New Books

I've added a couple of books to the list in my sidebar in the last few days.

Both of them were memoirs. "The Year I Got Everything I Wanted" by Cameron Conant, whose blog I also link to, and "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert.

I liked both.

I particularly liked the following short passage from Gilbert's book. I liked the word she describes, because I understand, just a little, that idea of "living at the border". She writes:

I was reading through an old text about Yoga, when I found a description of ancient spiritual seekers. A Sanskrit word appeared in the paragraph: ANTEVASIN. It means "one who lives at the border." In ancient times this was a literal description. It indicated a person who had left the bustling center of worldly life to go live at the edge of the forest where the spiritual masters dwelled. The antevasin was not one of the villagers anymore - not a householder with a conventional life. But neither was he yet a transcendent - not one of those sages who live deep in the unexplored woods, fully realized. The antevasin was an in-betweener. He was a border-dweller. He lived in sight of both worlds, but he looked toward the unknown. And he was a scholar.