My Three Favorite Spirituality Books

 

While pursuing art and illustration is what fills up most of my time nowadays, reading is a close second. Talking about books, and recommending them to people, were part of my daily life during the many years I spent working in the business of bookselling. In writing this post, which features three of my favorite books on spirituality and religion, I hope to inspire you to explore the topic as well, if it is of interest to you. If you would like to read the other book-related posts I’ve written so far (more are in the works), you can find them here and here.

Fiction or nonfiction, I am always seeking out stories about someone’s spiritual journey or pilgrimage, descriptions about the daily life in a monastery, or a classic religious text to study. I am forever looking for the next Journey to the East by Hermann Hesse, or The Three Pillars of Zen by Philip Kapleau Roshi, or The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross, or The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts, or Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. 

I have read everything from Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, to the writings of Soto Zen Master, Dogen, to The Bhagavad Gita and The Upanishads, to the New Testament of the Bible. I’ve read the works of Saint Augustine, G.K. Chesterton, and Rumi. I’ve read books about, and the teachings of, the Buddha, Jesus, and Saint Francis of Assisi. I’ve read about the inspiring lives of Oscar Romero, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Thich Nhat Hanh, and Philip and Daniel Berrigan. I’ve learned about Shintoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Greek and Egyptian mythologies. As a bookseller, I ran the “Eastern Religion” section of a bookstore for years. In the early 2000’s, I spent a year attending a Zen Buddhism center, deepening my studies and practice, and came within days of formally receiving the Buddhist precepts. Visiting religious shrines, temples, and churches were the highlights on many trips, in my traveling days. And I am still searching, reading, and studying. 

The books I chose to highlight for this post, are the ones that have been the most influential and impactful in my life. They are the ones I have gone back to periodically, especially in times of stress and uncertainty.

BOOK ONE

The Dhammapada translated by Eknath Easwaran; Published by Nilgiri Press, 1985.

“ ‘Dhammapada’ means something like ‘the path of the dharma - of truth, of righteousness, of the central law that all of life is one.' "

- Eknath Easwaran, from the introduction to The Dhammapada.

The first third of this edition is an introduction by the translator, Eknath Easwaran which, in addition to being interesting on its own, lends context and background to the text that follows. In it, he writes that, “These verses can be read and appreciated simply as wise philosophy, as such, they are part of the great literature of the world. But for those who would follow it to the end, The Dhammapada is the sure guide to nothing less than the highest goal life can offer: self-realization.”

The Dhammapada itself is a collection of verses that the Buddha’s disciples are said to have heard directly from the Buddha. The teachings are arranged by theme, and Easwaran provides a brief foreword for each chapter.

To me, The Dhammapada is the essence of Buddhism which so often, especially in the West, seems to get lost amongst the various branches, sects, teachers, personalities, schools, and the countless books on the history, doctrine, and philosophy of Buddhism. But The Dhammapada is the foundation of Buddhist philosophy. It is the actual teachings of the Buddha, which transcend anything else.

BOOK TWO

The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day; Published by Harper & Brothers in 1952.

“We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community." 

- Dorothy Day, from The Long Loneliness

This was one of the first spiritual/religious books I read, and it was introduced to me by my husband more than twenty years ago. It left a deep impression on me, and I went on to read all of Dorothy Day’s other books (she was a prolific writer in addition to being a communist, pacifist, cofounder of the Catholic Worker, and a Catholic convert), as well as various books about her, the Catholic Worker movement, and her mentor (and the cofounder of the Catholic Worker), Peter Maurin.

The Long Loneliness is an autobiography, written when Day was middle-aged. Her life was complicated, a pattern that continued right up until her death in 1980. Hers was a life filled with poverty, arrests for nonviolent civil disobedience, guilt, and uncertainty, as well as devotion to her daughter, the Church, and her principles. Her colorful and checkered past helped in shaping her into the staunch Catholic convert and relentless fighter for the poor that she became. 

Even if you do not have a particular interest in Catholicism, this book about a woman’s spiritual and personal journey, set during a tumultuous time in American history is worth a read. Because of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, there are still, nearly a century later, Catholic Worker communities, with Houses of Hospitality and farms. The Catholic Worker newspaper is also still in print, and is still sold for a penny a copy, just as it was when it began in the 1930s.

BOOK THREE

The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton; Published in 1948 by Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.

"In the midst of this conflict, I suddenly got a notion which shows that I was not very far advanced in spiritual life. I thought of praying God to let me know what I was going to do, or what I should do, or what the solution would be, by showing it to me in the Scriptures. It was the old business of opening the book and putting your finger down blindly on the page and taking the words thus designated as an answer to your question. Sometimes the saints have done this, and much more often a lot of superstitious old women have done it. I am not a saint, and I do not doubt that there may have been an element of superstition in my action. But anyway, I made my prayer, and opened the book, and put my finger down definitely on the page and said to myself: ‘Whatever it is, this is it.' 

I looked, and the answer practically floored me. The words were: ‘Ecce eris tacens.’ ‘Behold, thou shall be silent.’

It was the twentieth verse of the first chapter of St. Luke where the angel was talking to John the Baptist’s father, Zachary.

Tacens: there could not have been a closer work to ‘Trappist’ in the whole of the Bible, as far as I was concerned, for to me, as well as to most other people, the word ‘Trappist’ stood for 'silence' ” 

- Thomas Merton, from The Seven Storey Mountain

I am much more familiar now with Thomas Merton than I was when my husband put me on to this book two decades ago, and my interest in him has never waned. Since that initial reading all those years ago, I went on to read most of Merton’s other books, and several biographies about him. His interest in exploring Eastern spirituality, particularly Zen Buddhism, was an inspiration to many, and helped to promote those practices and traditions in the West. He was flawed, as we all are, and had a life full of paradoxes and complications, which is what makes him, and his story, so compelling. His life was cut tragically short, no doubt taking many unwritten works with it. 

You don’t have to be Buddhist or Catholic to get something from these books. If you are someone like me, who is inclined towards spirituality, and you have that need to search for something deeper and bigger than ourselves, you are in good company: The Buddha, Dorothy Day, and Thomas Merton were each searching for something, and eventually found it, at different times and places in history. Maybe, there is hope for us all.