Plex Player

Object location: Living room

Reading was always an important part of Sangharakshita's life, an activity from which he derived much enjoyment, inspiration and material for reflection. The deterioration of his eyesight in the early 2000s was a severe blow. After many experiments that might allow him to continue using his remaining vision, he eventually gave up and settled on listening to audiobooks. The Royal Institute for Blind People provided him with this Plex CD player on which he could play their discs and those that ‘Calibre’, a free audiobook library for people with a print disability, also regularly supplied. 

Over the five-and-a-half years he lived at Adhisthana he listened to a wide variety of material, including P.G. Woodhouse's 'Jeeves' series, which usually made him chuckle; Anthony Trollope's Barchester Chronicles; A. N. Wilson’s biography of Tolstoy, which he thought quite masterly; and Winifred Holtby's Poor Caroline and Mandoa! Mandoa!, both of which he thought excellent. 

Some time in his final year, Sangharakshita said that he thought he should educate himself a bit in science and economics. He was then ninety-three and it seemed admirable that he should still think in terms of educating himself and filling in the gaps in his knowledge. He started with Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, which he listened to twice, and followed it with Carlo Rovelli's Reality Is Not What It Seems. Dharmachari Kularatna, who had been reading and researching extensively on the subject of quantum physics, was astounded when he visited Sangharakshita in the last months of his life. He had no idea that Sangharakshita would be able to hold a serious and intelligent conversation on one of the most difficult subjects in the whole of science.