Hacker News Books

If I was lucky enough to own two, those would be:

1.Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand http://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Shrugged-Centennial-Edition-eboo...

2.The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying http://www.amazon.com/Tibetan-Book-Living-Dying-ebook/dp/B00...

A very good start is the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, but there are a lot of great books out there on these topics.

More specifically, there is an enormous importance placed on dying well. Read The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying for a really good explanation.

If anyone wants an amazing book that changed my perspective about life and death I'd highly recommend "The Tibetan book of living and dying".

I'm currently reading the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. I'm not Buddhist but I was looking for a good book on meditation. This book has been great, it's got the wisdom of thousands of years of mediators in a format that is very accessible to Westerners. Its explanation of different techniques for meditation is thorough and practical.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062508342

I am not much into fiction, my gift depends on the kind of person I gift to, few books I most of the time prefer gifting,

1. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche, for those spiritual minds. I am a huge fan of this book, I am traveling this week to Dharamshala to learn about Buddhism after reading this book.

2.Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, for those aspiring young minds.

3. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, for my adventure loving friends. I had an intense desire to see Mt.Everest after reading this book, I traveled to Everest base camp.

4. Bhagavad-Gītā As It Is by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, for everyone, I don't remember how many I have gifted.

5. Imitation of Christ, I have gifted it, but haven't read it myself. It's in my list.

6. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

The latter is the source of the material covered in the first. Dalai Lama introduces the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

My father passed away when I was 18, my mother passed away a year ago. Both from illnesses which no one had in my family.

As someone in his late twenties, it hit me hard. Even today, I cannot seem to enjoy anything since I feel the void of my parents, both of whom I was deeply attached to.

A friend who saw how broken I was gave me the book, "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tibetan_Book_of_Living_and.... It changed my perspective on death. It made me realize that nothing is permanent and it's best not to be afraid of death. A must read for anyone suffering from loss of their loved ones.

To live without the fear of death and to accept what happens, sets you free in many ways.

> A lot of this can be interpreted as a way to shun yourself from the world and not face reality. But can't anyone do that with anything helpful?

There are lots of texts on rising above worldly pleasures, and some are very good. I'm a particular fan of Ekhart Tolle's work, and I enjoyed the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying... The Tao of Pooh, and the Te of Piglet got me through a difficult adolescence.

As with any idea, though, simplifying it too far tends to lose important subtleties. The mental austerity mentioned in the original post is likely to strike a resonant chord with many men who wished they had better self-control, and who wished they were acting with more general agency in their life. Men are complete suckers for certain ideals of manhood, certain archetypes that are well presented. If this is something that interests you, I can strongly recommend the books Iron John by Robert Bly, King Warrior Magician Lover by Robert Moore, and the excellent Way of The Superior Man by David Deida.

I find this quote by Alan Watts particularly poignant, and perhaps an antidote to the original post:

"We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4)

Every time I see his posts I think about the book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. I would recommend reading it for anyone who might be having the discussion or dealing with death in their life.

https://www.amazon.com/Tibetan-Book-Living-Dying-Internation...

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying - Sogyal Rinpoche

http://www.amazon.com/Tibetan-Book-Living-Dying-Internationa...

I think the best first book to read on Buddhism would just be The Heart of Understanding by Thich Nhat Hanh. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying is really good, but I would read that next. It's much longer, and although parts of it are really insightful, there are also large sections that are repetitive or esoteric. It's also about ideas and practices that are important to Tibetan buddhism, but that aren't central to most other forms of buddhism.

I do, in fact I built an app to help me do it better (http://zazensuite.com)

The thing about meditation is that it's tough to get past those first few minutes, but when you do, it really helps you feel better.

I learned a lot about the philosophy of meditation from reading books like Be Here Now and The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

BTW -- Sogyal did not write the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. Sogyal is barely literate and cannot read Tibetan.He left Tibet at age 2 and received a basic education in India. He was never trained as a lama. The idea for the TBOLD came from Christine Longaker. Patrick Gaffney did the research. Andrew Harvey wrote the book. Compare the style and content to other books by Harvey.