How to Human:
Do you like books? Do you like reading books and then talking to your friends about them? We have we got a treat for you!
Every Wednesday at 7 PM, join us for How to Human: An Eight Limbs Book Club.
Together we’ll explore what it means to be human. How should we live? What is the self? Why do we suffer? What does it mean to be free? What do we owe one another—and the world around us?
How to Human is our way of exploring those questions through yoga, Buddhism, philosophy, neuroscience, social justice, ecology, literature, and more. We'll read ancient texts alongside modern voices, put very different ideas into conversation, and see what they might have to teach us about the strange, messy, wonderful business of being alive.
An Eight Limbs Book Club
LeVar Burton approved. Probably. Don’t ask him.
Oh, also, it’s free. No need to sign up or book a class. Anyone can join!
Svadhyaya, the fourth of the five Niyamas (ethical guidelines) in Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras, means “self-study.” How to Human is svadhyaya in book-club form: a year of reading, questioning, and looking a little more closely at ourselves and the world we inhabit. 12 months, 12 books, 12 big questions about life and how best to live it.
Svadhyaya In Practice
The books!
Book #2: Why Buddhism is True
by Robert Wright
What if the way we experience reality is… kind of a trick? In Why Buddhism Is True, Robert Wright takes a skeptical, science-meets-Buddhism look at the mind’s favorite hobbies: wanting things, avoiding things, making up stories, and generally convincing us that our thoughts are facts.
We’ll explore what Buddhism has to say about seeing through those mental habits—and whether understanding how our minds work can actually help us see the world (and ourselves) a little more clearly. No incense required.
Join us October 14th at 7 PM to discuss Chapters 1-5! 🤓
The Question: Can We See Clearly?
Book 3: The Upanishads (selected)
Question: What is Reality?
Book 4: Being You by Anil Seth
Question: What is The Self?
Book 5: The Body is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor
Question: What Does the Body Carry?
Book 6: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Question: What is Interconnection?
Book 7: The Dhammapada
Question: What Do We Do With Suffering?
Book 8: Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Marie Brown
Question: Can Practice Change the World?
Book 9: All We Can Save edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katharine K. Wilkinson
Question: What Do We Owe the Future?
Book 10: The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali
Question: What is Liberation?
Book 11: How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
Question: Where Does Our Attention Belong?
Book 12: A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
Question: What Makes Life Worth Living?
Previous Reads:
Book #1: The Bhagavad Gita
The Question: How Should We Live?
The Bhagavad Gita is boils down to a long conversation about what to do when life gets complicated and there isn't an obvious right answer. Arjuna is facing a terrible choice, and Krishna spends 18 chapters talking him through duty, desire, action, meditation, devotion, and what it means to know yourself. The big takeaway? Do the thing you're here to do, care about it, but don't let your need for a particular outcome run the show.
For us, the Gita's answer to How Should We Live? came down to something like: show up, do your best, give a shit, work selflessly, for the benefit of the world around you and without attachment to the results of your actions, and let go of the parts you can't control. Easier said than done, obviously. But maybe that's why we're still talking about it a couple thousand years later.