Awakening to Reality

Soh

Thank you Yin Ling for answering to my request.

Yin Ling

Finally sit down and go through my libraries and listed down the books I personally love, both dharma and dharma related.

I won’t categorise them bec I really do not think in category when I buy or read. All of them contributed to my insight and learning in its own way. If I feel it’s too much for me I put it aside and come back to it again when I have new insight, things usually open up. That’s how I read.

A lot of theravada books I didn’t list, coz I read them early in the path say before 2019-2020.. I don’t remember clearly so I won’t list them.

Pls also recommend me some books if not in the list. Much appreciated

***

Book recommendations (Dharma)

1. Awakening to reality e-book guide written by Soh Wei Yu in his blog awakeningtoreality.com

2. seeing that frees Rob Burbea

2. How to see yourself as you truly are HHDL

3. Clarifying the natural state DTN

4. Awake Angelo DiLullo MD

5. The method of no method Chan master Sheng Yen

6. The sun my heart TNH

7. Buddhahood without meditation

8. Death Joan tollifson

9. Royal seal of Mahamudra 1 and 2

10. Enjoying the ultimate TNH

11. Awakening the heart (sutra commentary) by TNH

12. Hakuin on Kensho commentary by Albert low

13. The end of your world Adyashanti

14. Emptiness dancing Adyashanti

15. Practical insight meditation Mahasi Sayadaw

16. Mastering the core teaching of the Buddha Daniel Ingram

17. No death no fear TNH

18. Tsongkhapa praise for dependent relativity

19. Mindfulness in plain English Bhante G

20. The supreme source CNN

21. Grist for the mill Ram Dass

22. How to realize emptiness Gen and Wallace Lamrimpa

23. Emptiness Greg Goode

24. Being time shinshu Roberts

25. Realizing genjokoan by shohaku okumura

26. The practise of Dzogchen Translated by tulku thondup

27. Natural liberation Padmasambhava

28. Finding rest in meditation/ nature of mind/ illusion by longchenpa - illusion is my fav

29. Insight into emptiness Tegchok

30. The other shore TNH (heart sutra commentary)

31. Call me by my true names TNH’s poetry collection

32. Mindfulness Joseph Goldstein - core Buddhist teachings like textbook

33. Introduction to emptiness Guy Newland

34. Under the bodhi tree and heart wood of the Bodhi tree Buddhadhasa Bikkhu

35. The grand delusion Steve Hagen

36. A path with heart Jack kornfield

37. Bringing home the dharma Jack kornfield

38. Food for the heart ajahn Chah

39. The mind illuminated culadasa

40. The power of now ET

41. 洪文亮法师writings (link can be found on ATR blog)

MMK

1. the sun of wisdom

2. Jan westerhoff

3. Nargajuna mark siderits

4. The feast for the fortunate

5. Nargajuna vigraharyavartani

ATR related

1) free ebook

2) all the recommended post in the blog

On the right panel

3) thusness old forum posts back in circa 2005-2008

4) all the transcripts - 4 of them I think

Others (indirectly to dharma)

1. the body keeps the score Bassel van der kolk (trauma)

2. Drugs and alcohol book by prof David nutt

3. Dopamine nation

4. The noonday demon Andrew Solomon (an anatomy of depression)

5. When breath becomes air Paul kalanithi

6. Attached amir Levine (attachment theory for relationships)

7. Dying to be me Anita moorjani

8. Atomic habits James clear

9. Tiny habits BJ fogg

awakeningtoreality.com

Awakening to Reality

1 Comment

Soh Wei Yu

Nice! Thanks for the effort Yin Ling

This is for anyone going through dark night or difficulties in life or practice

Soh

Mr. RB

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*This is for anyone going through dark night or difficulties in life or practice

When I first discovered Buddhism I found the first noble truth to be pessimistic. Later of course I understood it in full. When I was 10 years old I was detained for shoplifting. I thought my Dad would disown me. He embraced me and said “Son I’ll always love you no matter what you do… but you’re also grounded until further notice” lol. I remember that moment so clearly. The smell of marlboro reds, his green eyes. His kindness.

As a teenager I was so angry at him. So full of rage. He had drug problems and over the next several years I watched his slow decay. I was angry that he couldn’t be there for me. I was angry at myself for not being able to tell him that. When I was 18 I did my first 10-day Vipassana retreat and a year later did a 90-day retreat in Thailand. During our last phone call he told me how proud he was of me for finding something I loved and was committed to. How lucky was I that the last words I ever said to him were I love you.

Just a few weeks later my father fell into a coma his lungs collapsed from a lifetime of smoking and a decade of meth. He was almost entirely brain dead from asphyxiation, but had minor activity remaining in the brain stem, enough to keep his body alive. The night we got the news my Grandmother was sitting on a couch and my mother, aunt and I were kneeling on the floor around her. Crying she patted our heads and she put her hands in prayer and all she could say was “we have to be strong…” In that moment I saw how powerless and helpless we were. In times like that all you can do is kneel.

He took his last breath, the blood drained from his face and I understood the meaning of the word dukkha. My doubts about the Buddha’s first truth were cleared. All my hopes and dreams that my father would get better one day, along with the boy who held to them… died with him. In the years that followed my family suffered financial hardships, we nearly lost our home to foreclosure. I had no idea what to do with my life anymore.

Only very recently have I gained some success and stability. For 7 years after he passed everything I touched failed. I flunked out of college, couldn’t hold down a job for longer than a year and a half. Got a new girlfriend every year or two. No one was there to teach me how to become a man so I sought that fatherly figure in spiritual teachers and bosses ultimately to be sorely disappointed.

There were times when I had no one. No one believed in me anymore. Even my best friend had abandoned me. I quit my job with special needs children in my early 20’s to be a rideshare driver at night because I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. I ate a lot of fried sweet potatoes because I was broke from being too lazy to drive as much as I should have lol. I had nothing not even myself to rely on.

On those hopeless nights I still crossed my legs, straightened my back and meditated. I still read and sat day after day and even though every area of my life had fallen apart… I still had this dharma. One day after so many long years of being lost, all those retreats, the thousands of hours I sat, the teachers I lived with and left, all my wandering and seeking… it was all worth it when Presence and non-duality dawned and I was forever changed.

I realized then just as I know now that no sit is wasted. No hour spent reading is worthless. No moment of seeking is in vain. I’m still no enlightened man, but compared to what I used to be… this path killed so much unwholesomeness that was in me. I’m always amazed to see so many awakened people be so functional— doctors, lawyers, bankers, programmers. I could barely tie my shoes until just a couple years ago.

Tomorrow is my father’s birthday on the side of the world most of you are reading this from. I thought I’d take it as a time to share what some people say is a good story

. Here's my old man below. Happy Birthday Dad!