Buddhist Primer

Buddhism was one of the core principles I worked with since I was nineteen or so. I was all independently doing it though, I didn’t really want to study with others because I was all, hmm, quiet. Anyway, the best author of Buddhist texts for a North American audience was Lama Surya Das. He was a Jewish boy who went to Kathmandu to find himself and ended up studying at the feet of the greats. Then he came back over here to try and apply it to contemporary life. The meditations he outlines are fairly simple but effective. I started out with Awakening the Buddha Within, which was a good beginning book and had some really enlightening meditations, like the candle meditation. Later on I read Awakening To The Sacred: Creating a Personal Spiritual Life. And now I’ve just finished Letting Go Of The Person You Used To Be: Lessons On Change, Loss, and Spiritual Transformation, which he wrote after Sept 11. I think anyone looking for their own spiritual path can find a lot of relevance in his books, even if you don’t become Buddhist or you want to apply it to other faiths.