This is a survey book — focused on serving up a lot of information and doing it in a friendly tone with storytelling and pauses for practice. Salguero’s PhD is not in religion but in the history of medicine, and he’s developed an expertise in all healing modalities from the East. His previous book, Buddhish, was also a survey — of “the twenty most important Buddhist ideas” — and we gave it a 2022 “Best Spiritual Book of the Year” award.
Salguero proposes to handle “the entire range of Asian spiritual ideas and practices as a menu of options,” encouraging the reader: “You will make up your own mind about what works for you.”
In chapter 1, Salguero introduces himself. In chapter 2, he surveys the terrain: Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Jainism — their histories, texts, and major teachers, as well as forms of meditation such as TM, Zen, vipassana, and mindfulness.
Chapter 3, “Core Practices for Health and Wholeness,” is where things really start to hum. Breathing, grounding, and “taking care” all receive close attention. Specific spiritual practices, gleaned from the traditions, are offered in text boxes. There are two, for instance, for “basic grounding” — one from yoga and one from tai chi.
Other chapters are devoted to nondual perception, the heart, and the “energy body.”
I do wish they had chosen a different title for this book, a different metaphor. Because “A lamp unto yourself” is used as a counter to how Salguero apparently views western religion, from which the famous verse of the Book of Psalms comes: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” Because he assures readers, “I will never ask you to dim your own light,” supposing that western religion is all about that. It isn’t; read the mystics. Nevertheless, this is a valuable book.
