Since I spend a lot of time on public transport (either traveling or in the crazy traffic of Istanbul), I get to do quite a bit of reading. At the moment I’m reading two books. “A New Earth
Something I find very worrying is the growing phenomenom of antitheism. While using StumbleUpon, I noticed an immense number of sites that are very hateful towards religion. Understandably so, because they feel their way of life is being threatened by religion, but personally, I don’t feel that bashing, mocking, fighting or anything else that comes out of negativity can do any good. In “A New Earth
“In certain cases, you may need to protect yourself or someone else from being harmed by another, but beware of making it your mission to “eradicate evil,” as you are likely to turn into the very thing you are fighting against. Fighthing unconsciousness will draw you into unconsciousness yourself. Unconsciousness, dysfunctional egoic behavior, can never be defeated by attacking it. Even if you defeat your opponent, the unconsciousness will simply have moved into you, or the opponent reappears in a new disguise. Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.“
Very wise words. I really admire Eckhart Tolle’s works and can keep reading it over and over. If you really want to grasp the full meaning of his words above, go check out the book.
On my way to Bulgaria, I figured that Eckhart Tolle’s stuff might be a bit heavy for a 10+ hour journey and I’d need some novel to read. I found some novels in my apartment (left by previous inhabitants) and found an interesting one about life in Nepal around the time of the Nepalese independence movement in the 80s. I picked it up and took it with me… On the third page or so, I came across this marble of beauty:
“Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself.”
Taken from Kiran Desai’s “The Inheritance of Loss
Have you read any of these books? Thoughts and comments very welcome! I find books are one of the best topics for meaningful and engaging conversations! 🙂
Comments
8 responses to “Reading!”
Haven’t read those books before, cos I still have dozens which I have laid on my bookshelves to collect dust (including the oh-so-famous The Da Vinci Code)! How I wish I could have 72 hrs a day…
It’s no surprise for the rise of anti-theistic/secular/atheistic sentiments today, esp when most of the recent major events/tragedies have been a result of religious fanaticism.
One thing that struck me strange about Istanbul was the bus system. Do all buses have both a driver and a guy sitting at a table that you pay your fare to?
Everywhere else I’ve been in the world the driver has been both the driver & person who you pay the bus fare to.
Some good choices in books, I stick to more sci-fi myself 😛
@kyh: I think it’s fanaticism that’s the problem.
@Chris: Yup, that’s the way they do it in buses. Sometimes when it’s really busy they open the backdoors and the bus is completely packed yet people still pass money all the way to the front of the bus to pay the guy sitting at the table to pay fares. Really crazy. In Holland (or Bulgaria, or most countries I know) nobody would pay if they could get away with it (since you don’t get a ticket/receipt).
Tolle is a very wise soul. Love that quote. I need to internalize it for certain areas of my life. Thank you. 🙂
Oh yeah, I appreciate you for sharing another part of the world with us.
I love “A New Earth” by Eckhart Tolle also. I have read it once and plan to read it again soon. It is the kind of book that you can go back to many times and find something new or another way to look at things. 🙂
Yep. Same for The Power of Now. As time goes by, you uncover parts of yourself that you didn’t know about earlier. I have another quote from the book that I marked for future reference which is about ‘projection’.
He asks you to stop and think for a minute when you don’t like someone. Or rather feel, than think. And asks to see if the thing you don’t like about this person, isn’t subconsciously something you don’t like about yourself. I never noticed it before, but now I feel it very clearly. For instance, I don’t like dominant people, not because I don’t like their personality itself, but because I fear to lose control myself. So the factor that makes me not like them lies within me, not within them.
I haven’t read “A New Earth” but I’ve listened to him on the radio – what a wise man. I love “what you resist, persists” and I’m trying to remember that whenever I get angry over the many lies we are hearing daily during this election campaign here in the US.
I’m enjoying following your travels!
[…] wrote about this book a while ago. I’m ashamed to admit that I’m still reading it. Worse yet, I’m not even halfway […]