Review: Enlightenment by David Bognar

I was sent this book last year by the author and quickly lost it in a sea of to-do and travel prep. I wish now that I had paused to read it, or taken it with me (it’s a bit heavy though, printed on sturdy paper to support the beautiful photographs found ever seven or eight pages). But alas, now on the eve of new travels, I finally have the time (just a bit) to give it a proper looking-over and review.What is it?

It’s hard to categorize this book exactly. Obviously it’s about spirituality or religion in some form. The back matter suggests “Spirituality / Self-Help.” Its square cut, lovely photography, and pithy chapters make it a good coffee table book. By diving into the great questions of spirituality it makes good reading for anyone out there who would consider themselves a “seeker.” And the no-nonsense tone makes it equally palatable to folks who are pretty tired of the whole self-help genre, which seems to recycle the same superficial nonsense over and over and over (and OVER) again.

But it IS a self-help book. It has chapters on Fear and The Ego and Forgiveness, and it even comes with appendices with tests and tools to help change your life. In the chapter on Manifesting (Ugh.) Bognar refreshingly begins, “Pop spirituality is selling what people want to hear. While technically true, the fine print is usually omitted. If creating your own reality was as simple as advertised, most of us would have won the lottery by now.” Good. So I’d say Bognar is working within the self-help genre in order to change it. If you know someone (or it’s you!) who reads a lot of self-help and seems to spin in the same circles, this book may be the one to fix that.

Buddhist scholar nerds, too, will delight when they come across the fake Buddha quote on page 70:

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.”

(Loosely based on the first verse of the Dhammapada.)

And again, the photography is really gorgeous. So for those caught in the cycle of dead-end self-help literature and for folks who would like an appealing coffee table conversation starter, this is a great book. Bognar comes across in Enlightenment with direct simple advice which is neither trite nor esoteric. He writes like a regular guy who has put a lot of thought and energy into these questions and has some real wisdom to share. Part of that wisdom manifests in his actions, donating ten percent of profits to the Heifer Project and Amnesty International. As he says “Even if the world is a strikingly realistic movie, it still helps to have compassion for those suffering in a dream.”

Find out more at http://enlightenmentmadesimple.com/ (photos here).