My Precious Library

The Richest Man Alive

Paging through my library — I know I am the richest soul on Earth

I know that among the four hundred and fifty books, along with the two hundred and thirty-four “Paris Review” Interviews with writers (which appear on the Kindle as documents rather than books) housed on my Kindle reader, I will find the answers to all of my questions, especially my main one.

Okay, perhaps a small lie that, for I also know that the actual answer, the Truth Actual and Ultimate will not emerge from books but will one day arise form an immeasurable depth during meditation. Still, the path to that wonderful illumination is paved with the many books I’ve found and chosen to buy and place in my, yes, precious library.

A brief orientation perhaps is in order: I love the number eight.

And, as a consequence, I love the number sixty-four (i.e., eight times eight or eight to the second power, i.e., squared) eight times as much. So, not surprisingly, I have created sixty-four Kindle Collections to facilitate navigation. Collections are like bins where you store likeminded books or documents.

Most of these collections are by author — some of which, in no particular order: Nadeem Aslam, David Loy, Joan Didion, Jack Kerouac, Mary Oliver, Mavis Gallant, Rebecca West, John Crowley (of Little, Big fame), John Le Carré (who, by the way, is one of the best writers on the planet — don’t for a second pigeon-hole him as a spy-thriller author, he is so, so much more than that, even if most of his novels roam that genre), John Berger, Paul Auster, Diane Ackerman, Ursula Le Guin, Thomas Pynchon, John Updike, George Saunders, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Mary Robinson, Siri Hustvedt, and Eduardo Galeano.

The balance of these collections are by subject, e.g., Zen, Bhavana (meditation), Dhamma (writings on, mainly, Pali Buddhism), Poetry, Haiku, His/Sci (History and Science), Emptiness (the Ultimate Truth), Words (my many dictionaries), Craft (of writing), Language (more on English and writing), Paris Review (which contains 243 Interviews with Writer as published over the years in the “Paris Review” magazine), Dhammapada (four translations of this Buddhist classic — my favorite one by Thomas Byrom; perhaps not the most accurate but certainly the most poetic), et cetera.

In addition to the 450 books housed on my Kindle, I have more than that again in the Kindle cloud — the number of publications on my Kindle cloud (including my downloads and Paris Review documents) reads 1,234: yes, admittedly I have a thing for numbers. Not that I consider them magical or anything, or that I steer my little craft by them, I just love them as ornaments, I enjoy their sparkle.

The collection name “Story” houses 44 books, mainly stories or story collections by writers such as Martin Amis, Mark Helprin, Kurt Vonnegut, Chekhov, Robert Pirsig (“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), Dostoevsky, Doris Lessing, Gene Wolfe, Richard Powers, David Mitchell, John Cheever, Alice Munroe, Grace Paley, Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver, V.S. Naipaul, William Faulkner, Anthony Doerr, Benjamin Black (aka John Banville), Thomas McGuane, Margaret Atwood, Nabokov, Hemingway, Eudora Welty, Lydia Davis, Stig Dagerman to name just about all of them; along with collections of Grimm’s fairy tales, and those by Hans Christian Andersen, as well as a good translation of “The Arabian Nights”.

Lucy Ellmann finds herself in the “Story” bin as well — I’m currently reading her “Ducks, Newburyport.”

The collection named “Phil/Rel” (Philosophy and Religion) houses, yes, eight (64/8) works: “The Perennial Philosophy” by Aldous Huxley, “The Life of the Mind” by Hannah Arendt, “The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali” as translated by Edwin F. Bryant, “History of Western Philosophy” by Bertrand Russell, “Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues” by George Berkeley, “My View of the World” by Erwin Schrodinger, “Brave New World Revisited” by Aldous Huxley, and Thomas Traherne’s “Centuries of Meditation”.

It was Traherne who wrote: “You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars.” One of the most beautiful statements of Truth I have ever come across.

When, each morning as I being my meditation, I express my heartfelt thanks for all their help I thank firstly, Buddha Gotama for his brilliant path, and secondly and embracingly, my Sangha, my “support group” as it were, which to me includes all those religious figures, writers, poets, philosophers, historians who have sincerely pondered the Great Unknown, the big, the ultimate questions, and shared their conclusions either as story or as essays and the like.

The robust ignorance of this planet springs a leak now and then. Some of these leaks we call Saints, some we call Poets, some Writers, some Painters, and so on. This both temporal and spacial archipelago of wisdom-lights is what I view as my Sangha, and I thank them all each day.

Since I’m now practicing Zen, the majority of my Sangha are Buddhists, both Pali and Zen, both ancient and current. Some are meditation teachers, some are philosophers. A not very partial list, in no particular order: Dogen, Dan Leighton, Red Pine (excellent translator of Chinese scriptures), Sheng Yen, Edward Conze, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Shohaku Okumura, Robert Aitken, John Blofeld, Gary Snyder, Thich Nhat Hanh, Kazuki Tanahashi (excellent translator of Japanese scriptures), Rabindranath Tagore, Kosho Uchiyama, Hee-Jin Kim (amazing analyst of Dogen’s work), Hakuin, Gil Fronsdal, Eknath Easwaran, and last, but certainly not lease the Dalai Lama.

Between them the above Sangha has read and reflected a thousand times more widely and deeply than I have, and that they have all shared their very real “finding” is my very real blessing.

Yes, I know, I really do, that there are many, many more philosophers and teachers and writers and so on out there who are as well read, as good, and would be as helpful to my search as those I’ve listed here. But I also know, with the same certainty, that they would not be better, or more helpful — if he or she exists, I would have run across them by now: I have been looking for teachers for as long as the Internet has been in existence, and an amazingly brilliant light would have appeared on my screen by now. But, yes, I’ve missed not a few, of this I’m sure.

Still, I know that with what I now own, both on my Kindle and in the cloud, I have as much help as I am ever going to need, no one will help me better (unless in person, of course, but considering my age and location I have more or less ruled that option out; in other words, I plan to complete this journey via books, via “long distance” assistance, as it were.

If for no other reason than to prove that it is possible.

So, that’s why when, every now and then I page through my Kindle library, I say to myself, I am the richest person on the planet.

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© Wolfstuff