Recommend books that will almost certainly change my life spiritually?

[Htom Sirveaux]

I am always trying to grow through interacting with new and different perspectives.

[enough]

1. Start Where You Are by Pema Chodron.

Not a "new" perspective, but that was the book that opened things up for me. Still is.

[Atman]

3. Breakfast of Champions

But that's just me. Most anything by Kurt Vonnegut will do.

[enough]

7. Yeah, I loved that book too. (nt)

[Manifestor_of_Light]

2. The Importance of Living, by Lin Yutang, 1936.

Lin Yutang was a child of Christian missionaries in China. He writes about his abandonment of Christianity and adoption of Confucianism.

Excellent book and little known. I don't know if it's been reprinted or not. I have a 1936 copy.

[stuckinodi]

4. Tao te Ching n/t

[cbayer]

5. If you aren't that familiar with Buddhism,

"It's Easier Than You Think" by Sylvia Boorstein changed my life.

My favorite for fiction with a religious/spiritual theme is "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell.

I'm not really fond of texts or dense reads, so these worked for me.

[pinto]

6. To Kill a Mocking Bird, The Sound and the Fury, Leaves of Grass, Anna Karenina.

I found these challenging in one way or another and very readable.



Walt Whitman, age 37, frontispiece to Leaves of Grass, Fulton St., Brooklyn, N.Y., steel engraving by Samuel Hollyer from a lost daguerreotype by Gabriel Harrison.

[cbayer]

8. You, like I, love the challenging novel.

I would much rather read fiction and be challenged than someone's treatise on what they believe to be the truth.

[skepticscott]

9. Just because something is not fiction

does not mean it is based on "belief" in what is true. Some people enjoy being enlightened, fascinated and amazed by what can actually be known with confidence, without having to invoke "belief". Others hate the idea that some things are more right than others, and that some people's "beliefs" are demonstrable horseshit.

[Isoldeblue]

10. One of my favorites

is "Davita's Harp" by Chaim Potok. It's wonderfully written, with intense characterizations, but uplifting in the end, sort of story.

Here's a summary:
[link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davita%27s_Harp|

[pokerfan]

11. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Undaunted Courage - Stephen Ambrose
Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
A Universe from Nothing - Lawrence Krauss
The Age Of Reason - Thomas Paine
The Demon-Haunted World - Carl Sagan
Gödel, Escher, Bach - Douglas R. Hofstadter
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer
The Law - Frederick Bastiat
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter - Richard Feynman
The Republic - Plato
Synergetics - Buckminster Fuller
Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman - Richard Feynman
Time Enough for Love - Robert Heinlein
Zen & Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig

[WhiteTara]

12. When God was a Woman

by Merlin Stone,
Taking the Leap by Pema Chodren

The Great Cosmic Mother
Monica Sjoo and Barbara Walker

The Dalai Lama's Cat
? don't know, but you can find it by the name on Amazon. This one is fiction, but really the best simple presentation of a very deep philosophy.

[okasha]

13. Elizabeth Cunningham

The Passion of Mary Magdalen

Second novel in a series of four but can stand alone.

[edhopper]

14. The Blind Watchmaker

followed by The God Delusion, both by Richard Dawkins.

They might well change your spiritual perspective.