I was asked a crazy question by my friend Utpaladhi - what are my top ten books? Crazy because how could I choose only ten? Crazy because what if I missed out the most amazing book I ever read by mistake? Crazy because what if nobody will have heard of any of my most beloved books and I will just reveal myself as the obscure-spirituality nerd I am?
But the question was irresistible. And so here they are, alongside a little nugget of genius from each one. I hope you’ll share your favourite books with me in the comments - and maybe if you’re a writer here, you’ll take up the challenge and choose your own ten…
A Testament of Devotion by Thomas R. Kelly
I have a naughty part that is always a little delighted to reveal that, as a Buddhist minister, my very favourite spiritual book is by a Quaker. Kelly speaks in luminous terms of the Still Centre, which he uses many names for - Divine Presence, Eternal Life and Love, Light, the Eternal Now. He describes how our lives unfold most beautifully when we tune into it and follow its callings. He also warns against a frenetic busyness - an affliction I recognise all too well. I return to Kelly’s writings again and again and every time they are balm to my soul.
Life from the Center is a life of unhurried peace and power. It is simple. It is serene. It is amazing. It is triumphant. It is radiant. It takes no time, but it occupies all our time. And it makes our life programs new and overcoming. We need not get frantic. He is at the helm. And when our little day is done we lie down quietly in peace, for all is well. ~ Thomas R. Kelly
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
I love all Annie’s writing (look at me using her nickname as if she’s my friend) - she is hilarious, humble and incredibly wise. I tend to trust people who are riddled with flaws and speak about them with great honesty - I know where I am with them - and Lamott does this in spades. This is also an incredibly encouraging book to read as a writer.
The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. ~ Anne Lamott
Painting Enlightenment by Iwasaki Tsuneo and Paula Arai
Goodness - how can I begin to tell you about the beauty of this book? Tsuneo had a long career as a biologist and on retirement took up painting in his sixth decade. Until his death in 2002 he painted the most exquisite Buddhist paintings I have ever seen, all inscribed with the characters of the Heart Sutra, a sacred Buddhist text. His images alongside Arai’s curation and text are a masterpiece.
I hold my palms together with a sense there is some awakened power guiding me. When I paint, it feels like I am on a pilgrimage, “Traveling Two Together”. It’s like my hands are being guided and inspiration for ideas comes to me in dreams and other types of mysterious experiences. Doing this connects me to all beings. ~ Iwasaki Tsuneo
Zen Encounters with Loneliness by Terrance Keenan
Disclaimer: Terry is a dear friend of mine - but I’m not cheating because it was his book that led me to stalk him and (to my happy surprise) become his friend. I am often drawn to writers in recovery (Lamott is another) and Terry’s recovery is one of the stories he weaves into these stories about Zen and about living a good life. We chant his daily motto every time we do Buddhist practice here - ‘no blame, be kind, love everything’. What more is there to say?
What is kindness? Completeness. Imagine being kind without discrimination. Kindness is like faith; you cannot pretend to be it. […] I believe we are led to kindness through the Great Compassion, which I understand to be a deep comprehension of mortality, what it means to live. My practice for kindness is gratitude. I express it through bowing. […] The first time I served as jikijitsu, the meditation leader, I had to bow in front of everyone at the brief ceremony at the close of the last sitting. I stood there behind the bowing mat in the center of the zendo, two neat rows of students on either side of me in deep silence. I realised I was bowing for them, with them, and for and with all students ever. I wept as I bowed, flooded with an inexpressible thankfulness for the simple chance to be thankful. ~ Terrance Keenan
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
This novel follows Jayber Crow who, after a difficult start, becomes an ordinary barber in a small town. It is woven through with the sacredness of place and of green things. It also shows us how difficult it is to be kind to everyone, how unfair life can be, and, ultimately, how love is bigger than everything.
Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led - make of that what you will. ~ Wendell Berry
The Deepest Peace by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel
Zenju is a Zen priest who writes about race, gender, sexuality and homelessness. As a middle-class white woman I appreciate hearing her perspective on how it is to live inside her body. I also love the grace and beauty of her words and reading about her drinking tea fills me with a gentle peace.
To be undone is to be reminded that in nothingness there is peace. A peace-filled nothingness isn’t an annihilation of anything or anyone. It’s a nothingness that feels like a blanket of snow that covers, for a time, what you have taken for granted and rarely appreciate. The beauty of peaceful nothingness is that everything is there. ~ Zenju Earthlyn Manuel
Love Poems From God ed. by Daniel Ladinsky
Ladinsky’s creative reinterpretations of the writings of sacred men and women from throughout history is laced with cheeky humour. I never trust religious texts that take themselves too seriously. Here’s a taste!
How did those priests ever get so serious
and preach all that
gloom?I don’t think God
tickled them
yet.Beloved - hurry.
~ St. Teresa of Avila
There Is a Season by Patrick Lane
In Lane’s memoir he gives graphic details of his life-long alcoholism and his terrible childhood. The book is part-agony, part-ecstasy - despite (or because of) it not being an easy read, I found it one of the most consoling books I’ve ever read. I feel like I’ve wandered Lane’s garden with him - his sobriety shining, and every leaf and bloom lit up.
That is beauty, to stop a moment and watch the endless play of light on water and stone and see how the living things of the garden come to drink or just to gaze as I do now at the surface of the pond. ~ Patrick Lane
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
At the end of a well-written book I feel I have taken tea with the author and that they are now a friend. I feel this way about Wall Kimmerer, who writes with such love of her landscape with its flora and fauna and of her rich cultural history. Delicious!
Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer
All of Us: Collected Poems of Raymond Carver
I haven’t visited Ray Carver’s world for a long time and as I open my aged book, flicking through a few familiar stories and killer lines, I find that I have missed him, and that I still want to listen to him. Ordinary life, books, his friends, his own struggles with addiction, his unexpected late gift of love with fellow poet Tess Gallagher. When I finish writing this I’m going to open the book again and allow his blessings to fall on me.
Late Fragment
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.~ Raymond Carver
What riches. I am blessed indeed.
Is it cheating to mention a few more? No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz is the best introduction to Internal Family Systems, which changed my whole life. The Alcoholic’s Anonymous Big Book (and much 12 step literature) is steeped in hard-won wisdom. And Brother Lawrence’s God-filled letters. And Cole Arthur Riley’s luminous This Here Flesh. And John Paravaskopoulos and Taitetsu Unno and Shinran, of course, from the world of Pure Land Buddhism. And Richard Power’s epic activist and tree novel, The Overstory. And…
No! I must stop! Because I want to hear about the books that changed your life. Tell me.
Go gently,
Satya <3
Glennon Doyle’s Untamed. Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic. SARK’s Succulent Wild Woman. Barbara Sher’s Refuse to Choose.
Love this list and those suggestions in the comments. I have "Thrift Books" open in another tab! I also love anything, everything by the late Brian Doyle. Mink River was my gateway novel. Essays and nonfiction glorious as well.