Title: The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World
Authors: His Holiness, The 14th Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Abrams.
Publication Date: 2016
Pages: 368
One of my goals for Lent was to read one nonfiction book dealing with self-improvement. I chose this one after a patron requested our library purchase it and then it was a deal of the day. I couldn’t pass it up. I’m glad I didn’t as it is my…
Book of the Month for April 2017
This is a new feature where on the last Sunday of each month, I will review the best book I read for that month. Likewise, I am doing two similar features at the end of each month: Movie of the Month and Album of the Month, with reviews of the best movie we watched that month and the best album I listened to that month. Earlier this week, I wrote about our Movie of the Month for this past month, and my intent was to write about my Album of the Month on Friday. However, since I didn’t do that, I will announce my Album of the Month sometime later this week.
Before reading this book, I had read one other book by the Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living, which was in answer to a series of questions from Howard C. Cutler, an American psychiatrist. Like that one, this book is in answer to a series of questions to the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu from Douglas Abrams, another American writer – over a week’s meeting. However, unlike The Art of Happiness, I didn’t find Abrams to be quite as intrusive into the conversation as Cutler was. Abrams did inject himself into the conversation, but I think it seemed more natural than when Cutler did it in the previous book.
I think also what helped was the inclusion of scientific research on joy and comments from the Dalai Lama’s translator Jinpa, or Thupta Jinpa Langri, the Dalai Lama’s principal translator since 1985. The only issue I have with Abrams’ inclusion of Jinpa is that Abrams doesn’t identify who Jinpa is, only introducing him from time to time with “Jinpa explained” or “Jinpa said,” which was a bit frustrating for those of us not familiar with his relationship with the Dalai Lama.
After setting up the impetus of the pair’s meeting, which was the Dalai Lama’s 80th birthday, the trio, or really quartet, of writers get to the heart of the book: the nature of true joy, obstacles to that, and then the eight pillars of joy. Those eight are: perspective, humility, humor, acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, and generosity. The main section of the book ends with a birthday party for the Dalai Lama at the Tibetan Children’s Village with more than a thousand children, several hundred teachers, staff, and guests from the Tibetan Community and a brief final session before Tutu leaves. The Tibetan Children’s Village is in Dharamsala, India, where the Dalai Lama and his followers fled in 1959 from their native Tibet.
However, that truly isn’t the end of the book as the trio collect a series of “Joy Practices” or meditation exercises. The bulk of the exercises can be found in two categories: “Overcoming the Obstacles to Joy” and “Cultivating the Eight Pillars of Joy.” They are bookended with practices that Tibetan monks do at the beginning and end of each day. For me, this appendix is what puts this book “over the top” for me as it just doesn’t tell you about joy, but also how to practice joy in your own life.
So what book that you read this past month would you choose as your Book of the Month?
Return here tomorrow for Library Checkout, a meme created by Shannon from the blog River City Reading and now continued by Charleen from It’s a Portable Magic every month.
Title: Lion
Reading: I picked up a copy of Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction by Eric Foner from Overdrive at the Free Library of Philadelphia. I’ve had an interest in that time period ever since having a class in college about the Civil War, in which we used another book by Foner. It always has stuck in my mind and so I thought why not revisit Reconstruction with Foner, one of its most prominent historians. I’m also waiting to see a few other ebooks from FLP to become available, and when they do, I’ll decide which one I’ll choose for my next fiction read.
…anyway, I’m back and I am in the midst of celebrating a four-day weekend that started Friday and ends Monday. On Friday, I continued reading The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Douglas C. Abrams and probably will be continuing to read that today. Tomorrow, my wife and I are going to my parents’ for Easter, and on Monday, we have nothing planned. I probably will look for my next book via Overdrive from the Free Library of Philadelphia, but beyond that, nothing on the radar.
Earlier this week on the blog:
Each Friday I feature new music that is catching my ear. Sometimes it is from this week; sometimes it is not, but it’s always within the last few months. This week, I am highlighting the new albums by two artists who prefer to use pseudonyms/personas: Father John Misty, the comic and tragic mask worn by Josh Tillman, and Arca, the namesake of Venezuelan producer Alejandro Ghersi.
I stumbled across Arca after he helped produce four songs on Kanye West’s Yeezus, which was one of my favorite albums of 2013, and then Arca released his solo album, Xen, in 2014. Since then, he also was producer on Björk’s 2015 album Vulnicura (yes, another favorite album) and also released one other album, Mutant, in 2015. So like Tillman, this is his third album. On this one, he introduces his own voice to what up until now has been mostly instrumental music. I haven’t listened to this one much yet, but am looking forward to listening to it more today along with Tillman’s new album.
I have decided on a new course of action with my reading. From now on, I’m planning on reading one fiction, one nonfiction at a time, and putting others on wishlist in Overdrive.
I’m left with focusing on one fiction, Fer-De-Lance, the first Nero Wolfe, by Rex Stout, and one nonfiction, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Abrams. I think this way I can focus on the actual reading and not the talking about, and writing about, theoretical reading.
My wife and I just finished watching Season 1 of this gloriously suspenseful show and we loved it. I started watching it first, but then my wife was pulled into it too. She mentioned that a coworker had watched both the original French version and the American remake, which was canceled, and that the coworker enjoyed both of them, although the French one a little more, she said, partially because the American one ended before the storyline was finished.
