What are you Reading right now? / Reading list

The book that I finish this Forrest Gump by Winston Groom, I'm just delighted, very different from the film, although I also love the film too. I really liked to reread the essay about the book, you can read in advance with the content of the book before you start reading it.

I read Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius.

It tells not so much about philosophy as about the spectacular remarks of philosophers and their "adventures."

Today I finished reading the book of Diogenes Laërtius.

I was wrong (in previous post).

The opinions of some philosophers were set forth in many pages there, for example, Plato, Epicurus and the Stoics.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk -- a novel by Ruth Ozeki, 2013's A Tale For The Time Being. I haven't read any of her novels before, and this one is grabbing my attention. It often switches between past days in Japan and the current era in North America, so there's many different points of view. It's a refreshing, deep, and timeless novel.

I'm reading the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra. It is Buddhism, supposedly about what Gautama Buddha did right before he entered "parinirvana," or final nirvana. I'm 375 pages in.

One reason I'm reading this book is because I've recently had some online conversations with Buddhists wherein they argued my conceptions about Nirvana are wrong because Nirvana is devoid of love. One of them claimed Buddha and Bodhisattva are without love because they don't need it.

Throughout the book, loving kindness and compassion for all beings is recommended, and it is stated that Gautama himself cares for all beings as if they were his only son and "pities" all beings. Where love is claimed as not belonging to the Buddha, the translator always claims this is in the sense of attachment, desire, craving, etc. . Things are stated like that "Loving-kindness is the Buddha nature of all beings."

My thoughts on Nirvana are that it is possible through meditation to enter a state of mind wherein the sorrow caused by birth and death of friends, familials, and romantic attachments is transcended: by falling in love with everything (including space/nothing) and surrendering all attachments to that everything. I don't think this is Nirvana, but more a stepping stone toward Nirvana.

Every experience is with what you are in love with, so bliss. And motivation is toward saint-like behavior, compassion toward all sentient life (because what you are in love with includes them, and only they benefit from your attachment). Sorrow is transcended because Everything remains Everything regardless of what happens to it, so you can't lose what you are in love with.

Fair conduct moves toward perfection because, while the ego has yet to be transcended, fair and impartial motivation persists.

I had read a little Buddhism and a lot of enlightenment before the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra, but all the books and essays and poems I read on Buddhism were second hand accounts, not the actual Sutras.

I am currently reading Добротолюбие. It can be translated as love of kindness.

This is a translation of its Greek name φιλοκαλία (Philokalia).

The Philokalia (Ancient Greek: φιλοκαλία, lit. 'love of the beautiful', from φιλία philia "love" and κάλλος kallos "beauty") is "a collection of texts written between the 4th and 15th centuries by spiritual masters" of the Eastern Orthodox Church mystical hesychast tradition. They were originally written for the guidance and instruction of monks in "the practice of the contemplative life". The collection was compiled in the 18th century by Nicodemus the Hagiorite and Macarius of Corinth based on the codices 472 (12th century), 605 (13th century), 476 (14th century), 628 (14th century) and 629 (15th century) from the library of the monastery of Vatopedi, Mount Athos.

en.wikipedia.org...



In the Russian version of the Greek text was supplemented by various teachings of the holy ascetics.

Now I am reading the first volume (there are five volumes in total).

It contains the words of St. Anthony the Great, St. Macarius the Great, St. Abba Isaiah, St. Mark the Ascetic, Abba Evagrius.


The Russian Philokalia begins with these words of Anthony the Great:

Let this especially be the common aim of all, neither to give way having once begun, nor to faint in trouble, nor to say: We have lived in the discipline a long time: but rather as though making a beginning daily let us increase our earnestness. For the whole life of man is very short, measured by the ages to come, wherefore all our time is nothing compared with eternal life. And in the world everything is sold at its price, and a man exchanges one equivalent for another; but the promise of eternal life is bought for a trifle. For it is written, "The days of our life in them are threescore years and ten, but if they are in strength, fourscore years, and what is more than these is labour and sorrow." (Psalm 89,10) Whenever, therefore, we live full fourscore years, or even a hundred in the discipline, not for a hundred years only shall we reign, but instead of a hundred we shall reign forever and ever. And though we fought on earth, we shall not receive our inheritance on earth, but we have the promises in heaven; and having put off the body which is corrupt, we shall receive it incorrupt. Wherefore, children, let us not faint nor deem that the time is long, or that we are doing something great, "for the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to usward" (Romans 8,18)

For a long time I hesitated to read Forrest Gump. But finally, in between studies, I managed to do it. I am thrilled.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Well, I stumbled across a book titled, Welcome to Night Vale.

I just picked it up and started reading and then laughing! I was like, wth???!!! It seemed to be a series of non-sequiturs that were strung together to tell a story but the plot was deferred until you were explained to why the characters behaved/thought the way they did.

What follows is a wonderful example of absurd humor that is along the lines of Monty Python!

The story revolves around a couple of characters that keep crossing paths and were “investigating” the same high strangeness that they kept on encountering.

To give you ya’ll some more info, imagine a world where all the conspiracy theories are real and the population of a town “just deal” with the CT as a matter of fact and have lives that exist beyond the town itself.

Prepare to laugh, read, then re-read, paragraphs that, in the end, make sense, in the “normal” sense of storytelling!

And hey, Alice Ain’t Dead, is a great book too!!

The whole entire Night Vale idea started out as a podcast. So, now there are three novels, and two compilations of the podcasts in book form to read. And all the podcasts are available for download!

Enjoy your mind having to become Silly Putty to read this stuff!!

Not laughing is not optional!!

My brilliant friend, about 2 Italien friends

originally posted by: Creep Thumper
The Making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes

Good book and great writer. He wrote one of my favourite non-fiction books.