Book Review - Living Buddha, Living Christ

“When you are a truly happy Christian, you are also a Buddhist. And vice versa.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

I first added Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Living Buddha, Living Christ to my “Want to Read” list on Goodreads ten years ago but didn’t actually get around to reading it until earlier this year. I’m not sure exactly what enticed me about the book the first time I came across it, but something in me knew that I needed to eventually read it. I’m glad I followed that calling and gave it a try, even if it took me a decade to finish.

Living Buddha, Living Christ provides a high-level overview of the similarities and differences between Buddhism and Christianity. The book certainly isn’t a deep dive into either tradition, so if that is what you’re looking for then you should move on and continue your search.

But if you want to read a respectful, highly-digestible, thought-provoking take on the two spiritual paths, then look no further.

In the book, Hanh (the bestselling author of Peace Is Every Step) explores the teachings and practices brought to us by two of the most influential figures in the history of humankind. Jesus Christ and the Buddha have helped shape the lives of people and cultures for two millennia. Yet their followers do not always agree. Have you ever wondered what Buddha and Jesus would say (or do) to each other if they met on the road?

Something tells me that they wouldn’t kill each other, despite the sage advice from Zen master Linji Yixuan that is often repeated in Buddhist centers and temples throughout the world:

If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.

Instead, it’s likely that the two would engage in a friendly discussion similar to the one that Hanh has been having with Christians for several decades, where he has tried to build a bridge between the two contemplative traditions. Thankfully, the wisdom from that discussion has been skillfully translated for readers in Living Buddha, Living Christ.

The book explores several striking similarities between Buddhism and Christianity, like how the Buddhist idea of reincarnation lines up perfectly with “pre-incarnation”, a teaching from the third-century Christian theologian Origen that you’ve probably never even heard of. Or the ways that Buddhism’s notion of nirvana echo the sentiment of Jesus’ description of the Kingdom of God.

This book will help you see both Buddhism and Christianity in a different light, but also more clearly than you ever have before.

My completion of Living Buddha, Living Christ marks the 10th book by Thich Nhat Hanh that I have read. His books are incredibly simple yet they serve as powerful guides to live a better life, and this book is no exception. If you want to learn more about the intersections where Buddhism and Christianity overlap as well as where they diverge, I can honestly recommend that you give this book a read.

However, as one last note, I wouldn’t suggest Living Buddha, Living Christ as your introduction to Thich Nhat Hanh. Personally I think that Peace Is Every Step, The Art of Communicating, Being Peace, and Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames are much better places to start. But if you’re really into the concept behind Living Buddha, Living Christ, then you surely won’t be disappointed.

Either way, be sure you check out Hanh’s body of work; it has the potential to change your life.

Click here to buy the book.

Disclaimer: Think Wilder is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. I may earn a small commission for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial, and/or link to any products or services from this website.

Book Review - MindApps

With an increasing amount of psychedelic research being published each and every year, those of us with an interest in consciousness have found ourselves needing a more specific framework and language that could be leveraged to analyze and discuss altered states of consciousness. MindApps: Multistate Theory and Tools for Mind Design, written by Dr. Thomas B. Roberts and published earlier this year, presents a so-called “multistate theory” as a potential framework to fill that need.

Although a lot of energy being pumped into psychedelic research is focused on finding ways to heal the sick, another equally viable application for these drugs is the betterment of well people and benefit optimization/maximization. After all, why should these powerful plants and chemicals be relegated to only those members of society who qualify as having a condition or disorder? In MindApps, Roberts explores this concept and many others in a unique, innovative, and intriguing manner.

In case you aren’t already familiar with the author, Thomas Roberts is professor emeritus at Northern Illinois University, where he’s been teaching the world’s first catalog-listed psychedelics course since 1981. He is a founding member of the Multidiscipinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a former visiting scientist at Johns Hopkins, editor of Spiritual Growth with Entheogens, and the author of the books Psychedelic Horizons and The Psychedelic Future of the Mind.

After a brief foreword by James Fadiman (author of The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide), Roberts opens the book with a description of his first psychedelic trip, which took place at Lake Tahoe in February 1970. As is the case for many psychonauts, Roberts’ first psychedelic experience had an enormous impact. While it wasn’t his first introduction to psychedelic ideas per se, it did send him further down the psychedelic path, which eventually led to the writing of this revolutionary book.

For those of you who don’t already know, the term “psychedelic” means “mind-manifesting,” and Roberts’ mind has graciously manifested several ideas that are introduced in the book: ideagens, mindapps, multistate theory, mind design, and mindapp artificial intelligences.

Roberts proposes the concept of the “singlestate fallacy,” which is the “hegemonic assumption that all worthwhile thinking takes place only in our ordinary, default mindbody state,” or what most people refer to as our normal waking state of consciousness. This fallacy has as its opposite a framework that Roberts has coined as “multistate theory,” a collection of many different kinds of “mindapps” into one single large, inclusive group.

