An Awakened Life

I thought I had some original thoughts about Buddhism and identity, but in reading this, I see that Titmuss has gone farther, and more eloquently, than I ever could. Read this book and deepen your understanding.

An excellent book for those who want to awaken with courage and conviction. I have read the book a number of times, and recommend that you do too... each time you read it you will see more and it will mean more to you. Christopher Titmuss is a great writer who wants you to wake up and look around you, and not listen to what everybody else says.

In each of his 76 insightful and, at times, confrontational meditations of AN AWAKENED LIFE, Titmuss encourages us to take "a good, hard look" at our lives, to "know ourselves," to "go deep into ourselves," as we walk "the daily treadmill," so that we may live with clarity.Titmuss is a former Buddhist monk, and presently serves as an international boardmember of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. He offers us a book with big aspirations, addressing questions including: What is enlightenment? What is an awakened life? What does it mean to live free? What is the cost of an unexamined life? And he suggests that when read "mindfully and slowly on a regular basis" (p. 4), contemplative writing, including this book, "has the capacity to transform us" (p. 140), and to set us on the road to enlightenment."We must commit ourselves to living a conscious life," Titmuss writes (p. 12), by examining "the realities of our daily existence" (p. 122), by allowing things "to run deep inside our beings" (p. 140), by taking risks, by confronting suffering and death, by going "beyond our comfort zone" (p. 98), by dropping out, by experiencing a single flower, or a cloud moving through the sky, and by starting today.I will follow Titmuss's advice, revisiting this book, reading it slowly, mindfully, and regularly.G. Merritt