Book Summary: Man's Search For Meaning

The book started with historical references to the holocaust where Dr. Viktor Frankl chronicles his experience as an Auschwitz concentration camp inmate during World War II.
He goes on to describe his psychotherapeutic method, which involves identifying a purpose in life, which for him makes all the difference and the single most important thing for any human being.

In the first part of the book, I couldn't help but contemplate about the similarities between the Nazis-Hilter regime to the Syrian-Assad Regime of today. From the inhuman treatments to cold blooded murders. The sad part, of course, is that humanity promised not to let such thing happen and we are still seeing this today with Assad.

Below is the Summary of the book which relates mostly to the second part regarding the thoughts and science behind "the Search for Meaning". You will notice the obvious differences between Dr. Frankl method of therapy to all existing methods at the time including Freuds'.

Book Summary: the way of Zen

The first impression you get when you read the title is that this is going to be about practicing the Zen way.

However, it is mostly a historical documentary with few practical examples.

The first few chapters discuss how Zen started, its link to Buddhism, Taoism, Confuciusim and how it migrated all the way from India, China to Japan.

The latter chapters do give more practical insights but not enough to start practicing a specific routine on regular basis.

The historical references do offer an amazing look into the Asian culture, religion, thoughts, differences between Buddhist schools, their link or lack of to Chinese Taoism and Confuciusim.

Sean Runnette as narrator with his soothing and calming voice adds to the content of the book to give a well-deserved ride into eastern philosophy.

For these reasons, I recommend this book as a starting point for anyone looking to learn about Zen, or for anyone already practices Zen and meditation to understand the origin of how it all started. 

Below is the summary with few personal quotes and ideas. This summary is different from previous titles it is usually much more compact. Here I found it compelling to add more descriptions to provide an intelligible understanding of the content.