You might be wondering, “What are mindapps?” Roberts explains them by using a clever analogy: “apps are to devices as mindapps are to minds.” In other words, you can “install” them on your mind for a variety of reasons and benefits. Mindapps include things like exercise routines, meditation, psychoactive plants and chemicals, yoga and the martial arts, sleep and sleep deprivation, chanting, dream work, breathing techniques, and many more like them.

MindApps explores an innovative concept dubbed “MindappAI,” which entails synthesizing new mindbody states and developing them to their highest potential. This will be a task for psychologists and other so-called “mind designers” to tackle, whipping up fresh recipes involving two, three, or even more mindapp ingredients, creating new mind-body states, relating their characteristics, and researching and perfecting them through trial and error.

Mindapps have a myriad of possible use cases—Roberts argues that they can be used to enhance the sciences and save the humanities, and that a newly emerging field of psychedelic philosophy will need to make use of them in order to reach it’s full potential.

The book closes with several points of justification for qualifying multistate theory as a new paradigm, and I have to say that I found Roberts’ argument to be quite persuasive.

But wait, there’s more! Three appendices follow the final chapter, exploring some very intriguing topics—a syllabus for a psychedelic class, how psychedelics can use the corporate system to spread around the globe, and the story of how Roberts created the LSD holiday known as Bicycle Day. These appendices are very thought-provoking and I’m interested to see what a world with widespread psychedelic college classes and psychedelic corporatism might end up looking like.

I found MindApps: Multistate Theory and Tools for Mind Design to be an excellent book. This is the first of Roberts’ books that I’ve read, and I was so impressed with it that I am looking forward to checking out his other works. If you have any interest in psychedelics, consciousness, mind design, or any of the other topics mentioned in this review then you will definitely like this book.

Click here to buy the book.

Disclaimer: Think Wilder is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. I may earn a small commission for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial, and/or link to any products or services from this website.

In addition, the author provided a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. However, this is not a sponsored post—all thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own.

Book Review - The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide

I have absorbed a lot of information concerning psychedelic substances during the past 13 years. Some sources took a scientific approach, full of statistics, surveys, and other assorted data. Others have focused on the spiritual use of these substances, which include direction for practices like meditation, yoga, and breathwork. There are also accounts of recreational use, which clearly illustrate the possibilities of both positive and negative outcomes of using and abusing these substances. I ate up as many books, movies, podcasts, YouTube clips, and audio lectures as I possibly could.

I also have my own experiences with several of these substances, and had already come to my personal opinion that they have the potential to awaken in me unexpected paths in my life, greater self-understanding, an ability to engage in self-healing, and a stronger connection with the Universe and the inhabitants of our planet that we call Earth.

Over the years, I learned a lot about psychedelics and often come noticed myself thinking to myself, "Oh, I've learned that already" while reading a book or watching a documentary. However, when I read James Fadiman's The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys back in 2012 I found it to be the first work in quite a while that had so many new things to teach me. This book covers many aspects concerning psychedelic use that I was previously unaware of, such as the concept of sub-perceptual dosing and the importance of listening to non-vocal music such as Classical during the beginning of a psychedelic experience.

I first heard of this book from Lorenzo Hagerty's "Psychedelic Salon," a podcast that I have listened to since 2006. Fadiman is the guest on episode 302, during which Lorenzo interviews him about the book and his experience in the psychedelic research field. After hearing Fadiman speak about these things, I put the book on my "To-Read" list and purchased it a few months later. My intention when reading this book was to learn how to become a guide for others undergoing psychedelic experiences. I was pleasantly surprised by the wealth of information contained in the book afforded to those of us who wish to better integrate our psychedelic journeys into ordinary reality as well as learn to be a better guide to others. Following my reading of this book, I identified some aspects of my own psychedelic practice that I ended up changing in an effort to focus more on the therapeutic and spiritual uses of these substances, rather than my previous goal of just having a good time. While I still believe that the recreational use of these substances can have a positive outcome, this is the book that sold on the concept of using them in a more intelligent manner.

The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide does a great job of dispelling some of the myths about psychedelics, offers a practical and positive itinerary for a successful experience, introduces several important people in this field, and does so in a way that is unbiased and helpful. It is important for the psychedelic community to have truth on its side, and Fadiman does an excellent job of collecting both scientific and anecdotal evidence and arranging it in a way that is easily understood. I commend him on his work and look forward to more coming from him in the near future.

5/5 stars. 352 pages.

Click here to buy the book.

Disclaimer: Think Wilder is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. I may earn a small commission for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial, and/or link to any products or services from this website.

Book Review - Medical Psychedelics

After a bit of a rocky start last century, the past few decades have seen a healthy resurgence of psychedelic research. And although myriad studies have been carried out by researchers and published in scientific journals during that time, there has always been a glaring absence of academic textbooks available for burgeoning psychedelic nerds, researchers, and academics to reference when trying to learn about the existing body of psychedelic research—until now.

Fortunately for the rest of us, Dr. Oliver Rumle Hovmand, a psychiatry resident in Denmark who has an interest in the clinical use of psychedelics, pored over the existing research, put together a collection of the most important studies, and included them in a new book that was published this March.

