Don't Believe Everything You Think: Living with Wisdom and Compassion by Thubten Chodron

Don't Believe Everything You Think: Living with Wisdom and Compassion Reviews

• 
  Justin Lee

  1/29/23- a lovely reset. I love re-reading this and feeling that connection. One of my favorites.
  
  4/17/22- still a great source to come back to to get that refresher. There’s parts of Buddhism that doesn’t work for me but a lot of it does. This book helps guide you to better ways of thinking.
  
  
  This is not a self help book. I feel like with a title like that, one could easily assume that it is. I'm a fan of the author, Thubten Chodron, so I knew it was a book about using Buddhism in your life. The main title itself doesn't really fit this book and that's perfectly fine. It deals more with learning to treat others with compassion and learning a new approach to living.
  
  I was fascinated by this book and found it very useful. I will definitely be reading more books like this. Buddhist practice is quite different and more nuanced than I'm used to. If you're looking for a beginners guide to practicing Buddhism, this seems to be a good one.
• 
  Tanya McGinnity

  Venerable Thubten Chodron is a notable author, Buddhist monastic and the founder/abbess of Sravasti Abbey, a meditation community in Newport, Washington. She also hosts the Bodhisattva Breakfast Corner channel on YouTube which I highly encourage you to check out as well as her website which is chock full of information. It’s quite remarkable how often I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of Dharma discovery when visiting it.
  
  Her latest book, Don’t Believe Everything You Think: Living with Wisdom and Compassion is a commentary on The Thirty-seven Practices of Bodhisattvas by Togmay Zangpo, a Tibetan monk and Bodhisattva. Within in the pages, she offers up a crystal clear interpretation and explanation of the Dharma by providing an in depth, yet accessible commentary on each of the 37 verses and then providing a myriad of stories from others on the path who exemplify the teachings within the verses based on experiences they’ve encountered within their lives.
  
  The book is a helpful guide as to how to apply these practices in one’s life in order to work towards the enlightenment of all sentient beings and to support one’s efforts as a Bodhisattva. It is a nourishing read and covers a lot of ground – everything from meditation, practice and study to friendships, relationships, karma, adversity and so very much more. Don’t Believe Everything You Think offers guidance like that of a warm friend rather than of disciplinarian as Thubten Chodron shares her personality and experiences with honesty and generosity. This book leaves readers in a way that one is left with a method to live and exist in a manner that brings less suffering for self and others.
  
  Don’t Believe Everything You Think: Living with Wisdom and Compassion is the perfect companion to one’s study of the 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas and comes with my high praise for being so well-written and offering teachings that are easy to grasp and put into action. Now reminding oneself to do so – that is the real work of Bodhisattvas.
  
  I’d like to leave you with a few links to check out from Thubten Chodron which are referred to within this book as well as from her website.
  
  Audio of Thubten Chodron’s teachings on The 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas
  
  A link to The 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas by Gyelsay Togmay Sangpo
  
  Talks by Ven. Chodron based on the book Don’t Believe Everything You Think
• 
  Carol Lynn Rivera

  On the one hand, this book was not exactly what I expected. It leans very heavily on Buddhist practice and the idea of karma through multiple births. I was expecting (based on the cover description) something more Buddhist-philosophy-for-everyday-living, like so much of Pema Chodron and Thich Naht Hanh.
  
  With that said, if you focus on the thought-provoking aspects, there is a lot of wisdom to be gained. There's plenty to learn and discover, plenty to challenge you, lots to highlight and come back to later. The concepts were interspersed with stories from real people practicing dharma and it was inspiring to read about their journeys.
  
  So while not everything felt right for me, there was enough to contemplate to make it worthwhile. Whether you believe you'll be back in another life or not, there's tremendous benefit to seeing things from a different perspective and exploring your own thinking and behavior.
• 
  Sandy

  Explication of The 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas.
• 
  Zaynab

  The most interesting part of this book is Chodron's commentary on Togmay Zangpo’s The Thirty-seven Practices of Bodhisattvas. The antidotes from dharma students waxed and waned between being really interesting and quite frankly a little dull. They also embodied something I struggled with throughout this book, that is the assumption that materialism manifests itself in the same way across socio-economic statuses. Chodron writes from a place of having abandoning upper middle class living for life as a buddhist nun, and writes about materialism from the assumption that most folks living in the U.S who are grappling with consumerist culture have similar struggles in terms of leaving behind wealth and extensive material trappings. In an age where U.S buddhists are trying to grapple more heavily with white & class privilege, it was a little disappointing to read a book which doesn't take those things more thoroughly into account when discussing how to disengage from the culture of materialism U.S society lives in.
• 
  Maggie

  really appreciated this book. an excellent summary of buddhist methods at a moment when i needed a serious review and when the ideas are deepening within my practice making more sense out of the abstract qualities of this worthwhile method. but -- for me -- it also helped contrast the ideas i cherish and live by from my traditional faith path helping me see the distinction more clearly than ever before between christianity and buddhism. do i cherish the methods of zen practice? ohmy yes! are they the bedrock of my belief system? no. method itself has enormous value even as the essence of thought behind method may differ radically. this book has helped me to clarify that distinction. it's where i am at this point in time and i couldn't have gleaned this clarity from this book if the writer had been less dogmatic than he is in the thoughts he presented within this very book: don't believe everything you think -- a worthy thought-companion for the journey.
• 
  Marek Zmyslowski

