National Read a Book Day
- WEDossett
- Sep 6
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 7
It’s National Read a Book Day! (Yeah… I know…)
Here’s two I have on the go.
This is not a translation of theTherīgāthā The Verses of the Elder Nuns (an ancient Buddhist collection). It's a beautiful collection of modern poems arising out of it, written by Matty Weingast. It is more a rendering than a translation. The volume was published by Shambhala in 2020 and the title is The First Free Women. It's the case that most of those drawn to engaging with or writing about theTherīgāthā are women. Weingast is a man. This confounds the reader's holding to fast to hard or binary ideas of gender. Weingast himself says, when he is asked, as he often is, about why he didn't translate the writings of early monks, that he is not seeking to 'translate' anything. It was simply that the words and experiences of these women spoke to him. The poem I’ve photographed really spoke to me about the conceit of independence. I struggle at times to adjust to being someone who is not earning (more) money. I was compelled for health reasons to retire. This state of non-earning chalIenges my sense of myself as self-sufficient feminist, and as someone who lives within the norms of capitalism. However, I read something recently by a mindfulness teacher (Mike Kewley) that really helped, about how the support of the whole cosmos is required to enable me simply to scratch my own nose. The idea that we are ever self-sufficient, and do not need others, is a false consciousness. Just like this nun, whose food is donated by lay-people, I'm uneasy with my privilege and sense of debt to others. But this poem meditates on all that we have that we haven’t ‘earned’. Her rice is given to her in the same way the moon is. Having had a summer of talking with young people in my family about the pathways to joining the workforce, it strikes me that we also need models for living outside of the 'iron cage' of capitalism, even if all they do is shine a light on how our society is shaped.
The other is a book about CBT-related therapies. It’s called CBT - The Cognitive Behavioural Tsunami: Managerialism, Politics and the Corruptions of Science by Farhad Dalal (Routledge, 2018).
It argues that, while these therapies have some legitimate specific contributions to make, they were created in the context of neoliberal managerialism and are marketed to support it. These therapies locate “mental health deficits” (the book is critical of the framing of the problem as well as the therapy) in the individual’s lack of resilience rather than in structural conditions. Moreover, these therapies rely on a command and control (i.e. neoliberal managerial) attitude to experience and emotionality.
Those who’ve worked inside an organisation that has demoralised them to the point that when they finally break, they get referred for CBT, so that they can pull themselves together and line up more willingly and more positively for more of the same, may relate.
