This week I'm reading my pile, not focusing on one book, moving on when I get tired of what I'm reading. I start my day with Blind Owl by Sadeq Hedayat . A surreal, dark, and cyclical novella about a pen-case painter caught in an opium-induced state of alienation, heartbreak, and madness. Reread some of Meeting The Buddhas by Vessantara on the Vajrasattva sadhana, and he pulls up short, you need a teacher to get this full sadhana. This is a book for understanding Tibetan Buddhism and the panoply in their mythology, which you can use to supercharge your understanding of Buddhism. Rereading Boundless Heart by Christina Feldman. It's not a robot's disinterest, it's human not getting too caught up on the results. Sort of the opposite of capitalism that measures and expects and demands profits. She doesn't say that, I'm riffing off her. She dwell in the brahma viharas of metta, karuna, mudits and upeksha. Reading Itivuttaka for the first time. It's a s...
The 8th MurderBot novel by Martha Wells is another entry into this fine series of books at a security unit that isn't all machine, and also isn't all human. It has organic parts and looks mostly like a human. And yet it's pure killing machine, designed to keep it's assets alive, get them out of dangerous situations in a science fiction future where corporations are at war with each other, and do dastardly thing. There's an Apple tv show that is okay, based on it. It kind of shows that a minimalist non-human narrator can run an action novel. Many of the 8 are pretty short, which is good. Does it's constant risk assessment tell us about our present? Does it's ruthless focus on saving individual lives tell us something?