Reading lists
Guided paths through the texts, in an order that builds understanding. Each step says why it comes where it does.
- A Way through The Imitation of ChristSeven passages through the four books of the Imitation, from contempt of the world to the inner life, inward consolation and the sacrament.
- A first path in BuddhismThe Buddha’s core teaching, read in the earliest texts.
- Before PlatoHeraclitus and Parmenides: the first Western philosophers of the one, and their questions about being and change.
- Begin HereAn introduction to unitive philosophy in five steps.
- Christian MysticismClassics of Christian contemplative writing, from Augustine to John of the Cross.
- DaoismThe Daodejing, the Zhuangzi and their first great interpreter.
- Emerson’s Nature, Chapter by ChapterEmerson’s first book in five passages: an original relation to the universe, the transparent eye-ball, the universal soul, Spirit and the Orphic poet.
- JainismThe path of the Jinas: non-harming, many-sidedness and the soul’s omniscience.
- Living According to NatureThe Stoics and the American Transcendentalists on reason, nature and the self-examined life.
- Marcus Aurelius in Eight SectionsA first reading of the Meditations in George Long’s translation: the morning resolution, the inner retreat, the common reason, change, and death.
- Modern ContemplativesSimone Weil, Thomas Merton and J. Krishnamurti: three twentieth-century voices on attention, prayer and freedom.
- Mystics of the WorldOne major text from each of several traditions.
- Persian Mystical PoetryʿAṭṭār, Rūmī and Ḥāfiẓ: the journey, the reed-flute and the tavern, three masters of the Sufi poetry of love.
- Plato on Love and DeathThe Symposium and the Phaedo read together, from Diotima’s ladder of love to the last day of Socrates.
- Plato’s AscentLove, the soul and the Forms: the dialogues in which Plato describes the mind’s ascent to what truly is.
- Ramakrishna and VivekanandaThe saint of Dakshineswar and the disciple who carried his teaching to the world: devotion, Vedānta and the harmony of religions.
- The Confucian WayFrom Confucius and Mencius to the Neo-Confucian philosophy of principle and the mind.
- The Desert FathersThe monks and nuns of the Egyptian desert, and the teachers who made their wisdom a path for others.
- The Poet-Saints of MaharashtraJñāneśvar and Tukārām, and the pilgrimage that still carries their songs.
- Consciousness and NatureSāṃkhya and Yoga: the classical Indian analysis of the witness and everything it witnesses, including the mind.
- Devotion and RecognitionThe bhakti poets and the non-dual Śaivism of Kashmir: two Indian paths of love and self-knowledge.
- Grace and EffortPure Land Buddhism and the Śrī Vaiṣṇava theology of surrender: two traditions that ask what the self can do.
- Huxley and His CriticsAldous Huxley’s search for the divine ground, from The Perennial Philosophy to mescaline and Island, and the replies it provoked.
- Jewish MysticismFrom the Zohar and the Kabbalah of Safed to Hasidism and Martin Buber.
- Jewish Paths of the HeartPhilo, Baḥya and Naḥman of Bratslav: the soul’s ascent, the duties of the heart, and prayer from the depths.
- Medieval VisionariesHildegard of Bingen, Bonaventure and Catherine of Siena: vision, ascent and dialogue in the medieval Church.
- Philosophy of ConsciousnessFrom contemplative accounts of awareness to modern philosophy of mind.
- Reading Meister EckhartThe Godhead, the ground of the soul and detachment: a path into the sermons and treatises of Eckhart.
- Sober and IntoxicatedThe early Sufis of Baghdad and Khorasan: Bāyazīd, Junayd and al-Ḥallāj, and the debate over ecstasy and return.
- SufismTheology, metaphysics and poetry of the Sufi path, from Rābiʿa to Ibn ʿArabī.
- The Perennial PhilosophyThe claim of a common core of mystical teaching, and its critics.
- The Rhineland MysticsEckhart, Tauler and Ruusbroec, and their heir Nicholas of Cusa: the birth of God in the ground of the soul.
- The UpanishadsReading the principal Upaniṣads, and how the great commentators read them.
- The Zen of Linji and HakuinThe Rinzai line, from the shouts of Linji to Hakuin’s kōan training.
- Daoist Inner AlchemyQuanzhen Daoism and the refinement of essence, energy and spirit, from Wang Chongyang to Qiu Chuji.
- Emptiness and the Middle WayFrom the Perfection of Wisdom to Nāgārjuna and his Tibetan interpreters.
- NeoplatonismFrom Plato to Plotinus, Proclus and the Christian heirs of the One.
- The Nature of MindDzogchen and Tiantai: two Buddhist teachings on the mind’s own nature, already complete in every moment.
- The Whole in Every PartHuayan Buddhism and German Idealism: two great philosophies of the whole and its parts.
- The three schools of VedāntaAdvaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita and Dvaita, read in their own words and set side by side.