What do japanese monster movies, hardcore punk music and Zen have in common? That's what this book attempts to answer.

This was the first book that I read on Zen that was able to present the topic in real life terms that I could really relate to. It's a story about a resonably typical american guy that is really into monster movies and punk rock. His life's goal is to work on japanese monster movies. Somehow, along the way, he ends up becoming a Zen monk. This is his story.

I recommend this book to anyone that wants Zen presented in a fashion that is down to earth, easy to understand, and enjoyable to read.

More info on Brad can be found at his website.

This is supposedly THE starting book to learn about Zen. It was the first real book I read on Zen Buddhism and I found it to be very good. It's very readable and presents each of the "doctrines" related to Zen very well.

Just because the doctrines are presented well doesn't mean that they are necessarily easy to understand. All in all a great book.

An excellent book that covers the history of Zen in China and Japan as well as draws parallels between Taoism and Zen.
This book discusses the commonalities between Zen and Taoism and maintains that Zen has more in common with Taoism than it does with Buddhism.
It's a very good review of Zen and Taoism and provides an alternative to the Buddhist view of Zen.

This is an interesting history of how tea became central to the British empire and how they exploited the Chinese, Indians and other Asians to grow their empire. The way that workers are/were treated is amazing. The business of Tea and how it related to the strength of the empire is fascinating.

The Elegant Universe is an excellent introduction to not only string/M-theory, but also to both general/special relativity and quantum physics. It is very easy to read and presents extremely complicated material in an easy to understand fashion.

The issues I have are less related to this book and more around string/M-theory itself. At this point it is far from complete and has not presented any hypotheses that can be tested. While the math involved may make the professional mathematician or physicist excited, I don't particularly care how "elegant" it is. If it doesn't match reality, then it isn't science.

The idea that there are 10 or 11 dimensions, with 5-6 of them being "curled up” so that we can't perceive them strikes me as odd. That's not a big issue, since I had similar feelings about quantum probability when I first started reading about it. However, the difference is that quantum theory is tested and has been shown to be the most accurate theory ever devised by mankind. Perhaps someday I'll understand string/M-theory and there will be sufficient testing in order to ameliorate my concerns. Until then, this book is a nice overview of the field, but there's a lot more experimental science that needs to occur.

I just finished this interesting read on the differences between the ways that eastern (primarily Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans) peoples think and western peoples (US and Europe) think.
Citing some interesting psychological studies this book outlines the ways that our differences in historical philosophy (e.g., Greek vs. Chinese) impacts the way that we think today.
In general, westerners think in a binary logical fashion, focusing on objects and their attributes. They try to find commonalities between objects so that they can be classified and generalizations formed. Westerners trust the logic of the mind more than perception and experience.
In contrast, Easterners focus more on relationships, context, and continuity. They are less interested in finding commonality between objects and more on the given situation.
It is argued that these differences have resulted in some of our misunderstandings, as well as some of our discoveries.

The Geography of Thought shows that East Asia and the West have had different systems of thought, including perception, assumptions about the nature of the world, and thinking processes, for thousands of years. Ancient Greek philosophers were "analytic" — objects and people are separated from their environment, categorized, and reasoned about using logical rules. Psychological experiments show the same is true of ordinary Westerners today. Ancient Chinese philosophers and ordinary East Asians today share a "holistic" orientation — perceiving and thinking about objects in relation to their environments and reasoning dialectically, trying to find the Middle Way between opposing propositions. Differences in thought stem from differences in social practices, with the West being individualistic and the East collectivistic.

I found this to be a very good introduction to the foundational teachings of buddhism. Each topic is covered in language that is easy to read even when the particular area is complex (e.g., emptiness).

Phae called this book "What the Bud-uh-huh taught".