Jan

Very inspiring, straight to the point!

Revisado: 05-21-24

Absolutely loved listening to this book! Ajahn Chah's communication of the Dharma is direct and often challenging in a way that pushes one out of one's comfort zone.

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Wonderful story!

Revisado: 08-21-22

The story is very well written and depicts the life of the great poet Li Bai in a very intimate manner while at the same time giving the listener a sense of a wider historical and cultural backdrop. Very inspiring and made even more interested in Chinese poetry and just poetry in general. Thank you for the great work!

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A brilliant exposition of Buddhist teachings

Revisado: 02-16-22

The core Buddhist teaching or set of teachings of the Noble Eightfold Path were explained in a very straightforward and thoughtful way. Totally recommend!

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Interesting content with some sensationalist take

Revisado: 12-04-21

I found the content very interesting and informative. One one hand, it was fascinating to learn how languages are born, expand, and eventually decline. On the other hand, the narrator often comes across as arrogant and conceited. His sensationalist claims like the one that Ukrainian and Russian are the same language (I stidied Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian and I can tell that Ukrainian is much much closer to Polish than to Russian) made me doubt the credibility of the remaining content of the course.

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Very insightful and practical

Revisado: 12-04-21

Listening to this book felt more like listening to a good friend telling a captivating story rather than listening to an 'audiobook'. The material and practical suggestions described in the book helped me to practice lucid creaming better and what's more imporatant showed how to use it for spiritual development. It has also, quite unexpectedly helped me in dealing with occassional insomnia!

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Brilliant and captivating

Revisado: 12-04-21

Listened to this audiobook twice already and will probably listen again in a couple of years time!:) It's fascinating to follow the author through many twists and turns of both his life and the historical events he was living through. It's hard to imagine how someone growing up in the suburbs of London and conscripted during the WWII would become a homless spiritual wonderer in India and eventually live for many years as a Buddhist monk at the foothills of the Himalayas!

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Imaginative and very accessible

Revisado: 12-04-21

Very interesting content from a perspective of someone who had a first hand experience living in Asia. It was great to have various intellectual / spiritual / literary figures placed within a wider context and having their works elaborated and well summarized. Small personal stories and remarks like the one about 忘年交 (friendship where age is forgotten) convey a flavor of a different culture that would be hard to explain otherwise.
It is also one of the very few places where I've encountered a very sober picture of Mohandas Ghandi. And maybe what's more important is the mentioning of Ghandi's contemporary Babasaheb Ambedkar (who unlike Ghandi strongly oposed the disturbing caste system).
Thank you for a wonderful series of lectures Dr. Hardy!

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Interesting and engaging lectures about Africa

Revisado: 03-14-21

Probably one of my most favorite courses from the Teaching Company so far. The three things that made this course stand out for me are the following:

1) Professor combined historical / geographical / socioeconomic knowledge about Africa with his personal experiances on the continent. This made the lectures esier to relate to and more interesting overall. It's also quite obvious to me that Professor is very passionate about the continent and its inhabitants (e.g. he mentioned that in his will he wants his ashes to be spread at Victoria Falls or his experience of living in Zambia)

2) Various aspects of African history were analyzed from a multidisciplinary perspective which, in my view makes it easier to form a more objective opinion about the matters presented.

3) The narration is slowly pased with a lot of attention to details (some may find it a bit pedantic but I liked it:)

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A very interesting course

Revisado: 01-30-21

The lecturer is evidently very knowledgeable and passionate about the subject. As a Londoner I really enjoyed imagining lives of those who arrived in London and lived here at different periods in the city's history. I don't think I'll ever be able to look at St Paul's Cathedral or the Tower of London as before (seeing them just as part of furniture:)
I'd just make one suggestion: I think taking a course on wider British history beforehand would provide more context to these lectures and make them even more interesting.

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A lot of inaccurate and misleading information

Revisado: 01-24-21

Overall the story is quite interesting but the lecturer focused more on the development of Russian mentality and philosophy.
When in comes to history itself, the course contains some significant inaccuracies. For instance, stating that the history of Kyivan Rus' (a loose federation of East Slavic and Finno-Ugric peoples in Europe) is the same as history of Russia is just shocking! And, the use of terms like 'Belarussians' (instead of 'Belarusians') or 'Kiev' (instead of 'Kyiv') is indicative either of a narrow historical perspective or an adoption of a pro-Russian imperialist political position which in both cases undermines lecturer's credibility.

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