Consciousness & Thought Books - Page 2

The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction

Michel Foucault

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 29 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Hard...but worth it. 4 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Foucault is one of the most important thinkers of our time. He is a historian, a cultural theorist, and a philosopher. When looking at the History of Sexuality Foucault does not see powerful figures repressing sex, but actually encouraging people to discuss it. This discourse was encouraged so that sex could be controlled and this discourse actually created what is today called sexuality--a norm that we believe to be culturally independent or universal. The belief that sex is repressed is only another strategy formed through a series of power relationships that desires for people to keep discussing sex in order that this "sex" can be classified and controled. For example: Encouraging a discourse on the act of sodomy enabled a catagory of homosexual to be created. Instead of sodomy being a act that a person may engage in, that person instantly became a homosexual, his sexuality constituting his entire being--how he/she should talk, act, and live in general. The discourse that was encourage to develop around sex enable power to classify and control sexuality--power actually created what we believe to be the "real sexuality". Foucault explains the complicated relationship between power and discourse that developed a set of complicated and sometimes contradicting--and always changing--ideas about what sex is and how we are to approach it.
This book is not easy. I will have to read it again. However, I believe that this book is a good intro to Foucault's very important theories on power relationships. An important factor to be recognized is that this book is a translation from french and, as many people have already expressed, has made it more difficult to comprehend. I did not understand everything in totality but I feel that the most imporant concepts were revealed. If you get confused take a deep breath and reread the previous paragraph, doing this helped alot and gives your brain a second chance to wrap itself around the really difficult parts. This is a very rewarding book that will give you valuable tools for confronting and interpreting the ideologies and power relationships we are confronted with. Good Luck!

Editorial Review:

The author turns his attention to sex and the reasons why we are driven constantly to analyze and discuss it. An iconoclastic explanation of modern sexual history.

The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force

Jeffrey M., M.D. Schwartz, Sharon Begley

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 43 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A groundbreaking work of science that confirms, for the first time, the independent existence of the mind–and demonstrates the possibilities for human control over the workings of the brain.

Conventional science has long held the position that 'the mind' is merely an illusion, a side effect of electrochemical activity in the physical brain. Now in paperback, Dr Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley's groundbreaking work, The Mind and the Brain, argues exactly the opposite: that the mind has a life of its own.Dr Schwartz, a leading researcher in brain dysfunctions, and Wall Street Journal science columnist Sharon Begley demonstrate that the human mind is an independent entity that can shape and control the functioning of the physical brain. Their work has its basis in our emerging understanding of adult neuroplasticity–the brain's ability to be rewired not just in childhood, but throughout life, a trait only recently established by neuroscientists.

Through decades of work treating patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), Schwartz made an extraordinary finding: while following the therapy he developed, his patients were effecting significant and lasting changes in their own neural pathways. It was a scientific first: by actively focusing their attention away from negative behaviors and toward more positive ones, Schwartz's patients were using their minds to reshape their brains–and discovering a thrilling new dimension to the concept of neuroplasticity.

The Mind and the Brain follows Schwartz as he investigates this newly discovered power, which he calls self–directed neuroplasticity or, more simply, mental force. It describes his work with noted physicist Henry Stapp and connects the concept of 'mental force' with the ancient practice of mindfulness in Buddhist tradition. And it points to potential new applications that could transform the treatment of almost every variety of neurological dysfunction, from dyslexia to stroke–and could lead to new strategies to help us harness our mental powers. Yet as wondrous as these implications are, perhaps even more important is the philosophical dimension of Schwartz's work. For the existence of mental force offers convincing scientific evidence of human free will, and thus of man's inherent capacity for moral choice.

Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill

Matthieu Ricard

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 33 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

I Should Be So Lucky 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I read this book during a bout of depression. It is proverbial that Conspicuous Displays of Contentment push the depressed into even deeper despair more effectively than anything else. Yet I didn't find this book infuriating; it didn't drive me to suicide. No, I enjoyed it immensely and finished it rapidly.

The ramifications of the subject matter are endless. What ancient and modern Western philosophers thought about happiness; what they thought in Asia. The social conditions conducive to happiness, the brain-states that coincide with it. Then what the author's own Tibetan Buddhist tradition has to say about happiness and mental afflictions.

You only have to glance at the design of this book to know you're not going to get any great depth. But that's fine. Always room for compact and lucid accounts of Big Subjects. If you want reams of detail about neurochemistry or Buddhist meditation practices, you can find that elsewhere.

