(no subject)
Today is day 14 of The Sit. It's been going pretty well, I even managed to sit during the weekend when we had guests. I think it makes me more emotionally stable and helps me relax after work, since I usually sit in the evening.
I finished reading Andrew Skilton's Concise History of Buddhism. A couple of thoughts: first of all, it's much more readable than I thought it would be. It has some dense moments, especially when he gets to describing various schools and their philosophy. Those parts go into some seriously esoteric stuff. In addition, it obviously takes some attention to read a book where half of the words in every paragraph is not even in English. Skilton mostly focuses on India and early Buddhism, and covers its spread to other countries very briefly and only up to the 19th century. That said, this book is in dire need of a glossary. I understand that defining a concept every time it appears in the text would make the book clumsy. Having a list of all these Sanskrit and Pali terms in the end of the book with brief explanations would be very nice, especially when we are dealing with something so abstract as Buddhist philosophy.
Ok, back to work, it's a long day today.