Thursday, June 30, 2016

Thursday Book Report: Our Pristine Mind


Wanting to be happy seems to be a universal human trait, at least most of the time.  (We can make exceptions for our 13-year-old selves, who occasionally glory in the misery of it all…)  How to go about being happy, however, appears to have a more… multiplicitous… sort of existence.

One possible answer is provided by Orgyen Chowang’s book Our Pristine Mind:  A Practical Guide to Unconditional Happiness.  Chowang provides an approach rooted in Buddhist practice.

What I found interesting in the book was the contention that meditation can and should go beyond mindfulness.  Admittedly, many of us could do with more mindfulness, however we manage to achieve it.  Going beyond that place to Pristine Mind may seem daunting.

There is much to think about for anyone with an interest in meditation.  I am not sure I would describe the book as “practical” myself; the reader will need to do some work to parse out the actual practical steps to follow.


For me, the book touched on issues that are beyond the scope of a simple book report; I may get around to writing a more in-depth piece on that stuff or I may not.  For the purpose of this post, I will say that the book seems to be worth reading, if somewhat of a slog.

No comments:

Post a Comment