The Mak­ing of an Elder Cul­ture: Reflec­tions on the Future of America’s Most Auda­cious Gen­er­a­tion by Theodore Roszak
If you are old, intend to get old, or are related to an old per­son, I strongly rec­om­mend that you read this book.

When I became the state net­worker for the New Age Cau­cus in 1979, I was given two […]

Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Har­vard Med­ical School Guide to Healthy Eating‚ by Wal­ter C. Willett, M.D.

When I was nine­teen, I began fol­low­ing a mac­ro­bi­otic diet. When I became a dis­ci­ple of A.C. Bhak­tivedanta Swami the next year, I fol­lowed his veg­e­tar­ian diet with lots of dairy, sugar, and spice for eight years. Then I returned […]

The Uni­verse Story: From the Pri­mor­dial Flar­ing Forth to the Eco­zoic Era–A Cel­e­bra­tion of the Unfold­ing of the Cos­mos by Brian Swimme & Thomas Berry, Harper San Fran­cisco, 1992.
From the big bang to the present and into the next mil­len­nium, The Uni­verse Story unites sci­ence and the human­i­ties in a dra­matic explo­ration of the unfolding […]

Beauty: The Invis­i­ble Embrace, John O’Donohue, Harper Perennial, 2005

Beauty does not linger, it only vis­its.
Yet beauty’s vis­i­ta­tion affects us and invites us into its rhythm,
it calls us to feel, think, and act beau­ti­fully in the world:
to cre­ate and live a life that awak­ens the Beautiful.

Beauty is a gen­tle but urgent call to awaken. Best­selling author John O’Donohue […]

Thus it is impor­tant to note the the­o­log­i­cal point embed­ded in the devo­tional exal­ta­tion of enjoyment–it is not that enjoy­ment is the best way to wor­ship Krishna, nor that it is his most char­ac­ter­is­tic qual­ity, nor even that it is his best. It is that he him­self is the qual­ity of enjoy­ment. Only in enjoy­ment, in expe­ri­enc­ing or “tast­ing’ him, can we both be and see him.
If Being is enjoy­ment then we can enjoy as much as we like, wher­ever and when­ever we like, indis­crim­i­nately and with­out prej­u­dice as to the object of our desire. But if it is also attach­ment, direct­ed­ness, telos, then this too must be exem­pli­fied in an appro­pri­ate atti­tude to our object(s) of desire. (226–7)

The Place of the Hid­den Moon: Erotic Mys­ti­cism in the Vaishnava-sahajiya Cult of Ben­gal, by Edward C. Dimock, Jr.
SOME EXCERPTS AND COMMENTS
In her 1989 fore­word, Wendy Doniger says:
This is the most reli­able and indeed alto­gether the best book I know on all of the many Indo­log­i­cal sub­jects with which it deals, some of them major […]

Schol­arly Com­ments on Chai­tanya Chari­ta­m­rita
Some time ago, I wrote a blog express­ing the need for a schol­arly explo­ration of just who the his­tor­i­cal Krishna Chai­tanya really was. Recently, a friend com­mented on it say­ing, “let’s get the ball rolling.” Hav­ing some time avail­able, I make some com­ments on what we may actu­ally know, espe­cially when […]

Hindu Encounter with Moder­nity: Kedar­nath Datta Bhak­tivin­oda Vais­nava The­olo­gian, by Shukavak N. Dasa is a crit­i­cal,
the­o­log­i­cal biog­ra­phy of my grand-spiritual-teacher, Bhak­tivin­ode Thakur. It sup­ports nat­ural devo­tion and Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism. He was very influ­enced by 19th cen­tury ratio­nal­ism, Chris­tian­ity and Uni­tar­ian thought. Bhak­tivin­ode pre­sented the teach­ings of Krishna Chai­tanya in a new way to intel­lec­tu­als of […]

The Lan­guage of God: A Sci­en­tist Presents Evi­dence for Belief by Fran­cis S. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project: I mostly agree with his posi­tion. He says, “Sci­ence reveals that the uni­verse, our own planet, and life itself are engaged in an evo­lu­tion­ary process.” (p 45) I would add that our knowl­edge of […]

“As a life long seeker myself, open to both East­ern and West­ern reli­gious ideas, I con­sider this book a por­tal to enlight­en­ment. Bohlert leads the reader up a spi­ral stair­case to the light, wind­ing through the Chris­t­ian and Hindu faiths as we ascend.” Nori Muster, author of Betrayal of the Spirit