Can Zen be found within in a book? Have I been seeking enlightenment — or just collecting another little subset of books? Can all simultaneously be true?
These books, for temporary lack of a better spot, had been sitting atop the books of shelfie #59. Their location also puts them within the direct view from my shikibuton each evening. I figured I'd given them their own shelfie, though I do not really know what to say about them yet. Perhaps I will just list them.
- Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse. (This is the paperback version of the 1922 novel that I remember from either my parents' or grandmother's shelf)
- If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! by Sheldon B. Kopp. (I think I first became aware of this 1972 book by browsing Goodreads)
- The Book of Tea, by Okakura Kakuzō. (1930 Duffield and Company edition of essay originally published in 1906)
- Essays in Idleness and Hôjôki by Yoshida Kenkō and Kamo no Chōmei.
- Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice, by Shunryu Suzuki.
- The Myth of the Eternal Return or, Cosmos and History, by Mircea Eliade. (first published in 1949)
- The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation, by Chögyam Trungpa.
Highly recommended related reading
Please check out Susan Jennings' "Abandoning hope then putting it back together," published just a few days ago on My Inside Voices. She writes of struggling with the concept of hope amid the COVID-19 pandemic and notes at one point: "I think that’s the type of hope I’m after. That we can’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but that we can attempt to be better within that."
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