I have only two complaints. One is that, as somebody who has suffered from life-long severe depression, I didn't find anything here that would help me to be happy. Everything here I have seen before, and it doesn't work. It may work if you're already happy, but then, well, you don't need it, do you?

I suspect the reason for this lies in my second complaint. The author tells of his famous father, of his upbringing in elite French cultural and intellectual circles, hobnobbing with luminaries and jetsetters. When he finds all of this... somehow lacking, he toddles off to a sheltered enclave of Ancient Eastern Wisdom, where he hobnobs with the Dalai Lama and endless Rinpoches... (To be honest, I'm not exactly sure how you "hobnob".)

My point is: you Would be happy, wouldn't you? A book about Happiness would be so much more convincing if the author were the child of a Haitian beggar, born with a speech impediment, and... we don't want to get into sick humour territory, but you get my drift. If someone like That managed to be happy, Then I would be impressed.

Editorial Review:

Never has happiness as an emotional and physical state of being been so widely discussed. Matthieu Ricard is one of the most compelling voices on the subject, and one of the few who can bring together the teachings of eastern and western thought. In this accessible new work, Ricard provides a straightforward assessment of how to create true and lasting happiness. He addresses the pursuit of a meaningful life at its most fundamental level - the strengthening of the inner conditions that lead to genuine happiness. Ricard helps readers form new patterns of interaction with themselves and with the larger world, working towards happiness step by step, starting with 20 minutes of daily mind training and meditation.

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Robert Fulghum

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 73 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Simple ideas for your not so simple life 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Robert Fulgram's book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten is now more than 15 years old and has been updated in a new version. The book became an instant classic with its wise statements and gentle humor. The essence of the book is the following set of statements:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.
We learned most of these ideas as children, but as adults we often forget or discard them as no longer relevant. Yet they remain as the truly important things in life. The trick is not only to remember them but also to use them in an adult context. Maybe we can't take a nap in the afternoon any more, but we can relax and get sufficient rest so that we can work efficiently; we know better than to hit people, but political and personal violence is still a major part of life in the United States. Living a balanced life is something many adults have difficulty achieving. My own advice is to post this list someplace where you can see it every day. And it wouldn't hurt to read this small volume over and over again.

I rate this book at 5 stars. The other reviews seem for the most part to be either 5 or 1 stars. The negative reviewers miss, in my view, the main point of the book--that simple things are the most important and simple ways of saying things are the best means of communication.

Awakening the Buddha Within: Tibetan Wisdom for the Western World

Lama Surya Das

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Total reviews: 103 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Lama Surya Das, the most highly trained American lama in the Tibetan tradition, presents the definitive book on Western Buddhism for the modern-day spiritual seeker.

The radical and compelling message of Buddhism tells us that each of us has the wisdom, awareness, love, and power of the Buddha within; yet most of us are too often like sleeping Buddhas.  In Awakening the Buddha Within, Surya Das shows how we can awaken to who we really are in order to lead a more compassionate, enlightened, and balanced life.  It illuminates the guidelines and key principles embodied in the noble Eight-Fold Path and the traditional Three Enlightenment Trainings common to all schools of Buddhism:

Wisdom Training: Developing clear vision, insight, and inner understanding -- seeing reality and ourselves as we really are.
Ethics Training: Cultivating virtue, self-discipline, and compassion in what we say and do.
Meditation Training: Practicing mindfulness, concentration, and awareness of the present moment.

With lively stories, meditations, and spiritual practices, Awakening the Buddha Within is an invaluable text for the novice and experienced student of Buddhism alike.

The Principles of Uncertainty

Maira Kalman

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Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Maira Kalman paints her highly personal worldview in an inimitable combination of image and text.

The Principles of Uncertainty is an irresistible invitation to experience life through the psyche of Maira Kalman, one of this country's most beloved artists. The result is a book that is part personal narrative, part documentary, part travelogue, part chapbook, and all Kalman. Her brilliant, whimsical paintings, ideas, and images-which initially appear random-ultimately form an intricately interconnected worldview, an idiosyncratic inner monologue. Kalman contends with some existential questions-What is identity? What is happiness? Why do we fight wars? And then, of course, death, love, and candy (not necessarily in that order).

The tremendous success of Kalman's 2005 illustrated edition of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style established her as an original, inspirational voice, and the quirky, hilarious, heartbreaking style of The Principles of Uncertainty reveals Maira Kalman for what she truly is: a national treasure.

