Reading List

Yeah! That’s me reading and trying real hard to digest this very technical and deep book called “Tsongkhapa’s Praise for Dependent Relativity” by Lobsang Gyatso and Graham Woodhouse. It is an assignment from Tsem Rinpoche to read this book in a month and digest its entrails. Fortunately, it is only 123 pages long but it does a good job of  skimming the surface of the deeper meaning of Lama Tsongkhapa’s Praise of Dependent Relativity. I know many of you who are reading this wouldn’t have faintest clue what I am talking about. Don’t worry. Neither do I… before reading the book that is. The good thing is that it is short and it also packs with other peripheral explanations. It is amazing that Lama Tsongkhapa composed this praise in awe and inspiration after he came to the most profound realisation of Emptiness. Thus, with tears in his eyes and inspiration in his heart, he composed this majestic poem in honor of the Buddha’s pure enlightenment and elucidation of the selflessness, emptiness and dependent relativity.

Well, I am halfway through the book and I am nowhere near enlightenment. So, after reading a little too much on higher thoughts, I had to come down with something accessible. I am also reading simultaneously, the wonderfully orange paperback version of the Life of Pi. It’s a wonderful survival book written in the wittiest manner possible about an Indian boy who lost his whole family in a shipwreck and was marooned out at sea on a lifeboat with a dangerous Bengal tiger. The days passes by with misadventures and dire means of self-preservation. I am intrigued, amused and utterly baffled by the ingenuity of the authors descriptions. Wish I could write so beautifully. Love this book and I highly recommend it. That’s why it is a Penguin Classic now although it was first published 0nly in 2001.