I have been sorting through many of my books over the last week and have finally stumbled on the idea of writing a brief statement about books that I have decided to keep. Some of these books will be ones that I have read, others will be ones I definitely hope to read.

The first book beside me is one that I have just brought up from the shelves downstairs. I have just added it to a list I am building of Philosophy books that I hope to read. Why have I decided to keep this book instead of giving it away?

I originally bought it on sale - the sales tag is still on the book. That may have been a factor, but not a decisive one. The real reason for originally buying the book would have been that I have had an increasing interest in this topic since I spent 4 months in Japan about ten years ago as a visiting professor at Hokai Gakuen University in Sapporo. A title that begins "The Essence of ..." is enticing. I do not want all of the details, I just want a clear picture of the important ideas.

The front cover of the book is familiar. I am sure it is a photograph of a Buddhist temple in Kyoto that I have visited, I think it was called The Thousand Buddhas, more as a tourist than as one interested in the philosophy of the religion. This last sentence triggers a question that I recall asking when I first began reading about Buddhism. What is the defining characteristic of a religion? Why are some beliefs classified as a religion and others not? I had assumed that a religion was a set of beliefs that encompassed the idea of some form of God or gods. But Buddhism does not - at least as I understand it. Instead it is the worshipping of a man from about the 5th century BCE and the study of his sayings that have been preserved and analysed by generations of scholars and worshippers since that time.

The back cover is pursuasive for me. The Essence of Buddhism provides a clear, straightforward approach to the rich traditions of the Buddhist faith and its ideological foundations. It explains the power of karma, the practice of Zen, and the notion of nirvana, enabling us to acquire understanding of the life of the Buddha and his influence throughout the world." I recognize words like karma, Zen and nirvana but would be hard pressed to describe these terms in any coherent fashion that would satisfy me, let alone anyone else. I would like to rectify this. Therefore I am keeping this book, and it is now on my list of books I hope to read in the near future.

The table of contents divides the book into two main sections: Buddhism in the Time of Buddha and Buddhism After Buddha. I like this approach. As I see it, the first half of the book will focus on what we know about the life of Siddhartha Gautama and his teachings. Yes - I had to look inside the book to find the name and spelling of the man who became known as the Buddha. The latter half will describe what has happened in the following two thousand years. My sense is that Buddhism is similar to Christianity and Islam in that each religion has many different branches and beliefs. Often the disagreements within a religion are stronger than disagreements between religions. Fascinating.

I have just found the brochure I bought while visiting the temple in Kyoto. I was wrong. The photograph on the cover of the book is from a different location. There is no obvious indication of where the photograph was taken. My brochure indicates that I was thinking of a Japanese National Treasure called Sanju Sangendo. It is not a Buddhist temple but a hall dedicated to the Bodhisattva Kannon. Both the photograph on the cover of the book and Sanju Sangedo consist of a long row of golden statues - in the case of Sanju Sangendo, one thousand and one. This raises the question, what is a bodhisattva? The index in "The Essence of Buddhism" leads me to the following definition: a bodhisattva is "one who turns down the pursuit of salvation for himself alone and embraces instead the opportunity to return time and again to the world to help others." [p. 124] Buddhism has a belief in reincarnation.

One can find more information on Sanju Sangendo on the Web.

This is a book I want to read. I also want to make a few notes that summarize the important conceptual ideas.

Tags: non-fiction, Buddhism, religion, philosophy, history.

The process of reviewing and organizing my books is not even close to a straight forward activity. I suspect that it may take a few weeks before I can say that the result is an improvement over what existed before I began.

Without getting into the details of why I now have two piles of Psychology books, one pile of Science books, and a box of books for the city library, as well as a set of 4 web pages listing some of the books in History, Technology, Science and Philosophy that I have either read in the past, hope to read in the future, or have read this year, the last step in this sequence occurred about half an hour ago.

That was when I picked upt the book "Feynman's Rainbow" and had to decide whether I read it before (I am sure I had) and if so how would I rate it. A glance at the contents did not help. Then I began to read the first few pages. I have now read the first four chapters and have had to force myself to interrupt my reading to create this second entry.

This is a book I have read, and now want to immediately read again. As such it will qualify as a book read in 2008. It is an informal memoir of the author's first year's as a professor at Caltech and his interactions with Richard Feynman who was dying of cancer at the time.

I have enjoyed reading about Feynman ever since I read James Gleick's biography of Feynman, a best seller called "Genius", written in 1992. Gleick's book also inspired me to purchase a copy of the famous 3-volume series known simply as "The Feynman Lecture Notes on Physics" (1963). I made it through the first 12 chapters of volume I but then other priorities engulfed me. I hope to get back to this. Looking over my shoulder I see three books about Feynman and another 5 books by Feynman (2 are edited collections of his writings). I am also aware of a web site about Feynman ( http://www.feynman.com/ ). There are many other web sites that provide additional information about him.

I finished reading this book this evening. It has been awhile since I sat down and read a book from cover to cover in one sitting.

Here is a delightful exchange between Feynman and Mlodinow:

"I've been reading about the process of discovery," I told him, trying to keep the conversation alive. I was in the midst of Arthur Koestler's The Act of Creation.
"Learn anything?" he asked. [p. 36]

I enjoy most of my books, but Feynman's simple question is the litmus test.

What did I learn from this book? There may be a lot of science in explaining a rainbow, but fundamentally it is beautiful, even in the eye's of a physicist.

Tags: memoir, Feynman, physics