by Igor Kononenko Irena Kononenko ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 6, 2010
To be leafed through leisurely and used as a gateway to further reading and contemplation.
A comprehensive glossary of spiritual minds, this effort from a husband-and-wife team highlights the similarities between ancient, controversial and contemporary spiritualists.
The Kononenkos land this book right in the sweet spot: Each one- or two-page biographical entry of a historical figure is simple, sincere and without adulation or pretentiousness. The writing is spare and considered, despite the occasional hint of foreign-language syntax and a habit of capitalizing words that aren’t actually proper nouns (e.g., Awakened, Consecrated, Knowledge). In two introductory essays, the authors nonjudgmentally list the commonalities between the numerous teachers’ messages; yet the authors don’t dismiss the characteristics that distinguish one spiritualist from another. The result is not so much homogeneity as a sense of collegiality, giving the reader the space to decide whether Pythagoras, Jesus Christ, Don Juan Matus, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and more than 70 other distinguished persons really did have the same basic message in mind. Purists may be scandalized by the inclusion of controversial figures like Matus—whom some believe to be a fictional character invented by anthropologist and author Carlos Castaneda—or Osho, who was arrested in the United States for “problems with local residents and due to misunderstanding with the local authorities.” However the diversity of this book’s characters—including not just the Eastern mystics one might expect, but also a number of Western thinkers, healers and philosophers—is one of its greatest strengths. Some spiritually oriented books suffer from a sort of forced humility, but the Kononenkos’ clean, conversational writing style feels genuine.
To be leafed through leisurely and used as a gateway to further reading and contemplation.Pub Date: May 6, 2010
ISBN: 978-1434998989
Page Count: 418
Publisher: Rosedog Books
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
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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by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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