We've ranked the best hinduism books using expert recommendations, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.
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Author
I read The Bhagavad Gita, which is something I wasn’t ready for before, but glad to finally understand. [source]
The “Tao Te King” by Lao Tzu probably resonated with me the strongest, but others like the “Art of War” by Sun Tzu, “Bhagavad Gita” or Zen Buddhist scriptures were also real eye-openers, even for a non-religious person like myself. [source]
The human world occurs in language so best get good at it! [source]
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Founder/Apple
One book in particular stayed with Jobs his entire life, and Isaacson noted that it was the only book Jobs had downloaded on his iPad 2: “Autobiography of a Yogi,” “the guide to meditation and spirituality that he had first read as a teenager,” Isaacson writes, “then re-read in India and had read once a year ever since.” [source]
CEO/Salesforce
If you haven't read it, and if you want to understand Steve Jobs, it's a goood idea to dip into this book. [source]
One of the more impactful books for me when I was living down in the jungle and experiencing more of the deeper reflections through the medicine space. [source]
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Recommended by Caterina Fake.
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CEO & Co-Founder/AngelList
So good that it may as well be non-fiction. [source]
Love this book. [source]
He says, 'Love is stronger than hate. Soft is stronger than hard. Water is stronger than stone.' [source]
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Recommended by David Allen.
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Former USA President
According to the president’s Facebook page and a 2008 interview with the New York Times, this title is among his most influential forever favorites. [source]
CEO/Apple
I have two books going right now: One is the Bobby Kennedy book “Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon,” by Larry Tye that just came out. The other is quite an old book. It’s a Gandhi book “Mohandas K. Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth” that I got interested in because we went to the Gandhi museum when we were in India recently. I tend to like nonfiction and particularly reading about people and how they lived and how they fought, and what motivated them and their philosophy and so forth. [source]
A profound read. [source]
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Recommended by William Dalrymple.It’s one of the world’s great myths, an epic poem. It’s eight times the length of the Bible, one of the great works of literature of mankind. I came to it via the Peter Brook film, and read the script subsequently, and it is every bit as good as it’s made out to be. A very rare thing. It has a sort of Shakespearian ambiguity; you feel as much for the baddies as for the goodies. No one is pure. The bad guys aren’t entirely bad, the good guys aren’t entirely good. It’s brilliantly done, and the most gripping story ever told. [source]
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10Founder/Apple
In late 1972, Jobs had just started at Reed College, an elite liberal arts school in Portland, Oregon. He started doing lots of LSD and reading lots of books about spirituality. [source]
Changed countless lives. [source]
Travis Brewer said this is one of his most-recommended books. [source]
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Founder/The Chopra Foundation
In the book The Untethered Soul, Michael A. Singer takes you step-by-step through the process of Gyana, the yoga of the Intellect, to the Source. Moreover, he does it with elegant simplicity. Read this book carefully, and you will get more than a glimpse of eternity. [source]
Founder/StockPickr
Michael moved to an empty patch of forest, set up his trailer, and started to meditate in the early 70s. He surrendered to whatever happened in his life. Well...what ended up happening is that he created a multi-billion dollar company. His book is about the spiritual beauty of surrender. And how that can go hand in hand with financial success. I was so astonished by the book that I contacted him and flew down to Florida and stayed several days in his “compound” and interviewed him about his success. I re-read the book at least once every few months. [source]
Investor & Author
East is East and West is West, but Michael A. Singer bridges these two great traditions in a radiant treatise on how to succeed in life from our spiritual quest to our everyday tribulations. Freud said that life was composed of love and work. With great eloquence, wit, and compelling logic, Singer’s brilliant book completes this thought by showing them to be two poles of the same selfless devotion. [source]
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Recommended by Kevin Lamping and Kyle Russell.Not a business book, but *The Book* is one that I can say shines out among the other stars. It's hard to pick a book that's had the most impact on me, because they always have some effect. But there was something so calming, so reassuring about *The Book* that really helped me in a time of lots of self-doubt. I know this is supposed to focus on less "spiritual" books, and I'm not a religious guy, but I really enjoyed the notions put forth by *The Book*. Watts, the author, has some really profound thinking, and his writing guides you through Eastern thought for Western thinkers. I highly recommend this book for anyone searching for answers to the unknown. [source]
Book 20 Lesson: Distinction is not separation. To understand something, you must also understand its relationships with other parts of the environment or context around it. https://t.co/DB453aY565 [source]
13This book was recommended by Antonio when asked for titles he would recommend to young people interested in his career path. [source]
This is a very thin book but a mind-blowing one. In many ways it was part of my motivation to write my book. Alan Watts was a philosophical populariser. He called himself a “spiritual entertainer”, and went around the world giving lectures and writing popular books about Eastern philosophies such as Zen Buddhism and Taoism. This book is about non-dualism – the theory that in some sense, everything is one. It’s the principle encapsulated in the symbols of yin and yang. These days it is often seen as cheesy and New Age. But there’s vastly more to it than that. [source]
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Recommended by Chude Jideonwo.I haven’t read a book this compassionate and loving and warm before. I could feel Louise Hay reaching out to me and to all her readers, with a love that is easy to touch, and easy to embrace. https://t.co/znmOT744iX #ChudesBookClub #YouCanHealYourLife #MostHighlyRecommended https://t.co/OafIU4Vd0P [source]
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19This collection of the timeless teachings of one of the greatest sages of India, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, is a testament to the uniqueness of the seer's life and work and is regarded by many as a "modern spiritual classic".
