A thought-provoking, conversational description of Hindu principles and their modern relevance.
In this spiritual guide to karma and self-improvement, Dharma introduces Hindu ideas that transcend the idea of heaven after Earth and reinforce a less common perspective on reincarnation.
Action and work, Dharma says, are the true essence of karma. Karma, he explains, is not about beliefs, religion, or labels. It is simply based on what we accomplish, how we behave toward others, and how our conduct and character interact with the world around us. Explaining in clear, conversational chapters the relevancy of Hindu beliefs to modern life, Dharma encourages the reader to be a student rather than a servant. “The servant is all about the reward,” he says. “For the student the question is reversed: What can I do for God? How can I make God proud of me?” The author posits these ideas as pathways toward a better, more fulfilling life, and he likewise warns against evils masquerading as virtues. For example, in one chapter, the author discusses vengeance masquerading as justice. Yet he explains that the Hindu god Sri Rama is a teacher, not a torturer, and his spiritual reaction to bad acts is to offer a person a chance to redeem himself in the next life through lessons. While advocating Hinduism over other religions, the author explains in detail why the concept of heaven is a fallacy. He posits that running away to safety, comfort, and ease are actions taken by those who seek heaven, while staying to help, work, and fight for a better present situation are actions taken by those driven by karma. One anecdote, among many, involves a flood: a man gets in a vehicle and drives to safety, sleeping in a hotel and watching the disaster on the news the next morning, only to see his neighbors drowning and struggling to survive on the screen. This man, the author explains, should shrink “to the size of an ant” if he has any heart. His guide shows readers how to incorporate the teachings of Hinduism into mindful practice.
A thought-provoking, conversational description of Hindu principles and their modern relevance.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-909477-63-6
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Clink Street Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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