Learning How to Learn (Idries Shah)

Full Title: Learning How to Learn: A Practical Philosophy in the Sufi Tradition
Major Topic: what constitutes learning
Level: all levels
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Sufi insights into basic human processes such as knowing and learning define very clearly what works and doesn’t work in each of these areas. Read and study carefully and then [...]

As It Is (Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche)

Full Title: As It Is: Volumes 1 and 2
Major Topic: Using traditional practices and methods to know mind nature directly.
Level: all levels
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Urgyen Tulku, even among Tibetans, had a special gift for leading people into the experience of mind and explaining in simple language how to practice deeply. In [...]

Unfettered Mind (Takuan Soho)

Full Title: Unfettered Mind: Writings of the Zen Master to the Sword Master
Major Topic: presence
Level: experienced and advanced
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Using the context of martial arts, Takuan describes how to live awake and present. A subtle book, to be read with care. It may take time to appreciate exactly what Takuin [...]

Little Book on the Human Shadow (Robert Bly)

Full Title: Little Book on the Human Shadow
Major Topic: a commentary on Wallace Steven’s poetry, illuminated by Bly’s articulation of Jungian approaches
Level: all levels
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Contemporary view on how to recognize, neutralize, and step out of the operations of projection. The section on retrieving the shadow is an excellent guide [...]

Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin (Idries Shah)

Full Title: Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin
Major Topic: amusing stories that can be interpreted on many levels
Level: all levels
This Middle Eastern folk hero consistently confounds and delights the reader as he presents one conundrum after another. Find a story that speaks to you and sit with it. They may appear nonsensical, but each story [...]

Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)

Full Title: Alice in Wonderland
Major Topic: A fantasy world constructed by the author.
Level: all levels
This classic children’s book is a virtual must for anyone who goes to any depth in Buddhist meditation. Lewis Carroll’s logical absurdities create a dreamlike atmosphere in which anything and everything is possible. From the nonsensical Jabberwocky, which nevertheless moves one [...]

Heart Sutra (Red Pine)

Full Title: Heart Sutra
Major Topic: perfection of wisdom
Level: all levels
Probably the most famous sutra in the Buddhist canon. In one page it demolishes conceptual knowing and points to a path to freedom. Memorize it, say it daily, read good commentaries (like this one) and let it soak you.

Who Dies? (Stephen Levine)

Full Title: Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying
Major Topic: death and dying
Level: all levels
Contemporary exploration of the great matter of life and death. If soneone close to you is dying, read this book. If you are dying, read this book. Do the exercises. If you are training people in how to [...]

Verses from the Center (Stephen Batchelor)

Full Title: Verses from the Center: A Buddhist Vision of the Sublime
Major Topic: Direct awareness, experience without conception or projection.
Level: middle, experienced and advanced
Batchelor’s commentary and translation of Nagarjuna transforms a treatise on logic into precise instructions to bring the reader into non-conceptual knowing. Use this book as a practice. Take each section and bring [...]

Diamond Sutra (Red Pine)

Full Title: Diamond Sutra: The Perfection of Wisdom
Major Topic: Direct awareness, experience without conception or projection.
Level: experienced and advanced
Sutra in the Perfection of Wisdom genre. Provides the basis for the practice of the Great Middle Way. To get the most out of this book, read each exchange between Buddha and Subhuti, and feel the [...]