decent overview of dream practice in multiple traditions so good entry level book for those possibly interested in exploring it further. Lots of nice pictures too!

In the Concord, his final book, "...he made his last and most modest plea: 'Tolerate one another'."

Great book! :)

Jim Carter doesn't support field theory and so called his system "the Fieldless Universal Circlon Theory, or 'the FUCT explanation of reality.'" :)

I didn't really enjoy the first title that much, What is Life, it got a bit too technical for me, discussing heredity and using statistics. I very much enjoyed the second title, being more philosophical in style. I found it a fascinating but still easy read (my favourite style ;). For me it served as very good supplementary reading to my study of emptiness (Madyhamaka philosophy).

"I have little leisure for such literature just now. I have been using up my eyesight on more worthy characters lately..."
Mr. Casaubon (sorta ;)

A scathing microscopic portrayal of the hedonistic and shallow haut monde of his time. Simultaneously fun and depressing... I don't think Coward cared much for people of his own ilk.

Reading this I really had the impression that it (and his The Future of the Mind) was written for a tabloid magazine mind set...I hope Hyperspace is better...

Didn't actually finish but almost 700 pages Cheever is a bit much to handle...will return to it later...
My second favourite story is the first of _Three Stories_..."The subject today will be the metaphysics of obesity..." It's hilarious!

Interesting, intelligent and I enjoyed her personal touch.

Very succinct and helpful explanation of Kierkegaard's writings and philosophy!

Good counterpoint to Freud.

I found the first three quarters only mildly interesting, his travels and interactions with various artists and fellow writers...Joyce, Stein, Man Ray, and of course his buddy Pound (the chapter on his visits to Pound in the mental hospital are quite moving). However, when I finally got to chapter 43, Of Medicine and Poetry, I was excited to read his thoughts/philosophy related to this topic...
"When they ask me...how I have for so many years continued an equal interest in medicine and the poem, I reply that they amount for me to nearly the same thing. Any worth-his-salt physician knows that no one is 'cured'...a cure is absurd, as absurd as calling these deployments 'diseases'. Sometimes the home team wins, sometimes the visitors. Great excitement...We want home runs, antibiotics to 'cure' man with a single shot in the buttocks.
...I found by practice, by trial and error, that to treat a man as something to which surgery, drugs and hoodoo applied was an indifferent matter; to treat him as material for a work of art made him somehow come alive to me.
This immediacy, the thing, as I went on writing, living as I could, thinking a secret life I wanted to tell openly-if only I could-how it lives, secretly about us as much now as ever...I was permitted by my medical badge to follow the poor, defeated body into those gulfs and grottos. And the astonishing thing is that at such times and in such places-foul as they may be with the stinking ischio-rectal abscesses of our comings and show more goings-just there, the thing, in all its greatest beauty, may for a moment be freed to fly for a moment guiltily about the room." show less

mediocre

Read it about 10 years ago. Thought it was great!

tmi!

Glibly written, almost to the point of simple mindedness (especially regarding his philosophy of education-I agree with the spirit of it but has he not read of any already existing alternative schools, like Waldorf or Montessori?)...self indulgent, smug, smacks of the same narcissism I found in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance...and the conceit he uses of an imaginary dialogue with someone who has broken into his house is odd, if not a bit creepy...

Hmph...very creative...

Wow, fascinating and very thought provoking...full of so much to follow up on on so many levels.

A little disappointed, not as deep, intelligent or progressive as I thought when I first read it 40 years ago...