read more about buddhism

gave me a brainstorm – for Buddha’s sake, just add some more feeds into my reader. Brilliant! I used Technorati and searched the tags for “buddhism” and found one good site that led to a slew of others. SWEET!

a little page-a-day calendar of buddhist and peaceful quotes. I love it. Today was one of my all-time favorites, Ghandi: “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.”

Sadly, I haven’t had much time to read anything spiritual lately, aside from my calendar and my RSS feed “Buddhist thought for the day.” These are like tendrils that keep me connected to my beliefs, but it’s just not enough. I need to do more to get more centered again. Thankfully, the semester is starting to wind down, so I should soon have some more free time for this.

of Pema Chodron from the library – Good Medicine and Comfortable with Uncertainty. I haven’t listened to the second one yet, but the first had a lot of helpful teachings on tonglen.

I also noticed Ajahn Brahm has out a new book and I asked my library to purchase it. It’s called Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung?

Ajahn Brahm’s Opening the Door of Your Heart, and Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung?

He’s such a great speaker – I listen to his dharma talks by mp3 in my car all the time – they can be found at www.bswa.org .

Chodron, Pema. The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1991. ISBN: 1-57062-872-6.

I am re-reading this book and something stood out to me for the second time:

“The problem is that the desire to change is fundamentally a form of aggression toward yourself. The other problem is that our hangups, unfortunately or fortunately, contain our wealth. Our neurosis and our wisdom are made out of the same material. If you throw our your neurosis, you also throw out your wisdom.”

Piyananda, Bhante Walpola. Saffron Days in L.A. – Tales of a Buddhist Monk in America. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2001. ISBN: 1-57062-813-0.

Anecdotes from the life of a buddhist monk. Good examples of how to incorporate the dharma into everday life.

Kneen, Cynthia. Awake Mind, Open Heart: The Power of Courage in Everyday Life. New York: Marlowe & Company, 2002. ISBN: 1-56924-551-7.

This one is about the teachings of Shambala.

One Dharma. San Francisco: Harper SanFrancisco, 2002. ISBN: 0-06-251700-7.

p105- Principles of relative and ultimate truth, and how they can both be integrated into one’s understanding of life.

One of my all-time favorite books is Cheri Huber’s “That Which You Are Seeking is Causing You to Seek.” I just read a similar quote in Joseph Goldstein’s One Dharma: He quotes Wei Wu Wei as having said: “What we are looking for is what is looking.”

“The echo of that piece of cheesecake is still reverberating.”

Boorstein, Sylvia. Pay Attention, For Goodness’ Sake: practicing the perfections of the heart. New York: Ballantine Books, 2002, p42.