Booklist for Further Reading

Selected Excerpts

Scientists investigate life by looking outside of themselves, while Buddhist meditators look inward. In either direction reality displays roughly the same qualities; scientists and meditators give similar accounts of everything from brain functions to subatomic realities. As inside, so outside. The big difference is that by seeing these truths inside oneself, the information becomes personal. Experiencing the laws of nature working within us begins to alter our sense of who we are and how we feel about life. ‘Buddha’s Nature’ Wes Nisker

Happiness is often confused with pleasure. Unlike well-being, the evanescent experience of pleasure depends on particular circumstances, times and places. Pleasurable sensations soon wear out and give rise to indifference and sometimes disgust. On the contrary, genuine happiness as a “way of being” is less vulnerable to circumstances and becomes more stable and pervasive as we understand and experience it. And meditation is the key.
‘Happiness’ Mathieu Ricard

Society is culturally and not genetically coded, and our culture is more flexible than our genes: we can mutate if we wish, whereas we cannot change our gene pool. A cultural mutation can be willfully launched and consciously oriented. The conscious orientation of the next cultural mutation – the shift to a new civilization – depends on the evolution of consciousness. This evolution has become a precondition of survival. You can help humanity survive; you can evolve your consciousness…Entering the altered states of consciousness that are typical of deep meditation and intense prayer is particularly important.  ‘The Chaos Point’ Ervin Laszlo

Suppose you read about a pill that you could take once a day to reduce anxiety and increase your contentment. Would you take it? Suppose further that the pill has a great variety of side-effects, all of them good: increased self-esteem, empathy, and trust; it even improves memory. Suppose, finally, that the pill is all natural and costs nothing. Now would you take it? The pill exists. It is meditation. ‘The Happiness Hypothesis’ Jonathan Haidt

Wipe out thy imaginations by often saying to thyself: now it is in my power to let no badness be in this soul, nor desire nor any perturbation at all; but looking at all things I see what is their nature, and I use according to its value. Remember this power which thou hast from nature. ‘Meditations’ The Emperor Marcus Aurelius (1st century AD)

Why, then, if expensive things cannot bring us remarkable joy, are we so powerfully drawn by them? We are not solely to blame for our confusions. Our weak understanding of our needs is aggravated by what (4th Century BC Greek philosopher of happiness) Epicurus  terms the ‘idle opinions’ of those around us, which do not reflect the natural hierarchy of our needs, emphasizing luxury and riches, seldom friendship, freedom and thought. The prevalence of idle opinion is no coincidence. It is in the interests of commercial enterprises to skew the hierarchy of our needs, to promote a material vision of the good and downplay an unsaleable one. ‘The Consolations of Philosophy’ Alain De Botton