Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest.

These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.Ī very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Ī compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes.

For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. Writing in a variety of modes-memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction-the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books ( Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. “As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.

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