Medical Psychedelics explores the clinical applications of some of the better-known psychedelics, including LSD, psilocybin, ayahuasca, DMT, MDMA, and ketamine. In it, Hovmand examines the available pre- and post-prohibition medical literature, focusing on the practical aspects of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. He plans to update the book annually and develop it into a textbook that can be used when (or if) these substances become legal. This blog post is a review of the first of what will hopefully be many editions of this work.

The intended audience for the book would probably consist of medical and psychological professionals, budding researchers, science-minded psychonauts, and laypeople who are interested in learning more about clinical psychedelic research. If you fit into one of these categories, it might be right up your alley.

During the book’s introduction, Hovmand mentions that he uses the term “psychedelics” to refer only to classical psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD, but Medical Psychedelics also covers ayahuasca and DMT, one empathogenic psychedelic (MDMA) and one dissociative psychedelic (ketamine). The primary emphasis is on the classical psychedelics and MDMA, although there may simply be a larger body of research about these psychedelics than ayahuasca, DMT, and ketamine at this time.

Each substance is covered in depth at the beginning of its respective chapter, including the history, effects, and risks surrounding that particular drug. Hovmand then moves on to discuss its potential applications in psychedelic therapy before getting to the real essence of the chapter: a review of the existing clinical research. This consists of a series of actual research studies that are included in the book.

While I did find Medical Psychedelics to live up to its promise as a comprehensive textbook on the subject, there were a few things that I believe could be improved upon in a future edition. For starters, a table of contents would be helpful. This would make it easier to skip to certain sections of the book or find specific studies and would acquaint first-time readers with its structure before they dive in.

Some sections are more fleshed out than others. For example, there is a ton of information available on MDMA research but very little about ketamine. As mentioned earlier, this is may be due to the possibility that there is more research about some drugs than others. In addition, several areas of research into these drugs were excluded that could have been explored, like treating eating disorders with ayahuasca and MDMA or reducing pain with ketamine.

And there are plenty of other psychedelics to cover as well. Delving into the research involving other psychedelics like mescaline, 5-MeO-DMT, iboga, and salvia divinorum would take Medical Psychedelics to another level.

The only other thing I think the book would benefit from is a bit of editorial polish. There are typos here and there, but the overall meaning of the work is not lost and it can be easily overlooked as long as you know to expect that going into it. All of these are simply areas of opportunity, not dealbreakers that should prevent anyone from reading the book who would otherwise be interested in doing so.

Medical Psychedelics is a solid attempt at what may be the first-ever textbook on psychedelic research. Hovmand did an excellent job condensing a ton of valuable information into a fairly small book, and it could prove to be an invaluable resource for anyone who wants to learn about the clinical research into the medical applications of psychedelics. But if you’re looking for anything other than scientific research studies and related commentary then you should probably look elsewhere. It is an academic textbook after all, so you shouldn’t expect an easy read or clever prosaic writing style. But if this book sounds like it would be up your alley, then it probably is.

4/5 stars, 219 pages

Click here to buy the book.

Disclaimer: Think Wilder is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. I may earn a small commission for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial, and/or link to any products or services from this website.

In addition, the author provided a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. However, this is not a sponsored post—all thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own.

Book Review - Buddhist Meditation

I’ve read a lot of meditation books on my quest in an effort to deepen my own practice, but Buddhist Meditation by Edward Conze is without a doubt the most scholarly text on the subject that I have come across thus far. Originally published in 1972, this book wastes no time at all before diving deep into the material. In the introduction, Conze briefly discusses the meaning and purpose of Buddhist meditation, its range and principal divisions, the literary sources from which the practice stems, and a comparison of this Eastern science of mind with modern-day Western psychotherapy.

From there, the book is broken up into four major sections. The first goes over devotional exercises that Buddhist meditators can work on while meditating. The other sections go over three aspects of the practice—mindfulness, trance, and wisdom. The book features advice on how to cultivate and maintain mental and physical awareness, which includes instructions on postures, breathing, rejection of the sensory world, and above all the recollection of the ultimate goal: nirvana.

Buddhist Meditation is considered by many to be a classic text. It’s included in the list of suggested books to read at the end of Ram Dass’ seminal spiritual book Be Here Now, which is where I probably first heard of it. Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I had hoped I would. It’s a very dry read. All in all I found it to be a bit esoteric and unhelpful, frankly, which was a disappointment because I think it probably contains helpful information that I would benefit from putting to use in my own meditation practice, but I just couldn’t get past the writing style to those nuggets of wisdom.

I did finish reading this book, and I even highlighted some of the pages. There were some parts that I really liked, and on the whole I have a positive opinion of it. Maybe it’ll be good review material in 20 years after I’ve learned more about these concepts from more entertaining authors and teachers. While I wouldn’t recommend Buddhist Meditation to most people, if you consider yourself to be really interested in Buddhism and want to learn more about the role of meditation in this tradition, then maybe you’ll appreciate it. Anyone else should probably steer clear and pick out a more accessible book on the topic.

3/5 stars. 192 pages.