Reading "My journey to Lhasa" ...

I have been reading, for some time, "My Journey to Lhasa" by Alexandra David-Neel.
Interesting account about Tibet as it no longer exists ...

This is not a review yet. Just some quotes...

"When we left him the old farmer's face expressed a perfect serenity, a complete detachment from all earthly concerns, having, it seemed, entered the true Blissful Paradise which, being nowhere and everywhere, lies in the mind of each one of us."


"Farther in the deserts, higher still on their giant peaks, they seek caves and almost inaccessible shelters, where they may meditate and be alone, face to face with the Infinite and the Eternal."

more to come ...

The Hope and a Fear ...

I just finished reading (listening in fact) of "The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer" by Siddhartha Mukherjee.
The only thing I could tell you all is the message of hope and ... a message of fear. While absolutely incredible progress has been made when it comes to cancer cure - we still are far away from victory. And the reasons are absolutely mind-blowing: the very essence of cancer is the same as is the essence of life itself...
Despite enormous efforts, like the one described in the book - The cancer genome atlas: http://cancergenome.nih.gov/ - we are far, on the clinical level from the precise knowledge how to treat the malady ...
However, the overall tone of the book is realistically optimistic. At least to the extent of cancer prevention - we can do a lot ...

It will stay with me for long ...

Jacob's Scriptures

This incredible book (by Olga Tokarczuk) is not yet available in English. I hope it will be one day.

On 900 pages of it we get one of the most fantastic mixture of fiction and history of XVIII century Poland and Eastern Europe.

The book tells the story of Jacob Frank, a Jewish mystic, who created almost impossible, new messianic sect in XVIII Judaism - the sect that broke with traditional Judaism, adopted some tenants of Sabbatai Zevi, had a short affair with Ottoman Turkey Islam, and then ...converted to Catholicism! Frank and his family and followers got into plays with Austrian Emperor, had a kind of small kingdom in Brno, were imprisoned in Czestochowa and ended its glory in a noble castle in Offenbach, Germany !

Absolutely amazing book; from the perspective of care paid to facts and play between imagination and history - I could compare it only to Umberto Eco’s “Prague Cemetery” …

The book ends beautifully:
“It has been written though that a man who labours himself with the works of Messiahs', even the unsuccessful ones, will earn respect as the one who studies the eternal mysteries of the Light, just by telling these stories.”