User Profile

Sasu

Sasu@bookrastinating.com

Joined 2 years, 1 month ago

For years after having been exposed to Mortimer Adler's wonderful (but perhaps a bit oppressive) How to Read a Book, I thought I had to read all of the classics before I could reasonably read anything else and was (hopefully understandably) a bit paralyzed. After having tried for a while to approach this ideal, I have realized that life is short and I now read according to my interests and needs.

English is my native language and the language in which I do most of my reading, but I also read German, Mandarin, and literary Chinese (quite rusty in the latter two). I'm currently also working on learning Pāḷi.

On Mastodon: @sasu@ieji.de

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Sasu's books

Currently Reading (View all 8)

2026 Reading Goal

20% complete! Sasu has read 5 of 24 books.

replied to Sasu's status

Can't publish my review for some reason, but will keep trying sporadically until it works or until it seems pointless, whichever comes first. Highly recommended for anyone needing support starting on the #Zettelkasten method.

replied to Sasu's status

Barbara Bonner: Inspiring Forgiveness (EBook, 2020, Wisdom Publications)

Sometimes forgiveness can feel unfathomable, unreachable, or even just plain wrong. Inspiring Forgiveness throws wide …

Aptly Titled, Effective

An excellent and very readable #anthology full of #stories, #quotes, and #poetry geared toward inspiring #forgiveness. I found it helpful for its variety and diversity of description and presentation regarding how forgiveness can look, how to think about it, and the many kinds of forgiveness (or non-forgiveness). Beyond that, I think the particular strength of Inspiring Forgiveness is that it is probably still accessible to people not (yet) interested in #forgiving, much more so than one of the many works offering advice on how to #forgive.

The one thing that bothered me was that the formatting seemed poorly adapted to ebook readers. I've heard that the printed version is quite nicely done, though, so if you're thinking about reading it and have the choice, you're probably better off with a hardcopy.

#BarbaraBonner #InspiringForgiveness

Lama Rod Owens: Love and Rage (AudiobookFormat, 2021, North Atlantic Books)

In the face of systemic racism and state-sanctioned violence, how can we metabolize our anger …

Creative, Radical, Challenging

It's hard to know what to write about this one.

On the one hand, I experience much of Lama Rod's teaching in this book as brilliantly creative. The meditation instructions are well-systematized and I found the guidance helpful, especially for the #7homecomings, #tonglen, and #EarthTouching / #bhūmisparśa practices. I also deeply appreciated his acknowledgement of the issues present in the #Tibetan #Buddhist tradition and his way of relating to flawed teachers in a system vulnerable to abuse of power was valuable for me. The way he addresses #racism, #whitesupremacy, #queerphobia, #patriarchy and other forms of #discrimination or #opression reminded me favorably of Sebene Selassie's You Belong.

On the other, having now listened to it in its entirety, it seems like the book might have put together in a piecemeal sort of way. I get the impression that this might have …