I love books. They greatly inspire me and they are my go-to resources to learn about something. In this ever-growing list, I will keep collecting the books that had the most influence on me.
The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka
Fukuoka was a great permaculturist of his time although the term didn’t even exist back then. He created an organic polyculture food forest in the 1940s of Japan. He experimented with–what he called–the “do-nothing” farming. He successfully cultivated various grains, fruits, and vegetables without plowing or tilling the soil, applying any chemical fertilizers or pesticides, or using any sort of machinery. He sought ways to do farming, but essentially to live really, in harmony with nature.
When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the attempt to possess them, the essence of natural farming will be realized. The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.
As a passionate cook, his perspective on the diet of non-discrimination was eye-opening to me.
I read One Straw Revolution when I first quit the comfort of my job and home country and started to live as a volunteer in a Portuguese eco-community. It was the best introduction to permaculture.
Free at Last: The Sudbury Valley School by Daniel Greenberg
It is the most influential book I read about parenting. It explores the nature of free education through the example of a boarding (un)school in the US. In this school, kids have no formal classes, and no schedule, they spend most of their time outdoors, and they can freely follow their interests. Sudbury is also a democratic school. Adults present to look after the physical space, guide children when needed, and ensure certain safety measures. Kids together with the adults make decisions about their school and learning progress. Despite all the doubts, children graduating from this school become content, self-confident adults, many of them find themselves in professions such as doctors, lawyers, or architects.
Everything about the school conveys our belief that any human interest is a worthwhile pursuit if only it has been chosen freely and followed from true inner desire. Our distinctions are between superficial interests and deep ones, not between “worthy” ones and “unworthy” ones… and this attitude follows our students through life, keeping them comfortable with others, regardless of what path they have chosen.
I read this book along with Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood when my child was born. Free at Last helped us reflect on our own school experiences and offered an alternative vision that resonated with us on how we saw our roles as parents and what environment we wished for the child to grow up in.
Human Cycle by Colin M. Turnbull
I read Human Cycle during our first pregnancy. It’s an anthropologist’s contemplation on the various ways three distinct societies–an African tribe, a British middle class, and an Indian ashram–operate and approach life. A unique read. It helped me come to a conclusion on what fatherhood means to me.
The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz
The Mastery Of Love is a beautiful piece about unconditional love. The book is organized into chapters, each providing a distinct angle on the same idea: how to find love within you so that you can share it with others unconditionally. It’s a book I occasionally pick up to read out a chapter to my partner or friends. The chapter Magical Kitchen is very dear to me as it speaks of love by a means of offering food. Interestingly, my last two partners had this very book.
You have food today, but tomorrow you may not have food, so you agree to do whatever you can for food. You can become a slave because of food, because you need food, because you don’t have it. Then after a certain time you have doubts. You say, “What am I going to do without my pizza? I cannot live without my pizza. What if my partner decides to give the pizza to someone else — my pizza?”
Now imagine that instead of food, we are talking about love.
It’s originally written in Spanish. I read the English translation.
Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy by Sadhguru
Inner Engineering is Sadhguru’s yogic guide and toolkit for inner growth and transformation into an ever-joyful, full-time human being. Prior to reading the book, I completed the Inner Engineering Online course offered by Isha Foundation which essentially captures the same anecdotes and sadhanas. The book is a glimpse into Sadhguru’s life and his journey of self-realization. It’s a practical guide for walking the path of yoga.
As Sadhguru puts it, what he has to offer is not a sort of theory. There’s nothing about it to believe or not. He offers tools to gain wisdom through personal experiences to be able to see life how it is.
Everything that ever happened to you, you experienced right within you. Light and darkness, pain and pleasure, agony and ecstasy—all of it happened within you. If someone touches your hand right now, you may think you are experiencing their hand, but the fact of the matter is you are only experiencing the sensations in your own hand. The whole experience is contained within. All human experience is one hundred percent self-created.
Since I was already familiar with the content, I read the Spanish translation of the book for language practice.
Initiation by Elisabeth Haich
The author of Initiation, Elisabeth Haich (Haich Erzsebet) was born in Hungary. With her partner Selvarajan Yesudian, they established the first yoga ashram in Europe in Budapest, the city where I was born. (Later they needed flee and they moved the ashram to Switzerland.) I knew the author already because I read the Hungarian translation of her German book Sport und Yoga (Sport and Yoga) a while ago. It’s basically a hatha yoga guide with inspirational stories, and description of breathing exercises and asanas, followed by a week-by-week practice plan.
In contrast, Initiation is nothing like a yoga textbook. It took me half a year to finish reading it and, more importantly, process it. Each time I picked up the book, I had to be fully receptive to what the author was going to offer. It had been a very challenging read at times. On one hand, it’s an autobiography, a collection of incredible stories. On the other hand, it’s an invitation to a spiritual process. As its blurb says, reading the book is the initiation itself. That’s absolutely how I felt. It talks about the mystery of the Egyptian pyramids, reveals her past lives, discusses sacred geometry, and offers sadhanas.
The body is only the robe of the self. You wear clothing too, and yet you are not the clothing. In the very same way you wear a body which can be any sex, but your self stands above the sexes and is neither man nor woman. The self is the creator. The person, the physical, material manifestation is only one half of the true being. The other half has remained behind in the unconscious, unmanifested state. And whether a manifestation is male or female or other depends merely on which half has incarnated itself. When a person has made both halves of his being conscious and experienced them consciously, he has become identical with his self, and then he carries within himself both the male and female principles in complete equilibrium.
While reading the book, I hosted a traveler via Trustroots who was reading the very same book. It was a beautiful coincidence. I’ll need to get back to this book once more. Although I read it once, it doesn’t feel like I finished it.
Tantric Sex by Diana Richardson
For a long time in my twenties, I was embarrassed in my sexual life. I struggled to find an honest way to express my sexuality. Sex meant a weird mix of performance expectations, repressed emotions, and fantasy, often accompanied by “erection problems”. My partner at the time brought a copy of Tantric Sex home. We both read the book.
As the subtitle suggests, it’s “a guide to love and sexual fulfillment”. It offered me a thorough introduction to concepts such as male-female polarities and genital consciousness. It showed tools (love keys as the author refers to them) for the couples to experiment with. It helped me heal much of my sexual pain and reclaim my sexual life. I came to realize that sex was not about doing but simply being. It had been a truly life-changing read.
This book served me the sexual education I never had before. It was also the necessary foreplay to the Making Love audio tapes by Barry Long. Long’s book was the natural next step for me to learn how to connect sexuality to spirituality which then I studied in depth in Haich’s Sexual Energy And Yoga book.