What a Buddhist beginner needs
The beginner is not a specialist in Buddhism. A Buddhist beginners needs are much different. The beginner requires an integrated birds eye view of Buddhism. But then how do we present such a picture? Do we present the picture historically with a list of important developments listed chronologically? But how far can this really go in helping the beginner? This is a question that is difficult to answer.
There are so many books about Buddhism available these days so that the beginner is more than often overwhelmed and confused. Some of the books published are scholarly and highly technical. Other books are cobbled together by dilettantes or opportunists, some of whom merely provide a personal interpretation of Buddhism, one not based on anything the Buddha actually taught.
When I was a beginner, the one book that I was attracted to was John Blofelds, The Zen Teachings of Huang Po which, by the way, is still available. Looking back to that time, my beginners heart seemed to know what to look for. The integrated birds eye view of Buddhism that I was looking for was a spiritual one. I wanted to intuit what other Zen masters and the Buddha had discovered. I wanted to see for myself what they saw. As a beginner, the books that I was particularly drawn to helped me to gain a spiritual intuition.
I did not find Buddhist books worth my time that were written from a psychological, self-help perspective. These authors are using Buddhist meditation therapeutically so that the angst ridden denizens of the rat race who follow them, might become better and happier rats! These authors ignore much of what the Buddha taught. They are not interested in the core teaching of the Buddha which is spiritual in nature.
I have to agree with Heinrich Dumoulin who said, The mystical element is an essential part of Buddhism. In fact, it is so essential there can be no authentic Buddhism without it. Minus the mystical element Buddhism has nothing worthy to teach. It boils down to there is no s! elf or t ranscendent, all is impermanent and suffering, and death is emancipation. But this is precisely nihilism from which the West is presently suffering.
The only Buddhist books worth reading are those which give us a integrated birds eye view of Buddhism are those which contain the mystical element; in my case The Zen Teachings of Huang Po. In such books the beginner learns in a few pages that they have to have a deep and profound intuition of pure Mind or resign themselves to prithagjana (worldling) status which is Buddhism for those who cannot distinguish spiritual light from material darkness.
