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pravachan (Discourse)

The goal of a sevaka is create a person with character, morality, and ethics who can create serve others and lead a meaningful life. As part of this journey, my goal is to have books that every sevaka should read and internalize.

Primary

The core texts that every sevaka should read and internalize are:

  1. Tulsidas - Hanuman Chalisa
  2. Vyasa - Bhagavad Gita
  3. Patanjali - Yoga Sutras

These are foundational texts of the Sanatani and it provides a strong basis for understanding dharma, devotion, discipline, and liberation. If nothing else is read, these three texts should be read, reread, understood, and internalized.

Secondary

However, by limiting oneself to just these three texts we miss out on a lot of the great works of literature, philosophy, history, and statecraft that have shaped human civilization over the millennia. There are great texts from the West as well as the East that can help us build a more complete moral compass.

  1. Epic & Heroism
    1. Valmiki – Rāmāyaṇa
    2. Vyasa – Mahābhārata
    3. Vyasa – Bhāgavata Purāṇa
    4. Homer – Iliad
    5. Homer – Odyssey
    6. Virgil – Aeneid
  2. Liberation & Dharma
    1. Ramakrishna Paramahamsa – Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
    2. Swami Vivekananda – Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
    3. Vāsiṣṭha – Yoga Vāsiṣṭha
    4. Thomas à Kempis – Imitation of Christ
    5. Didymus Judas Thomas – Gospel of Thomas
    6. Upaniṣads
  3. Mind & Discipline
    1. Epictetus – Discourses / Enchiridion
    2. Cicero – On Duties
    3. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations
  4. Philosophy & Ethics
    1. Plato – Republic
    2. Aristotle – Nicomachean Ethics
    3. St. Augustine – Confessions
  5. Moral Cosmos / Integration
    1. Dante – Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso)
  6. Power, Statecraft & History
    1. Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War
    2. Kauṭilya – Arthaśāstra
    3. Plutarch – Lives
  7. Literature & Human Psychology
    1. Kālidāsa – The Recognition of Śakuntalā
    2. Rabindranath Tagore – Gora
    3. Shakespeare – Hamlet
    4. Shakespeare – King Lear
    5. Shakespeare – Macbeth
    6. Shakespeare – The Tempest
    7. Dostoevsky – The Brothers Karamazov
    8. Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment
    9. Tolstoy – War and Peace
    10. Tolstoy – Anna Karenina
    11. Gabriel García Márquez – 100 Years of Solitude