Zen, Yoga, Gurdjieff- perspectives on inner work: where am I?

Friday, April 2, 2010

where am I?

Just bringing the readership up to date.

I've been In China sinceMarch 22 and unable to access blogger.

I'm in Phnom Penh right now and hope to assemble a post while I'm in Cambodia... who knows, maybe I'll splurge and write TWO posts.

In any event, apologies for the absence.

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Recommendations and current reading list

Lee's current reading list (all recommended)

Far From The Tree: Andrew Solomon. Parents, Children and the Search for Identity. Highly recommended.

Inner Yoga, Sri Anirvan—This extraordinary book is essential reading for any serious student of Gurdjieff or Yoga practice. Written at a level of both practical and philosophical discourse well above other contemporary work, Anirvan investigates the deep roots of Yoga practice, theory, and philosophy in a deeply sensitive series of insights. Of particular interest is the extraordinary and challenging piece on Buddhi and Buddhiyoga, which examines the questions of practice, life, and death with an acuity rarely encountered in other work of this nature.

Divine Love and Wisdom, Emmanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg gives us a detailed report on Reality as received from higher sources, reflecting many Truths one would be wise to study carefully. Readers will be astounded by the extraordinary degree of correlation between Swedenborg and Ibn 'Arabi. Many fundamental principles introduced by Gurdjieff are also expounded on in fascinating detail by Swedenborg. All of Swedenborg's works are well worth reading.

The Divine Governance of the Human Kingdom, Ibn 'Arabi. Another real gem, this book ought to be read by every seeker on the spiritual path. If you can only find the time to read one book by Ibn 'Arabi, this ought to be the one. By turns lighthearted, serious, insightful, and ingenius, al 'Arabi introduces us to our inner government character by character, explains their relationships, and indicates how to bring them into a state of harmonious cooperation. Written with love, the book deftly manages to avoid being didactic, delivering instead a sensitive, poetic, and even romantic look at how to organize our inner Being.

The Bezels of Wisdom—Ibn al 'Arabi. A compendium of observations about the nature of "The Reality"—what al 'Arabi calls God— from a 13th century Sufi master. This towering work easily holds its own against—and is worthy of comparison to—13th century masterpieces from other major religious traditions such as Dogen's Shobogenzo and Meister Eckhart's sermons.

Also worthy: William C. Chittick's The Sufi Path of Knowledge, an extensive review of al Arabi's works.

Destiny Disrupted- Tamim Ansary- An entertaining, lucid, and highly readable account of history from the Islamic point of view. Every layman who aspires to understanding the tensions between Islamic and Western cultures in the modern world needs to read this book.

Inferno by Max Hastings. A history of the Second World War viewed from peripheral theaters, and the effects on the common man, where many awful things that receive little attention from historians took place. Hastings is unflinching in his criticism of all the antagonists in this catastrophic world event.

The Quest- Daniel Yergin. Yergin's investigations of world energy history (read his history of oil, "The Prize") are superlative. It;'s a long book, but no one can reasonably claim to understand today's energy challenges without at least this much reading.

The Schwarzbein Principle. The one book about diet, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels you truly need to read.