I am mystified. I can't figure out how to see my blog on the web anymore. I'm hoping that writing a new entry will either jog my memory or make it reappear mysteriously.
I just did a weekend retreat based on the teachings of Eknath Easwaran's book Meditation. It was awesome! I'm on a business trip now and my hotel room is full of Easwaran's books. He is so funny while he is imparting wisdom about how to live that he makes it fun to be working on yourself. By funny I mean that he really understands the distractions that meditators face and the trying situations we confront when we are attempting to live a more compassionate life. In addition to his book Conquest of Mind, I'm reading a biography he wrote of the "Frontier Gandhi," Badshah Khan, who was what Easwaran calls "a nonviolent soldier of Islam." This 1984 book couldn't be more relevant to today! I'm learning a lot of Afghanistan and Indian history from it.
I'm also reading Adam Sisman's Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of a Life of Dr. Johnson. I was really happy to see that it won the National Book Critic's Circle Award for biography this week.