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Monday, April 15, 2019

BookTalk: Buddha’s Soul





In Today’s book talk I am going to talk about my book “Buddha’s Soul’.

Buddha and Jesus are two of my most admired teachers. I admire them not because they were founders of two great religions, not even because they were superhuman, but because they were deeply human.

There may be many teachers who came before and after these two, but these two teachers stood apart in their deep rooted concern for human suffering.

They were not there to preach a new way, nor to expound a new ideology. They were there just to wipe out tears from the eyes of suffering humanity.

But unfortunately, we forget what these masters stood for and deify them and put them on a high pedestal, and totally misinterpret their messages.


These were the feelings, that prompted me to write a book on Buddha. I named my book “Buddha’s soul” with a hint of verbal overload.

Many Buddhists claim that Buddha believed in “no soul” or “anatta”. So how can Buddha himself have a soul?

I have read some modern self claimed rationalists who say that they admire Buddha because it was he who declared that there is no soul – which is very scientific!

But the fact of the matter is that Buddha never explicitly said that there is no soul! After all, he was a student of ancient Indian schools of thought which centered around the concept of soul.

There are many who criticize Buddha for bringing up a ‘Nihilist’ ideology – a negative way of looking at life. Even the Hindus who reluctantly accepted him as one of the incarnations of God, dubbed him as ‘Mohana Avatar’ an incarnation or Avatar meant to confuse people!

There are many more such misinterpretations of what Buddha stood for, that I have discussed in this book.


Those of you who probably have read my book “Mysterious experiences : A peek beyond the confines of the Mind” or have listened to its audio version, may remember some of my own personal mediation related experiences that I have narrated in that book.

I could tally some these experiences with what is described in some of the commonly known Yoga books, but some, I could find no analogue any where. For quite some time, I stood puzzled with those experiences, not knowing what they really meant till I came across some ancient Buddhist texts namely the Tipitakas.

Tipitakas are like the Gospels of Buddhism. Real events of Buddha’s life that were recorded by his close disciples, and later complied in the form of voluminous set of books. They were the heart of original Buddhist thoughts.

But these texts in the Pali language are extremely difficult to understand without the aid of their English translation by some of the dedicated modern day monks.

While studying these 2500 year old texts, I got answers to many of my questions related to meditation and my own mysterious experiences. In these texts Buddha goes into the nitty-gritty of Meditative practices, his own personal struggle on the meditative path, how and why of whatever happens at each stage of progress and so on. One hardly finds such detailed first person accounts in any other book on Yoga or meditation.

Not all people have the time to go through these voluminous texts and fish out the gems in this ocean of narratives. So in this book, namely ‘Buddha’s Soul’, I have tried to pick up some interesting and useful information which in my view, is difficult to find elsewhere. So, I am sure that you will find a wealth of information in this book if you are a serious practitioner of meditation or Yoga.

Many incidents in Buddha’s life have parallels in the life of Jesus Christ. I have narrated some illuminating ones. Both spent their entire life for the uplift of the suffering masses. Jesus gave up his life due to some animosity of his opponents. And Buddha probably died of poisoning by his adversaries. Both accepted the end without complaint.

I can go on and on. But I think I should leave something for you to read and enjoy. So please do read this great book, if you have not already done.

Where can I find this book?

You can find this book in almost every online store that sells books, such as amazon, apple, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, scribd and so on. This book is available both in e-book as well as in print book formats.

Check the link https://books2read.com/BuddhasSoul for a preview/purchase in these formats. This is an universal book link that would list most stores where the book is available and if you click the store icon, you will be taken to that store in your region. Before I forget, let me remind some of you who may not be familiar with Books2read.com that the 2 is numeral 2 and not the word ‘to’

I am sure you will greatly get benefited by reading this book.

Bye then, till we meet again, week after next, with another of my books.


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