Lars Martin Fosse
4.0 out of 5 stars Straight Forward But Disappointing for a Lay Reader,October 8, 2012
This book's special niche is for those who want to read the book in Sanscrit and English at the same time.
Perhaps I have been spoiled by the excellence of The The Bhagavad Gita: A Walkthrough for Westerners that was recommended to me by Harrison Owen, himself the author of several books including Wave Rider: Leadership for High Performance in a Self-Organizing World. My review of the Gita for Westerners is a reflection of what I can get out of a book.
This one, while appreciated as a gift, and while also clearly a valuable contribution in terms of new twists on the English translation, is for me largely valuable for the ten page introduction.
I will say that the simplicity of the presentation (as in sparse sophistication demanding attention) focused my mind and I did draw out from this book the emphasis on non-attachment. In addition to the above two books, I would recommend The Zen Leader: 10 Ways to Go From Barely Managing to Leading Fearlessly, from which I drew the insight that I have been wasting time and energy trying to reform legacy systems that are too self-invested to every contemplate change, and that I should instead focus exclusively on “attracting the future” by being who I am, representing the constructive ideas that I do, and let others do with those ideas what they will.
Reading this book at a time when dark forces are conspiring to attack Iran and justify it with a variety of false flag attacks and the same kind of lies that led to the three trillion dollar war on Iraq, I try to FOCUS on the message in this book. Here is one example:
QUOTE (15): Know that this, on which all the world has been strung, is indestructible. No one can bring about the destruction of this imperishable being.
I have never been about rank or money, but I have had my ego involved in whether people, listen, learn, and do the right thing, and I see more value in the message — do what you do for the right reasons, without expecting outcomes. The outcomes are for others to co-create by their own action.
QUOTE (21): You are only entitled to the action, never to its fruits. Do not let the fruits of action be your motive, but do not attach yourself to nonaction.
Bearing in mind that this book provides less than one percent of the content of the total Gita [the ten page introduction is certainly the highlight of the book for those of us that do not want to spend years studying these specific phrases], I confess to being a bit under-whelmed. For me, The Bhagavad Gita: A Walkthrough for Westerners is the one book to buy.
Other books I recommend to those seeking new spiritual balance include:
Your Spiritual IQ: Five Steps to Spiritual Growth
Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution
Empowering Public Wisdom: A Practical Vision of Citizen-Led Politics (Manifesto Series)
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
Evolutionaries: Unlocking the Spiritual and Cultural Potential of Science's Greatest Idea
Conscious Evolution: Awakening Our Social Potential
