Buddha and the Path to Happiness

Grand Palace, Bangkok.

Buddha by Karen Armstrong
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was given to me by a friend in Shanghai who, like me, is interested in theology and philosophy. It is a rare person who can see the value in both ways of trying to live a good life, and my return gift was Ryan Holiday's The Daily Stoic. Little did I know how similar Buddhism and Stoicism are in their sense of logic, and, most importantly, managing our impressions or perceptions. Self-reliance is achieved by "meditation, concentration, mindfulness and a disciplined detachment from the world", through which each of us (p. 175):

...must make himself his island, make himself and no one else his refuge.

The sense of peace that can be achieved in this "world of pain" is not, however, the lonely ascetic existence of the proverbial hermit on the mountaintop. Rather, it is through

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