Book Review - The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

Although I'd first heard of Alan Watts' The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are several years ago, it wasn't until I watched Dakota Wint's YouTube video Top 5 Books Every New Spiritual Seeker Needs that I was motivated enough to actually check it out. First things first—I know that I will benefit a lot from re-reading this book several times. It's extremely dense and packed with a lot of valuable information, a lot of which I likely didn't absorb during my first reading of the book.

The basic premise of the book is that we have been told that we are isolated beings, "unconnected to the rest of the universe", which has led to our viewing the "outside" world with hostility and "has fueled our misuse of technology and our violent and hostile subjugation of the natural world". However, Watts asserts that this belief is mistaken and that we are in fact directly connected to everything else there is. In the beginning of the book, Watts discusses the concept of cultural taboos—things like making direct eye contact with another person or performing an act that is against one's religion. This leads him to make the following point:

"The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego."

The concept of "I" is extremely powerful and commonplace in most societies on Earth, and it is so fundamental to our modes of speech and thought, as well as our laws and social institutions. Watts spends many words of this book arguing against the concept of personal selfhood in favor of a more universal concept of identity—one that includes the rest of reality in addition to the components that we would normally judge as "ourselves".

One of the other things I found interesting was Watts' definition of "attention" as "narrowed perception"—because when we attend to one thing, we ignore everything else. In Watts' own words: "conscious attention is at the same time ignore-ance (i.e., ignorance) despite the fact that it gives us a vividly clear picture of whatever we choose to notice."

These are just some of the concepts that Watts describes in The Book. If either of these ideas sound interesting to you, I would definitely give this a read. I wish that this review was able to more fully show how wonderful this book is, but since this is only my first read-through, I feel like I was only able to skim the surface of its ideas and therefore will likely have more to say about it upon successive readings. I definitely give this one two thumbs up though!

5/5 stars. 178 pages.

Book Review - Bhagavadgita

The Bhagavad Gita is a traditional Hindu scripture that is part of the epic Mahabharata. It is essentially a dialogue between a prince named Arjuna and his guide, Lord Krishna. It takes place right before a battle in a war between families that Arjuna is expected to fight. The text introduces many concepts in Hinduism, including dharma, yoga, bhakti, karma, and more.

I really wanted to like this book. Having purchased it over ten years ago, going into reading it with the knowledge that it is one of the most important Hindu texts, and listening to people like Duncan Trussell quote it and explain it in his podcast built it up in my mind, but ultimately, this was a tough read for me and I didn't get much out of it. That's likely due to the fact that I didn't understand most of it.

I'm going to go ahead and blame my experience with this text on the edition that I read, rather than on the text itself. Fear not, I plan to read a few alternative versions of the Bhagavad Gita over the next several years. I already have several in mind, but if you have any that you would recommend, please let me know!

2/5 stars. 97 pages.

Book Review - Essence of World Religions

I was fortunate to receive a free copy of Essence of World Religions during a local all-vegan Thanksgiving Dinner that I attended this year. It piqued my interest because it appeared to be a basic introduction to many of the common world religions, some of which I had never even heard of before. A few of friends that were seated at my table mentioned that they had read the book the previous year and found it to be a good overview of the topic and a valuable resource.

The book was originally published in 1994 as part of the JAINA Education Series program, and the edition I received is the Third Edition, published in November 2004. The preface of the book stresses that it is intended to be an introductory resource, stating "The strength of this book is its simplicity." Because of that, many complex and subtle distinctions between the religions have been left out of the book. The main focus is on providing a basic comparative summary of the following religions:

• Religions of India

1. Hinduism
2. Buddhism
3. Jainism
4. Sikhism

• Religions of the Far-East

1. Confucianism
2. Taoism
3. Shintoism

• Religions of the West

1. Judaism
2. Zoroastrianism
3. Christianity
4. Islam
5. Bahä'i

Each religion's section covers the time it was founded, a description of the founder (if there was one at all), the major scriptures that are consulted, any sects that may exist, the number of current adherents, the ultimate goals and beliefs, identifying symbols, and a list of observed holidays. Some religions have additional sections added that are specific to them.

I found this book to be extremely eye-opening, because there is a lot in common between these religions. Of course, there is a lot of different between them as well, but the book primarily focuses on the similarities. I would definitely recommend the book to anyone who is interested in a primer for these religions or spirituality in general.

3/5 stars. 80 pages.