I Am That preserves Maharaj's dialogues with the followers who came from around the world seeking his guidance in destroying false identities. The sage's sole concern was with human suffering and the ending of suffering. It was his mission to guide the individual to an understanding of his true nature and the timelessness of being. He taught that mind must recognize and penetrate its own state of being, "being this or that, here or that, then or now," but just timeless being.
Recommended by Bill Liao.The human world occurs in language so best get good at it! [source]
I love this book because for one thing it’s just a great story, well-told. A lot of books about Indian sages are written in such a way that they just send you to sleep . . . But Ishwerood is a great writer, and he’s smart. He explains lots of things about Hindu tradition and thought throughout. It’s actually a very informative read on that level. [source]
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Recommended by Big Sean and Haris Siddique.
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29 Recommended by The CEO Library Community (through anonymous form).One of the best 3 books I've read in 2019 [source]
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32 Recommended by Catherine Plano.A moment when something read in a book helped: The book from Dr. Bruce Lipton The Biology of Belief where he talks about how we SEE the world around us is a reflection of what is going on in our inner world (our mind). What we perceive or interpret as reality we project into our environment. The gold nugget here is… if you want to change your environment – change the way you see it, then change the meaning you give it and therefore you will change your behaviours and get the result that you are after. [source]
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In Paths to God, Ram Dass brings the heart of that system to light for a Western audience and translates the Gita's principles into the manual for living the yoga of contemporary life.
While being a guide to the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita, Paths to God is also a template for expanding our definition of ourselves and allowing us to appreciate a new level of meaning in our lives.
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The Dhammapada is one of the greatest psychological works ever written, and certainly one of the greatest before 1900. It is masterful in its understanding of the nature of consciousness, and in particular the way we are always striving and never satisfied. You can turn to it – and people have turned to it throughout the ages – at times of trouble, at times of disappointment, at times of loss, and it takes you out of yourself. It shows you that your problems, your feelings, are just timeless manifestations of the human condition. It also gives specific recommendations for how to deal with those problems, which is to let go, to accept, and to work on yourself. So I think this is a kind of tonic that we ambitious Westerners often need to hear. [source]
The Buddhist collection of sayings. And it begins with, basically, the idea that we create the world with our minds. [source]
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51I can say that my area, or my background involves a lot of practical work, traveling, learning and performing a big variety of sports, meeting new people and making contacts. But taking into account that being a young entrepreneur I wish I had known a lot of things before starting everything. Therefore, what I would suggest people to do is invest a lot in themselves professionally and personally, where I put a lot of emphasis on developing an equilibrium between mind, body and spirit. This equilibrium will help a lot in everything you do in your daily life. So these are the books I would recommend. [source]
Recommended by Nicholas Whyte.It’s one of my guilty pleasures. I can’t claim that Lord of Light is as great a work of literature as the other four, but I enjoy it hugely. The story is essentially about one of them who decides that this isn’t good enough and attempts to reinvent himself as the Buddha, and therefore attempts to cause a religious revolution on this planet. [source]
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59I’m reading more books at the same time. Guilty. Some of them are Tools of Titans - Tim Ferriss, My Berlin Child – Anne Wiazemsky, Women who Run with the Wolves - Clarissa Pinkola Estés. Tim is full of lessons to learn, remember & implement, I’ll see what the rest of the books will unfold. [source]
65The only hope for the Suryavanshis is an ancient legend: When evil reaches epic proportions, when all seems lost, when it appears that your enemies have triumphed, a hero will emerge.
Is the rough-hewn Tibetan immigrant Shiva, really that hero? And does he want to be that hero at all? Drawn suddenly to his destiny, by duty as well as by love, will Shiva lead the Suryavanshi vengeance and destroy evil?
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Recommended by Aubrey Marcus.
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Recommended by Morgan Spurlock.mentioned this title as the most-gifted or recommended book on page 223 of "Tools of Titans". [source]
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95"Tantric Yoga and the Wisdom Goddesses is an excellent introduction to the essence of Hindu Tantrism. The author discusses all the major concepts and offers valuable corrections for many existing misconceptions. He also introduces the reader to the core Tantric practices of meditation and mantra recitation, focusing on the ten Wisdom Goddesses". --Georg Feuerstein
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