Joyful Wisdom: Embracing Change and Finding Freedom
Written by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and Eric Swanson
Narrated by Feodor Chin
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
His new audiobook, Joyful Wisdom, addresses the timely and timeless problem of anxiety. "From the 2,500-year-old perspective of Buddhism," Yongey Mingyur writes, "every chapter in human history could be described as an 'age of anxiety.' The anxiety we feel now has been part of the human condition for centuries." So what do we do? Escape or succumb? "Buddhism," he says, "offers a third option. We can look directly at the disturbing emotions and other problems we experience in our lives as stepping-stones to freedom. Instead of rejecting them or surrendering to them, we can befriend them, working through them to reach an enduring authentic experience of our inherent wisdom, confidence, clarity, and joy."
Divided into three parts like a traditional Buddhist text, Joyful Wisdom identifies the sources of our unease, describes methods of meditation that enable us to transform our experience into deeper insight, and applies these methods to common emotional, physical, and personal problems.
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche was born in the Himalayan border regions between Tibet and Nepal. He teaches throughout the world. His bestselling book, The Joy of Living: Unlocking the Secret and Science of Happiness, debuted on the New York Times bestseller list and has been translated into over twenty languages. In early June, 2011, Mingyur Rinpoche walked out of his monastery in Bodhgaya, India and began a 'wandering retreat' through the Himalayas and the plains of India that lasted four and a half years. When not attending to the monasteries under his care in India and Nepal, Rinpoche spends time each year travelling and teaching worldwide.
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Reviews for Joyful Wisdom
322 ratings7 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer!
While this wasn't my point of departure into Theory, though it should've been. Ideas bubbled and grew fecund in my youthful soul. Pints of Carlsburg and shit food from Hardees nourshed my wretched body, but it was Nietzsche's frisson which propelled me forward. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gay Science: the source of and solution to all your worries about lack of meaning in life. That is how it feels right now anyway.
I came to this book to find out Nietzsche's interpretation of reality and framework of life; what was his answer to the question - what should one do? As to interpretation of reality it is hard to be disappointed; there are so many compelling conclusions on all aspects of humanity, language, morality and existence - delivered on the most part with wit and clarity. Here and there it is spoiled by the odd super long sentence or vague metaphor that tests the limits of comprehension, but it is still a gold-mine of ideas in bite-size chunks. Recipe for two: read a few pages on a low heat, set simmering for 20 minutes (perhaps go for a walk or bike ride) and serve immediately to a companion. For me its been the source of most of the best topics of conversation for the last half year.
What about a framework of life? Philosophy for me is the attempt to concisely describe reality and help us decide how to live - to arrive at a theory/framework, relying on the most irreducible and unshakable axioms, which singles out some courses of action as the better ones. I did not find anything like this. After all the talk of his free spirit type, I arrive at perhaps contradictory conclusions: on the one hand I have many scattered ideas about the life he presents persuasively as a good one, but on the other hand I hear the louder message 'Be yourself!'.I wonder if such things as axioms and basic truths existed in Nietzsche's head and he chose not to present things that way - or whether he really did think as he wrote.
He persuades me better than books on Buddhism did to mistrust dichotomies - I feel like he has succeeded where they failed because he reasoned more forcefully the many contradictions we can stumble upon when demanding clear reasoned black-and-white everlasting truths. I am left feeling more alone and lost than ever in my head, but more at peace and at home in the universe. I feel less secure of my ideas about how to live, but far less urgency to remedy that. I feel profoundly happier, and equally sad. Everything, everything, everything. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Profound content in simple terms. Narration a bit mechanical, but otherwise excellent
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nietzsche considered this "the most personal of all my books." It includes many aphorisms the denote themes central to his work; notably the proclamation of the death of God is in this book. Along with Also Sprach Zarathustra, this is among his most poetic works.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The majority if this book consists of just under 400 short pieces, between a few lines and couple of pages in length, in which Nietzsche delivers his profound reflexions and aphorisms. There are also a few poems at the beginning and the end. .The outlook of the pieces are quite varied, and if you flicked though, picked one, and read it, you might be cheered up, made to think about a miscellaneous issue, pushed towards an existential abyss, or just feel like going outside for walk. I will list a small selection of the varied headings of the pieces that stood out to me as I flicked through just now:"The Danger of Vegetarians", "Too Oriental", "The Origin of Religion", "Dignity of Folly", "Against Remorse", "Work and Ennui", "Epicurus","The Way to Happiness"There is quite a variety of things that are written about in this book, which might give it more appeal than some of his other ones. The way that Nietzsche writes is not technical, but his ideas will be more easily received by some people than others. I happen to agree with a lot of it, but some of it is also subversive, he entices us with the poetic sentiment, but after analysis we realise it is callous, or amoral.Due to the structure of the book, and the fact that a lot seems to be said in each of the pieces, it will probably be a book that the reader will come back to, and re-read, after the initial reading. I did read the book right through, but it would be easy to read one piece and then spend five minutes thinking about it, over a cup of tea, then move onto another.But if you don't like to think about deep issues, are intellectually squeamish, or don't like philosophy, then you will probably want to avoid this book. But for anyone who likes to think, then this is a book that will be quite enjoyed.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Next to Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary, The Gay Science is my favorite source of clever soundbites about various topics, so invest in an edition with an index!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Imagine, if you will, that you (and everyone else) had to keep living the same life over and over again for eternity. What changes would you make? Nietzsche’s theory of the Eternal Recurrence should make us all stop and examine the lives we are leading. A must read!