Saturday, April 08, 2006

Book recommendation?

A total stranger sent me a one line message today that said, "Have you ever read Ruling Your World?"  The title threw me off a bit, since I thought it was some sort of "be aggresive" business type book.  I did a quick search on Amazon and it looks like a very good book on living life by following the principals of Buddhism.  Has anyone read it?  Here's a small excerpt from a chapter:

Contemplating worldly gain and loss reveals that we spend part of our life trying to get it together, and the other part watching it fall apart. As soon as we have time-"I have a whole hour free"-we are losing it. As soon as we make a friend, we're losing him. As soon as we have fame, it becomes tinged with notoriety. As soon as we have wealth, we're losing it. Looking for something new to gain helps us forget to look but a few seconds back at the last thing that we lost. Fabricating this chain of desire is how we keep ourselves in samsara [the cycle of desire and suffering]. We are using instability to try to make stability. We're investing in hope and fear, banking on denial of a simple truth: all the pleasure the world can offer eventually turns to pain. Everything we gain is subject to loss. Why do we put all that effort into gain when, in the end, we are going to lose it? (p 124) 

I think I might track down a copy to read.