Book Excerpt The Buddha Journey

Book Excerpt

"How do I develop true happiness?

It is everyone's life mission to be happy. Every sentient being wants happiness and a good life. And so it is also our life's mission to develop that happiness, for and from ourselves, from within. It is unfortunate that we live in a world where society has brainwashed us that new, pretty, fancy things will bring us happiness. That our life would be incomplete without the latest trending gadgets, cars, clothes, and even foods. We spend hundreds and thousands of dollars to be part of the status-quo, to fit in, and make sure we're on the same trending page as the rest of the world.

Are we happy with all that? Yes, for a hot minute. Only until the next latest gadget is released, next year's model car is for sale, and the new season clothing line has come and gone before we've even realized it exists. We have this completely false assumption that these "things" bring us real happiness, that they have this magical way of taking all our dissatisfactions of the world away. Because they don't.

Real happiness is when we realize these nice things are impermanent, and the happiness they bring is also impermanent. New technology is constantly changing and developing; it can't even catch up to itself. With a blink of an eye the new iPhone is released, the next thing we know, the iPhone is going to be a tiny chip we have to embed in our heads!

Buddhism is not a fixing path; it's a healing path. If we come into Buddhism assuming it's going to magically fix all our life problems, then we are the problem in our life. Buddhism gives us the guidelines and instructions to understanding life and our minds, and to use those instructions to help us escape what we see as dissatisfying as a different view of reality. By understanding life (using the Four Noble Truths) and following the guidelines of the Eightfold Path, we start understanding our mind and the world around us and why things cause us dissatisfaction.”

 

About the Book

Title: The Buddha Journey: Questions and Answers for the Awakening Mind
Author: Quang Tri
Genre: Spirituality / Buddhism
The Buddha Journey aspires to answer the most commonly asked questions beginning or advancing students would ask. The Buddha Journey covers your basic “Buddhism 101” introduction, then answers over 100 questions about compassion, anger, forgiveness, meditation, impermanence, sex, karma, death, becoming a Buddhist and more! Quang Trí writes in a simple, easy-to-understand way that allows the reader to understand the content and contemplate the subject matter on their own for their own interpretation.

Author Bio

Quang Trí has been practicing meditation since 2002 and Buddhism since 2006. He is a Dharma teacher and a Truth seeker, teaching others about Buddhism, mindfulness and meditation. As the writer of the popular website, BuddhaJourney.net, Quang Trí continuously aspires to help everyone with their path toward Awakening. He is one of the senior members of his temple, Chua Phuoc Hue, as he trains to ordain as a monk.

Links

www.buddhajourney.net
Amazon
Facebook
Twitter

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Book Excerpt The Luddite's Guide to Technology

Technonomicon: Technology, Nature, Ascesis:​

1. Many people are concerned today with harmony with nature. And indeed there is quite a lot to living according to nature.
2. But you will not find something that is missing by looking twice as hard in the wrong place, and it matters where one seeks harmony with nature. In monasticism, the man of virtue is the quintessential natural man. And there is something in monasticism that is behind stories of the monk who can approach boar or bear.
3. Being out of harmony with nature is not predominantly a lack of time in forests. There is a deeper root.
4. Exercising is better than living a life without exercise. But there is something missing in a sedentary life with artificially added exercise, after, for centuries, we have worked to avoid the strenuous labor that most people have had to do.
5. It is as if people had worked for centuries to make the perfect picnic and finally found a way to have perfectly green grass at an even height, a climate controlled environment with sunlight and just the right amount of cloud, and many other things. Then people find that something is missing in the perfect picnic, and say that there might be wisdom in the saying, "No picnic is complete without ants." So they carefully engineer a colony of ants to add to the picnic. 

 

About The Book

Title: The Luddite’s Guide to Technology

Author: CJS Hayward

Genre: creative non-fiction / religion and spirituality / technology – social aspects

Mammon, as it is challenged in the Sermon on the Mount, represents such wealth and possessions as one could have two thousand years ago. But that is merely beer as contrasted to the eighty proof whisky our day has concocted. The Sermon on the Mount aims to put us in the driver’s seat and not what you could possess in ancient times, and if the Sermon on the Mount says something about metaphorical beer, perhaps there are implications for an age where something more like eighty proof whisky is all around us.

Author Bio

Christos Jonathan Seth Hayward wears many hats as a person: author, philosopher, theologian, artist, poet, wayfarer, philologist, inventor, web guru, teacher.

Some have asked, “If a much lesser C.S. Lewis were Orthodox, what would he be like?” And the answer may well be, “CJS Hayward.”

Hayward has lived in the U.S., Malaysia, England, and France, and holds master’s degrees bridging math and computers (UIUC), and philosophy and theology (Cambridge).

Links

​http​://amazon.com/author/cjshayward

​http://CJSH.name

http://fan.CJSH.name

https://CJSHayward.com​

​http://tinyurl.com/luddites-guide-technology

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Release Day Party The Best of Jonathan's Corner

 

 

About The Book

Title: The Best of Jonathan’s Corner

Author: CJS Hayward

Genre: Creative non-fiction / many genres / religion and spirituality / Eastern Orthodox

The Best of Jonathan’s Corner, newly expanded ​ after getting five star reviews​, is a collection of varied works of Eastern Orthodox mystical theology. It spans many topics and many different genres of writing, but it keeps coming back to the biggest questions of all. It is inexhaustible: the works are independent, and you can read a few, many, or all of them to suit your taste. Fans of CS Lewis and GK Chesterton will love it.

Author Bio

Christos Jonathan Seth Hayward wears many hats as a person: author, philosopher, theologian, artist, poet, wayfarer, philologist, inventor, web guru, teacher.

Some have asked, "If a much lesser C.S. Lewis were Orthodox, what would he be like?" And the answer may well be, "C.J.S. Hayward."

Called "Jack of all trades and master of many" by one boss, he also wears many hats professionally: open source / IT generalist, front end developer, JavaScript programmer, back end web developer, Pythonista, PHP and Perl user, Django developer, end to end web developer, Unix/Linux/Mac wizard, LAMP guru, SQL generalist, Unix shell (both using existing shells and implementing a new shell), system administrator, researcher, technical writer, usability advocate, UI developer, UX/IA enthusiast, and more.

Hayward has lived in the U.S., Malaysia, England, and France, and holds master's degrees bridging math and computers (UIUC), and philosophy and theology (Cambridge).

Links

http://tinyurl.com/best-of-jonathans-corner

http://CJSH.name

http://amazon.com/author/cjshayward

http://JonathansCorner.com​

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