Islam
"No religion in the modern world is as feared and misunderstood as Islam. It haunts the popular Western imagination as an extreme faith that promoted authoritarian government, female oppression, civil war, and terrorism. Karen Armstrong's short history offers a vital corrective to this narrow view. The distillation of years of thinking and writing about Islam, it demonstrates that the world's fastest-growing faith is a much richer and more complex phenomenon than its modern fundamentalist strain might suggest."--BOOK JACKET.
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- And for Islam, I recommend Karen Armstrong’s “Islam: A Short History”. This book gives context to Muhammad as a Man in addition to the influential religion he adapted/created (for most major religions are adaptations, “modernizations” of what came before.)
- - Total Freedom by Jiddu Krishnamurti.
Initially this came across as shallow truths masquerading as profundity, especially with his unwillingness/inability to explain himself during discussions. Finally I read enough that some things just 'clicked' into place and my perspectives shifted along with my outlook on life.
- Letters from the Desert by Carlo Carretto (first half).
I was brought up a protestant so was never really exposed to catholic thought in my formative years. When I finally started exploring the classics for myself I found them often overly wordy and mystical, so I moved on to more modern (relatively speaking) works like this and the Way of the Pilgrim too. The simplicity of the writing and the clarity of the thoughts in the first few chapters of Letters from the Desert hit me hard.
- The Quran
A wonderfully phrased book that captures its times very well. Ideally to be read alongside something like Islam: A Short History or Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet, both by Karen Armstrong, to provide the context.
As an aside the Qu'ran is available for free online in audio format both as interlinear English/Arabic but also as Arabic only, and as a non-speaker of Arabic I often find listening to it being chanted a very calming and uplifting experience despite having no clue what is being said.
- Getting Real by 37 Signals.
As a programmer/developer/engineer since the late 1980s this was a revelation, bringing a clarity to my own thoughts and feelings about much of the world of enterprise software development. Very obvious points in retrospect that nobody ever (including me) seemed to have realised during my entire career before then.
- Web Copy that Sells by Maria Veloso.
A strange choice, given that there is nothing 'profound' in here. What it is, though, is a very well written book on persuasion which finally got me to see that I'd spent years avoiding 'sales' as something that wasn't for me whereas in reality it's for everyone and we do it all the time.
- The Body by Charles Colson.
Colson was jailed for his part in the Nixon stuff, then became a Christian. It's an incredibly moving book which is not his autobiography but an analysis of what is going wrong with the church. The impact comes from the stories he relates at the start of the chapters (especially the opening ones about 9/11). Those tales gave me an understanding of the potential 'greatness' in people.
- Doctors want money, but that does't mean they're completely useless. I wouldn't want to perform surgery on myself.
I recently read "A History of God" by Karen Armstrong, which covers the evolution of religion and various mystical traditions in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. It's a really interesting book and one of the points she brings up is that there are many historical examples of attempts at mystical experimentation that end in madness. The teacher is supposed to be a sort of life guard.
Ultimately, the book made me even more skeptical of religion and meditation than I already was. Spiritual/meditative introspection seems like a risky and dangerous process.
