Reading, watching movies, listening to audio books and music is a great way to look at the world through different eyes, while sipping tea on a comfortable sofa.

Online Resources

Invitation to World Literature, The Bhagavad Gita: This 30min video introduces The Bhagavad Gita, the most famous section of the great ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharata. Life and death, duty and desire are all explained by Krishna, the creator god.

Literature

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse: On of the first books arriving in the west, describing the live and teachings of the Buddha. Beautiful language. Read it – if you can – in German.

Bhagavad Gita, A New Translation by Stephen Mitchell: A modern, poetic translation of the Gita.

The Bhagavad Gita (Classics of Indian Spirituality) by Eknath Easwaran: This was my first book on the Gita. I loved it. Each chapter starts with an introduction into the philosophical concepts, which makes it much easier to understand what Arjuna and Krishna are really talking about.

Movies

Enlighten Up! by Kate Churchill: Documentary of a journalist who agrees to find out if 6 month of intensive Yoga will help him to understand what “spirituality” could actually mean. Contains many interviews with famous Yoga Gurus.

How Art Made the World (2006) by Nigel Spivey and David Attenborough: Why does our world look like it does? That great modern mystery is spectacularly unraveled in this international landmark series and epic quest across five continents and 100,000 years.

Philosophy

The Philosophy Book by Will Buckingham: A great collection of a lot of different points of view. Nicely illustrated!

Status Anxiety by Alain De Botton: A great book explaining how meritocracy changed the way we look at the world.

Yoga

Storytime Yoga – The Treasure in Your Heart by Sydney Solis: A collection of multicultural, interfaith stories to teach children and adults universal wisdom.