September Read-2

Title: The Secret Life of the Mind: How Your Brain Thinks, Feels, and Decides
Author: Sigman, Mariano
Call Number: 612.82 S577S 2017
Book Description from amazon
From an: world-renowned leader in neuroscience, a provocative, enthralling journey into the depths of the human mind.

Where do our thoughts come from? How do we make choices and trust our judgments? What is the role of the unconscious? Can we manipulate our dreams? In this mind-bending international bestseller, award-winning neuroscientist Mariano Sigman explores the complex answers to these and many other age-old questions. 

Over the course of his 20-year career investigating the inner workings of the human brain, Dr. Sigman has cultivated a remarkable interdisciplinary vision. He draws on research in physics, linguistics, psychology, education, and beyond to explain why people who speak more than one language are less prone to dementia; how infants can recognize by sight objects they've previously only touched; how babies, even before they utter their first word, have an innate sense of right and wrong; and how we can "read" the thoughts of vegetative patients by decoding patterns in their brain activity. 

Building on the author's awe-inspiring TED talk, the cutting-edge research presented in The Secret Life of the Mind revolutionizes how we understand the role that neuroscience plays in our lives, unlocking the mysterious cerebral processes that control the ways in which we learn, reason, feel, think, and dream.
My Read:
I didn't finish this book, yet. But I found the following paragraphs interesting:
Page-140-141
"An American psychologist, Dan Gilbert, gave this idea physical substance with a cell phone app that every once in a while asks users:"What are you doing?';"What are you thinking about?';"How are you  feeling?' The answer, gathered from people throughout the world, comprise a sort of chronology and demographics of happiness. In general, the states of greatest happiness correspond to having sex, talking with friends, sports, and playing and listening to music, in that order. Those of least happiness are work, being at home at the computer or on public transportation in the city.
Obviously, these are averages and do not imply that working makes everyone unhappy. And, naturally, these results depend on social and cultural idiosyncrasies. But the most interesting part of this experiment is how happiness changes according to what we are thinking about. During a daydream, almost all of us feel worse than when our brain isn't wandering freely. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't have daydreams but rather just that we should understand that they entail-like so many other trips-a complicated mix of discoveries and emotional ups and downs."
Contrast to the answers listed in that experiment in this book I found thinking about work make me happy. So is being at home at the computer. I don't like to chat after work; I found chatting energy consuming. The gathered answers in the book and mine got me wonder "What's wrong with me?" It's a question I asked myself in the shower stall.

September Read

Title: Koan: The Lessons of Zen
Author: Manuela Dunn
Call Number: 294.3443 K75 1996
Book Description from amazon.com
This beautifully illustrated small book contains some of the most profound and inspiring koans excerpted from two of the classics of Zen literature: "The Gateless Gate", and "The Blue Cliff Records", along with dozens of full-color reproductions of classic Eastern paintings and a comprehensive introduction.
My Read: 
Reading this small book brings back memory of a time when I read books of koans in Chinese. Allow me to share Case 40-Tipping Over a Vase from "The Gateless Gate"-page 35: 
Hyakujo wished to send a monk to open a new monastery. He told his disciples that whoever answered a question mostly ably would be appointed. Placing a water vase on the ground, he asked, "Who can say what this is without calling its name?" The chief monk said, "No one can call it a wooden shoe." Isan, the cooking monk, tipped over the vase with his food and went out. Hyakujo smiled and said, " The chief monk loses." And Isan became the master of the new monastery.
Footnote: The truth, her symbolized by the water vase, can not either be told nor not be told. It can only be shown. Isan, a monk who studied with Hyakujo for twenty years, made a striking demonstration of this teaching. 
Reading Koans also reminds me of Aesop's Fables. We love stories. Reading abstract ideas or concepts bores us sometimes. But teaching with story telling interests us and interesting things stay with us and last longer. Case study books intrigue me more than contexts of explanations and descriptions. 

August Read

Title: Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injuries and Its Aftermath
Author: Mason, Michael Paul
Call Number: 617.48104 M411H 2008
Book Description from amazon.com:

Head Cases takes us into the dark side of the brain in an astonishing sequence of stories, at once true and strange, from the world of brain damage. Michael Paul Mason is one of an elite group of experts who coordinate care in the complicated aftermath of tragic injuries that can last a lifetime. On the road with Mason, we encounter survivors of brain injuries as they struggle to map and make sense of the new worlds they inhabit.

Underlying each of these survivors' stories is an exploration of the brain and its mysteries. When injured, the brain must figure out how to heal itself, reorganizing its physiology in order to do the job. Mason gives us a series of vivid glimpses into brain science, the last frontier of medicine, and we come away in awe of the miracles of the brain's workings and astonished at the fragility of the brain and the sense of self, life, and order that resides there. Head Cases "[achieves] through sympathy and curiosity insight like that which pulses through genuine literature" (The New York Sun); it is at once illuminating and deeply affecting.

My Read:

The following are takeaways from pages in the book:

"The most spiritual question in the world is not whether there is a god, or how we came to be in the universe. The most spiritual question in the world does not concern itself with knowing why there is suffering or why we are here; those ponderings stem from the most spiritual question. The aim of every mystical tradition in any religion is a sincere and relentless pursuit of the answer to the most spiritual question. The most spiritual question is about you. The question is: Who am I, really? Brain injury, above all other anguishes known to man, perpetually invites us to embark on the search for our selves. Who are we, other than our brains, really?"--Page 212-213

'Who are you, really?" I ask.

"I love myself the way I am now," she says. "I appreciate that I am not my brain injury

. It was a traumatic experience, to be sure, but it deepened my relationship to myself and to others. I have become a more loving person. I am a lot more empathetic, and I know what compassion is now."-page 223

A verse in Case 19 in the book "The Gateless Gate":

The spring flowers, the moon in autumn

The cool breeze of summer, the winter's snow;

If idle concerns do not cloud the mind,

This is man's happiest season.

A conversation in the koan in Case 19:

"What is the Way?"

"The ordinary mind is the Way."

"Should I direct myself toward it or not?"

"If you try to turn toward it, you go against it."

"If I do not try to turn toward it, how can I know it is the Way?"

"The Way does not belong to knowing or not-knowing. Knowing is delusion, not-knowing is blank consciousness. When you have really reached the true Way beyond all doubt, you will find it vast and boundless as the great empty firmament. How can it be talked about on a level of right and wrong?"

At these words, Joshu was suddenly enlightened.--page 219