Brandon

A funny teaching on Tonglen. If you don't know what Tonglen is, learn. It will change your life (no guarantee). This is a great source to learn Tonglen. If you don't want to spend the money on this particular book, because you aren't sure what Tonglen is. Research it, and then come back and get this book. Or don't. Also check out Pema Chodrons book on Audible.com called Good Medicine.

This was like hearing a Tom Clancy novel about magic, the research that went into this made the book very entertaining.

I can read some pretty technical and boring things and manage to keep myself pretty entertained. Listening to this, I wanted to put my hand in a rat trap, just to break up the monotony.

He makes some interesting observations, maybe worth suffering through if only for the information. His vision of "great chain" and "four quadrants" are pretty empty ideas, but he relies on them with a blind faith rivaling any I've seen. He also spent about $5,000 bucks repeating 10 of the same 50cent words. If you pick at random any place on this book, I?m sure if you wait 10 seconds you?ll hear the word ?modernity?.

This could have been done in 30 minutes just as well, or better really. The spends most of the time, just clarifying the same idea, over and over. This became an exercise in Wilber chasing his own "paradigm" like a tail, never really able to articulate it in a way that works. I'd rather listen to my ex-girlfriend talk for 5 hours about her dreams, where she's shopping with somebody that is her friend, but "like, wasn't my friend... you know?"

I never read any Kerouac, but been familiar with the name since I was a kid. To be honest this book is more or less entertaining, and I was glad I heard it but wouldn't of wanted to of read it. If you have any sort of Buddhist study in your past, Kerouac's mild distortion of Buddhism and self-aggrandizing will kind of turn you off. If you are not familiar with Buddhism, you won't notice it at all.

On its own merit, this is a mediocre book and no longer very relevant. In its time, I'm sure it was ground breaking and launched many people towards the philosophies or religions of the East.

It is worth getting, but more just to get Kerouac off your 'have to read list' and realize you were never missing much.

I've got a lot of audible books on Buddhism. So far this has been my favorite one, and have listened to it numerous times. Lot's of information and told in a very easy way to listen to. The voice they used for Gotama Buddha is now burned into my brain as the voice of Gotama Buddha.

Check it out, it's totally worth it.