Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics for a New Millennium

Recommended by Matt Liebmann, Peabody Professor of American Archaeology and Ethnology

I picked it up in my first trip to Southeast Asia in 2000. It was my first exposure to Buddhist thought and philosophy. I picked it up in a bookstore in Bangkok and found it to be simultaneously very enlightening and very profound.

I go back to it because it’s the kind of book where I read a sentence or two, or maybe a paragraph at most, and I must mark the page, put it down and think about what I’ve read. I’ll read it in short doses because I always find new things to think about.

In that book, in particular, the Dalai Lama says that he’s not trying to convert people or demonstrate that Buddhism is the right way; he’s just laying out what he sees as logical ways to live our lives — observations that are often very profound. It helps me think about how the world works and how it should work, and how I could help to make it work better.