  Fantastic content, the form didnt speak to me.
• 
  L

  This is definitely focused on Buddhist teachings and thus may not be as non-secular as it claims at the beginning of this book. There are definite wisdom in the 37 Practises but there was just something missing in it for me to give this a full five stars. Perhaps it leans too much in the way of advocating for monastic life.
• 
  LemontreeLime

  The authors and interviewees are all associated with a Tibetan style Buddhist monastery in Washington state, and parts were good. But it felt heavily edited especially in the speech patterns of the lay members of the group. Americans tend to say things 12 different ways, after a lifetime of anything goes exposure to media. I found everyone using the same phrases and verbiage ...disturbing.
• 
  Brad McKenna

  This book takes the 37 verses of the Practices of the Bodhisattvas and delves deeper into them. She gives modern examples of what the ancient text is talking about and then opens it up to members of her Sangha to give personal stories that relate to the verse in question. Sometimes these stories helped me to connect to the verse, other times they actually drove me away.
  
  Here are two quotes and a concrete explanation of Buddhist practices I found insightful:
  
  “Many people find it much easier to be kind to others than to be kind to themselves. Being kind to ourselves, forgiving ourselves, and extending compassion to ourselves is a skill we need to learn. Then we need to practice it repeatedly. It’s not selfish to be kind to ourselves; this is very different from being self-indulgent. We are a sentient being, and in Buddhism we want to have love and compassion for all sentient beings and to work for the benefit of all sentient beings. We can’t leave one sentient being out saying, ‘I’ll extend kindness to all sentient beings except myself.’” (14)
  
  “While a description of Buddhahood contains many lofty and marvelous qualities, a good way to begin to get a sense of the state of a Buddha is to imagine what it would be like never to get angry at anyone, no matter what they said or did to you.” (15)
  
  Seven-Point Cause and Effect:
  Seeing all beings as having been our mother.
  Understanding their kindness.
  Wishing to repay their kindness.
  Love, wishing them to have happiness and its causes.
  Compassion, wishing them to be free of suffering and its causes.
  The great resolve to undertake the task of bringing them happiness and freeing them from their suffering.
  Bodhicitta- the altruistic intention in which we seek complete enlightenment in order to best benefit all living being- arises as a result of the previous six causes.
  
• 
  Mary

  I really enjoyed this book. I am not a Buddhist and do not plan on becoming one, but there is a lot I took from this book that I want to implement into my life (the author says as much: take what works for you).
• 
  Sara Zia

  Great reminder/refresher on nature of the mind and how to not spin into its tricks, questions of the self, etc. I can’t get with the reincarnation and karmic debt part personally, but outside of those parts much of this deeply resonated with me.
• 
  Phuoc Truong

  Sách luận giải chi tiết 37 bài kệ của bồ tát. Ba mươi bảy bài có bài đọc hiểu liền, có bài đọc luận giải mới hiểu. Quan trọng là thực hành theo các bài kệ này trong đời sống hằng ngày .
• 
  Karo

  Felt myself nodding off during the introduction... so... no, not for me
• 
  This Skipper Knits

  Life changing
  
• 
  Vika

  A highly practical and easy to understanding manual covering important practices, correct attitudes and beliefs.
• 
  Jess

  Thubten Chodron did an admirable job simplifying The 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas.
  Not only did she thoroughly decipher each verse but she also helped make them applicable to modern times.
  When unraveling the verses, she used exceptional metaphors, similes, symbolism, and other figurative devices to revive the verses themselves.
• 
  Elysse

  Lots of great wisdom if everyone applied just one thing he teaches to their life, this world would be a better place;
  However, Chodron does seem to push going to a temple, or living the monastic life a bit too much. Still an insightful book, encouraging us to live compassionate lives.
• 
  Tessa

  The 37 practices of Bodhisattvas were fantastic. I got tired of reading oversimplified example stories of people learning each one. It became redundant. I also felt that it was problematic to focus on folks in prison, it at times read like "trauma porn" to me.
• 
  Keith

  Masterpiece!
• 
  Carol

  Useful reminder of the benefits of Buddhist philosophy.