{"id":27045,"date":"2020-11-01T13:28:39","date_gmt":"2020-11-01T19:28:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=27045"},"modified":"2020-10-31T19:32:01","modified_gmt":"2020-11-01T00:32:01","slug":"book-report-yogas-devotional-light-by-julian-lynn-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/01\/book-report-yogas-devotional-light-by-julian-lynn-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: <i>Yoga&#8217;s Devotional Light<\/i> by Julian Lynn (2017)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/yogasdevotionallight.jpg\" width=\"200\" alt=\"Book cover\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"4\">It seems like it took me a lot longer to read this book than it did.  As you might remember, gentle reader, I bought this book along with two others (<em><a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/27\/book-report-divine-fruit-by-julian-lynn-2017\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Divine Fruit<\/a><\/em> and <em>Four Gates to Health: Eastern Ideas and Techniques for Vital Living<\/em>) <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/20\/good-book-hunting-may-11-and-19-2019-abc-books\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">last May at an ABC Books book signing<\/a>.  I read the collection of poetry soon after I bought the books, and I am pretty sure that I started this book in the beginning of June last year.<\/p>\n<p>It has the word <em>devotional<\/em> right in the title, and that&#8217;s what it is: A Hindic yoga-based devotional with 365 entries ranging from a couple sentences to a couple of pages.  Each is designed to make you think, to let go, and perhaps, if you&#8217;re an active yoga practitioner, something to think about when you&#8217;re sitting.  Although in Buddhism, you&#8217;re supposed to try to empty your mind as you sit, perhaps you&#8217;re allowed to think in yoga.  Or maybe these are things to think about at other times.  <\/p>\n<p>The daily bits range from stories about people she meets and how they inspire her to simple little aphorisms about recognizing beauty around you in everyday things.  Some are a bit twee, and some of the stories seem a bit self-congratulating about helping others.  <\/p>\n<p>At any rate, as I mentioned, it took me a while to read it.  Partly because it&#8217;s typeset in an italic font, which slows one down when it comes to reading.  Perhaps that&#8217;s the intent.  The other was that I was not doing it in a steady day-by-day fashion&#8211;I would go in read a couple of days&#8217; worth of these devotions to end a night of reading fiction for a couple days, and then I would set it aside for a while, and then I would read a couple more.<\/p>\n<p>I enjoyed it and grokked it a bit more last year when I started it.  Looking back, I really haven&#8217;t steeped myself in Buddhist and Hindu thought much this year&#8211;maybe they haven&#8217;t spoken to me following a year of losses.  As I finished it over the last couple of weeks, though, the message did not speak to me as much.<\/p>\n<p>So I probably enjoyed it overall more than the poetry and probably more than I&#8217;ll enjoy the nutrition book when I get to it.  Perhaps I would have enjoyed it and gotten more out of it in a more receptive frame of mind.  <\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It seems like it took me a lot longer to read this book than it did. As you might remember, gentle reader, I bought this book along with two others (Divine Fruit and Four Gates to Health: Eastern Ideas and Techniques for Vital Living) last May at an ABC Books book signing. I read the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27045"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27046,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27045\/revisions\/27046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}