Escape from Evil vs. The Practice of Not Thinking

A Bridge of Ideas

What connects your profound 5-star appreciation for Ernest Becker's exploration of death denial in 'Escape from Evil' with your more moderate rating for Ryunosuke Koike's 'The Practice of Not Thinking' is a surprising shared pursuit of a profound liberation – the freedom from the tyranny of the ego. While Becker dissects the often-unconscious mechanisms of human self-deception driven by mortality's shadow, Koike, from a spiritual tradition, offers a pathway to dissolve that very self by cultivating a state of pure awareness, transcending the thinking mind that Becker brilliantly illustrates as the architect of our existential angst. You've gravitated towards two distinct, yet harmonizing, attempts to escape the self-made prison of fearful consciousness.