Monthly Archives: June 2016

Recently Read

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A few weeks ago,  I was lent a book that I perhaps wouldn’t have picked up at the bookstore because it isn’t fiction. However, I found that Richard Hooper’s Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, & Lao Tzu: The Parallel Sayings is quite enjoyable and enlightening.

Like many books, it opens with a praise/review section. Often, these praises are generic (the worst is “the next Lord of the Rings, when the book is nothing like the trilogy) and seems like the reviewer did not bother to read the book). Not so with these praises, which are genuine and true compliments. One such review says that it is “bound to nourish those who are soul-weary of combativeness in the name of religion.”

I am one who is weary of religious disputes and those hiding behind religion while attacking each other and found that the book replenished me and continues to do so every time I look through it. You see, Hooper does not focus on how each leader and how each religion/philosophy differs from each other, but how they are similar, reminding me that there can be unity among so much discord.

Hopper begins with explaining the history of each figure, the Buddha and Jesus in particular. Although I have a Christian upbringing and I have a decent knowledge of Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha), I learned quite a lot about both. The introduction was affirming to me as it put in words what I have been feeling for a long time: that Christianity has become a religion about Jesus and his teachings instead of being of Jesus and his teachings.

After the introduction, the book is broken into chapters on topics such as the self, wisdom and knowledge, love and compassion, and death and immortality. Hooper discusses each topic briefly before leaving the reader with quotations from the 4 philosophers that are remarkably similar. For instance, in the section about compassion, a quote from Jesus says “Blessed are the merciful, for theywill achieve mercy” and one from Lao Tzu says, “Compassion and mercy bring victory. Heaven belongs to the merciful.”

Hooper’s words may be challenging to some beliefs and reaffirming to others, but we need to challenge our beliefs in order to find out what they are and who we truly are.

 

Self Portrait

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This poem is inspired by a prompt series called “The Time is Now” sent out by Poets and Writers.

 

“Self Portrait”

Sitting on my bed, I look around me:

the dog, asleep, on the floor, books – Dickens, Austen, J.K. Rowling -,

Freddy the Teddy resting on a decorative pillow,

and then focus on the central figure in the mirror (plain, square, slightly dirty, unlike Plath’s lake)

The face is familiarly oval;

My mom says it looks “most like me, unfortunately”

with traces of cousins and an unmet grandmother.

I see this too: my brown, almost hazel eyes and sometimes wild, but always curly hair

that seems to change shades of brun when I turn my head.

I see also remnants of a pimple and under my collarbone, a chickenpox scar.

I do not quite see my little, previous self;

she is inside me.

I do not see a writer;

the notebook and pen are not visible in my reflection.

In this room, my home for the summer,

I see me – a woman – myself – a human – and I.