Book Review! Book Review!

Halloooooo all! Here we are, on Earth Hour... eve? Haha! Sorry, here's another reminder. I think it's so cool. Too bad it's on a Saturday though.. I think a lot of people would be a lot more willing to turn the lights out on a quiet Monday night instead of on a well-observed party-hour. Oh well! Maybe it'll make the point all the more appreciated. Anwyays: www.earthhour.org for more details. I'm so into it.
Other things! This is going to be a short post because my last one was so terribly, terribly long, and because there's just one thing that I really want to do: give a hoot about a book that I recently read called Buddhism For Mothers, by Sarah Napthali. Now, this book pretty much is what the title describes it as: a thoughtful and beautifully written book about how the properties and lessons of Buddhism can be applied to Motherhood. It's realistic, insightful, true-to-life and really quite brilliant. I ended up picking it up because the mother of the children that I nanny for owns it, and the title was an instant pull. Also, it was well-thumbed-through and probably read and re-read, borrowed and lent, a number of times.. I couldn't help myself. In those precious little five-minute intervals when the children were actually safely occupied by themselves, I'd read a few pages at a time and soak it up like the words themselves were delicious. It's a fantastic book! I'd recommend it for mothers of course, but it's really for everybody. It's quite a find.
Getting to the point, there was a little summary list at the end of one of the chapters that I found myself going through again and again with relish, and I thought I'd post it up here.. I hope it's not some kind of horrible copyright infringement bad-karma to do this, but going with the spirit of the book, something tells me that it's probably not a horrible idea.

Excerpt from 'Buddhism For Mothers', by Sarah Napthali

* Realise that deep and lasting happiness can only come from within. Stop relying on the world outside you to deliver.
* Stop postponing happiness and enjoy your present moment.
* Make time to stop 'doing' and just 'be'. Meditation, for example.
* Realise that slavishly attending to your self-image does not lead to happiness. Don't get locked into any particular image of yourself.
* Attachment to youth and beauty causes suffering because aging and death are inevitable. [It's so true.. why spend so much energy fretting about something we have no control over?] Work on letting go, and acceptance. Realise that aging doesn't hurt you! Only your resistance to it does.
* It's okay to accept death as a reality; it only helps you live more consciously.

I like it; real, not sugar-coated, but optimistic, like the whole book. There's a chapter on the 'self', about how anyone's 'self' is not a static being, but an ever-changing entity that is never the same from day to day, or even minute-to-minute... moods, experiences, realisations, so many things contribute to the ever growing, changing thing that we call our 'image' that trying to pin ourselves down into some kind of description, definition, or 'way-that-we-are' and then trying to maintain that self-image is a life-long pain-in-the-ass energy waste. Just be! Are 'you' simply the sum of your parts? Are 'you' your physical attributes? Are 'you' your resume? Are 'you' simply the descriptive-words that other people might describe you as being? Just coming to the realisation that we DON'T have to fit ourselves into some kind of mold and then maintain that shape forever in a frenzy to fit in, or be appreciated is so... liberating!

I feel like I learned a lot from that book. If you've got any good reads that you'd reccommend for Daisy readers, feel free to leave a big healthy book review as a comment! Happy EarthHour everyone, and stay tuned for next week... I've got a couple of delicious posts on the way.

Hearts!