Yesterday I finished re-reading Moving Against the Stream, the most recent memoirs of Sangharakshita, the founder of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order / Triratna, the Buddhist movement of which I am a part. In this book Sangharakshita describes his return to the West in the early sixties after two decades of living and practising in the East. The situation in the small world of British Buddhism at that time was quite different to that of the present, and I marvel and rejoice in the fact that Sangharakshita not only managed to survive those very difficult times, but also managed to found a new Buddhist movement that quickly grew and spread throughout not just Britain and the West, but throughout the world.
At school I don't remember ever having actually read a book from cover to cover, I simply couldn't see the point. It wasn't until about the age of twenty, having been working for five years on the roads, asphalting, mixing concrete and laying kerbstones, that I read short biographies of John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix, and soon discovered the books by the adventurer Thor Heyerdal, who became an early hero for me. I soon devoured all of his books, and thereby thankfully developed a broader perspective on life.
Later I studied philosophy and politics and therefore read quite a lot in these fields, although I rarely really found much inspiration or enthusiasm for these topics. A couple of names I remember from this time, of people whose writings really spoke to me, are Bertrand Russell, who was another great hero for me, and Jean-Paul Satre. I also dabbled with Kafka and Dostoevsky.
Having discovered the teachings of the Buddha in the early nineties, I am always happy to bury myself in Dharma books, especially primary sources, from the Buddhist canon, and books by Sangharakshita, of which there are many.
Nowadays, on account of my teaching English, I also get the chance to read modern novels with my students, which is something I never really got into before. Over the past four years we have read a very broad range of books, from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole to Hanif Kureishi's Something to Tell You. Currently we are reading In the Kitchen, a novel by Monica Ali, though we have only just begun and it is therefore too early to comment.
At school I don't remember ever having actually read a book from cover to cover, I simply couldn't see the point. It wasn't until about the age of twenty, having been working for five years on the roads, asphalting, mixing concrete and laying kerbstones, that I read short biographies of John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix, and soon discovered the books by the adventurer Thor Heyerdal, who became an early hero for me. I soon devoured all of his books, and thereby thankfully developed a broader perspective on life.
Later I studied philosophy and politics and therefore read quite a lot in these fields, although I rarely really found much inspiration or enthusiasm for these topics. A couple of names I remember from this time, of people whose writings really spoke to me, are Bertrand Russell, who was another great hero for me, and Jean-Paul Satre. I also dabbled with Kafka and Dostoevsky.
Having discovered the teachings of the Buddha in the early nineties, I am always happy to bury myself in Dharma books, especially primary sources, from the Buddhist canon, and books by Sangharakshita, of which there are many.
Nowadays, on account of my teaching English, I also get the chance to read modern novels with my students, which is something I never really got into before. Over the past four years we have read a very broad range of books, from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole to Hanif Kureishi's Something to Tell You. Currently we are reading In the Kitchen, a novel by Monica Ali, though we have only just begun and it is therefore too early to comment.
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