Nicholas (nwhyte) wrote,
Nicholas
nwhyte

May Books 5) The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching, by Thich Nhat Hanh

A book by a prominent Buddhist monk outlining key teachings of Buddhism. I started off rather liking it as an approach to mindfulness and how to process suffering and the good things about life. But after he Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, I started to get a bit irritated with the constant discovery of new lists of important spiritual things, from the Two Truths up to the Twelve Links of Interdependent Co-Arising; it seems to me that over-describing the undescribable is fundamentally a mistake. I also started wondering to what extent Thich Nhat Hanh is presenting a mainstream account of Buddhism or his own particular take (or his school's). And I wonder also if there is much sense of the numinous in Buddhism; there didn't seem a lot here. Anyway, it is still the most interesting book by a Buddhist on Buddhism that I have read.
Tags: bookblog 2012, poc, religion
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