The Unfolding Now: Realizing Your True Nature through the Practice of Presence

A. H. Almaas

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Extraordinary "how to" of practicing Presence 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

We spend so much of our lives trying to get somewhere else. This book revealed to me how this habit of striving interferes in my inner experience of what is happening now. Learning to truly experience what is happening now does not mean being passive. It does not mean that I refuse to take action. It means that if I am sad, I experience that sadness, rather than rushing to cover it up with wishing for a different inner experience. I can take action to change circumstances without denying what my experience is with the current circumstance. Wanting my experience to be different is subtly different from wanting external change. I can work to improve communication and understanding in my family or community without denying my own inner experience at each moment whether it be frustration, anger, fear or joy. Almaas teaches with great clarity the "how to" of being present and tells us that being ourselves, being real, means being our True Nature.

Editorial Review:

The keys to self-knowledge and deep contentment  are right here before us in this very moment—if we can simply learn to live with open awareness. In The Unfolding Now, A. H. Almaas presents a marvelously effective practice for developing the transformative quality of presence. Through a particular method of self-observation and contemplative exploration that he calls inquiry, we learn to live in the relaxed condition  of simply "being ourselves," without interference from feelings of inadequacy, drivenness toward goals, struggling to figure things out, and rejecting experiences we don't want. Almaas explores the many obstacles  that keep us from being present—including defensiveness, ignorance, desire, aggression, and self-hatred—and shows us how to welcome with curiosity and compassion whatever we are experiencing.

Descartes' Error

Antonio Damasio

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Total reviews: 53 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Hard to maintain interest 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I bought this book thinking it would be a good read about exploring the mind, emotions, and reasoning (hence the title). The first chapter starts out interesting but it goes downhill after that. I don't mind the author's ideas but I found his writing very obtuse and hard to follow at times. He could have made this book more interesting to the average reader.

The Three Amigos - Brain, Body and Mind 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

If you are curious about how connected the brain, body and mind are without all the scientific and clinical gargon this book is it. Dr. Damasio has researched the workings of the frontal area of the brain for over 30 years and the talent to explain it well, plain and simple. Beware, this book will possibly enhance interest and knowledge of the brain to impress in casual conversations. The brain continues mystify researchers and scientist. A very good read.

Editorial Review:

Linking the process of rational decision making to emotions, an award-winning scientist who has done extensive research with brain-damaged patients notes the dependence of thought processes on feelings and the body's survival-oriented regulators. 50,000 first printing.

The Book of Secrets: Keys to Love and Meditation

Osho

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Total reviews: 65 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Osho is Master of Masters 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Any book by Osho is a precious jewel. A Master like Osho never existed before and will never come again. He was complete in every way. A true Master and Master of Masters.

Buy this book, listen to His lectures and "stay aware" until you reach Home.

how to live in the now , thus in the eternity 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

the perfect book for you who want to calm your mind and your soul. i would recommend it to just about anyone in the world.

Editorial Review:

In this comprehensive and practical guide, the secrets of the ancient science of Tantra become available to a contemporary audience for the first time. Confined to small, hidden mystery schools for centuries, and often misunderstood and misinterpreted today. Tantra is not just a collection of techniques to enhance sexual experience. As Osho shows in these pages, it is a complete science of self-realizatoin, based on the cumulative wisdom of centuries of exploration into the meaning of life and consciousness. Tantra-the very word means "technique"-is a set of powerful, transformative tools that can be used to bring new meaning andjoy to every aspect of our daily lives.

Simulacra and Simulation (The Body, In Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism)

Jean 0 Baudrillard

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Total reviews: 36 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Caveat emptor(s): 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

1. The first two chapters are more or less verbatim permutations of his 'Simulations', which this reviewer finds more substantial, though this book contains a few elaborations that are left aching for in Simulations. In every other respect, the first two chapters say little that Baudrillard had not already accomplished in previous publications in greater depth. The possible advantage herein could be lie in that the less extensive use of Semiotical and Marxist concepts may make this more accessible. But this assumes the utility of accessibility. Elsewise, the Semiotext(e) translation of 'Simulations' was more than adequate, you may just want to start there.

2. This text will likely be indecipherable jabberwocky to anyone not acquainted with Semiology and economics. Furthermore, if these thing bore or otherwise hold no relevance to one, there is no real point in reading any of Baudrillard unless one is in possession of a patience willing to wade through some genre specific terminology and verbiage to get some cultural and social analysis out of it; those critiques stand on their own for the most part.

3. The Matrix: low relevance to the film, his earlier writings are more radical.

4. Baudrillard has little reverence for the institutions of Socialism and Democracy, reading this may infuriate or otherwise cause a lapse of faith in those deus ex machinas.

Editorial Review:

The first full-length translation in English of an essential work of postmodernist thought