Reading List: Buddhism for Beginners
When telling others about this blog, and my recent interest in religion, I received a great number of book recommendations. Thanks to a few gift certificates a number of them are now speeding towards my office, but before they arrived I picked up an e-book to get a better grasp on Buddhism.
Buddhism for Beginners by Thubten Chodron stood out as an affordable and approachable introduction, and it surpassed my expectations.
Written in a conversational, question and answer format, it offers easy to digest snippets of Buddhist teachings and philosophy as they apply to everyday life. From the metaphysical to the mundane it’s discussed logically and honestly. The author doesn’t preach as much as she presents, never pressuring or speaking down to the reader, instead leaving them to decide on their own how much to take to heart.
Perhaps the best compliment I could give the author is that one of her answers would often prompt a follow-up question in my mind and it was, almost always, one of the next questions in the book. The second best would be that the discussion ended too quickly. I hope to one day be able to sit down with a Buddhist as knowledgeable as the author and pepper them with just such questions.
As an introduction to the Buddhist way of life I highly recommend this title. I have a few other books to work through before I return to learning about Buddhism, but when I do I have confidence that I’ll understand it with much more ease than before.
