Rick Santorum

First, the tired phrase “Pro-Life.”  For Santorum and his ilk this means you oppose abortion as vehemently as you oppose witchcraft, anti-Americanism, oral sex, and any number of a long list of unforgiveable crimes.  So, if a woman gets raped, it is not pro-life to say she should be allowed to take a morning after pill to rid her body of the smaller than pin-sized cluster of cells embedded in her womb which, in the absence of preventative mesures, will evolve into the child of the man who desecrated her body.  Keep in mind that if we stuck those cells (the zygote) into a petri dish you would not be able to see them with the unaided eye.  But this is what it means–in this case at least–to be pro-life: you value a non-sentient (because it has no nervous system) couple of cells more than the traumatized, humiliated whole human being before you.

On the other end of the spectrum, being pro-life means saying that intact dilation and extraction of a fetus–aka partial-birth abortion–is murder, and with this I wholly agree.  Watch a video of the procedure online and you will be appalled.  Unless the mother’s death in conjunction with delivery is imminent I cannot see why anyone would want to perform such a procedure, or why it is legal.  So on this note I am with the Santorums of the world.

So what does this make me?  Am I pro-life or pro-choice?  As Fox News is so fond of saying: You decide!  The point is, I don’t give a shit about the labels, pro-life or pro-choice.  The issue is one of compassion, after all, and not of labels or ideology.  Compassion requires sensitivity and intelligence; compassion understands nuance.  The black-and-white world of Santorum and Co. is alien terrain for a worldview that really tries to act compassionately.  This is the problem with much of the religious culture of America: it views reality through the binary lenses of light and dark (right and wrong), but the world is a grey zone that demands careful and considered choice.

If you don’t believe me, follow Santorum’s “morality” to its bitter end.  He is unwaveringly ”pro-life,” but this pro-life stance does not cause him to question the US military budget, which at current levels comprises 40-45% of the world’s military spending.  We are the leading developer and manufacturer of life-destroying machines, the leading exporter, and we do much more than simply “defend” ourselves with those weapons we do not sell–we use them to invade and dominate other countries.  (If you question this assertion, I would ask you review the American record of the past century as regards armed interventions in other countries: no nation comes close to us in the number and extent of such operations.)  Santorum does not and will not question the American military posture in the world.  He cannot, because he–like the overwhelming majority of his political colleagues–does not think, he merely asserts on the basis of his pre-programmed ideology.

On a different note…

What does it mean to be pro-life when you have no problem stripping environmental protection regulations?  What does it mean to be pro-life when you make statements like “I’ve never supported even the hoax of global warming” (said by Santorum on NBC’s Meet the Press Feb. 7, 2012) or “We were put on this Earth as creatures of God to have dominion over the Earth, to use it wisely and steward it wisely, but for our benefit not for the Earth’s benefit” (said at an event the day before)? 

So not only is Santorum, who is Catholic, rejecting the Catholic Church’s position on global warming, he is also pretending to have a degree of scientific expertise and judgment that allows him to discard what has been scientific consensus for several decades now–that a) the planet is warming with unprecedented speed and b) human activity is the prime cause of this warming.  (If you don’t think it is the scientific consensus, please start regularly reading cutting edge science publications like Science and Nature.  The people publishing there don’t seem to be much in doubt.)  What’s next for Santorum?  Will he show up at a string theorist’s conference and tell the assembled physicists that as a description of matter at the subatomic level string theory is bunk, that it doesn’t have a place in his view of Creation?  Or will he come out with a press release informing physicists, astrophysicists, cosmologists et al that they’ve been wasting their time, that the genesis of everything has already been adequately described in Genesis and the world is really just six thousand years old?  (Oh, he already did that…)  

What this all means of course is that for the sake of political ideology and campaign donors (the oil industry et al), it is okay to poo-poo the people who actually know something about Life, the Universe and Everything–about ecosystems, biodiversity, climatology, forest preservation, the cosmos, etc–to trash the land, water and air, to continue relying on fuel sources that are toxifying and degrading our world, all so that Planet Earth can serve us. 

I leave you with some sad numbers.  Of the various following types of animals that are known and whose populations have been sufficiently evaluated, the following percentages are threatened or endangered by pollution, habitat loss, predation and, yes, climate change: 

• 20% of mammals
• 31% of amphibians
• 12% of birds
• 10% of fish
• 8% of reptiles
• 50% of invertebrates

Like many other politicians and regular citizens, Rick Santorum is pro-life, but does he really care about the living?

Dodo Bird (RIP 1662)

Sources:

• Earth’s Endangered Species
• Animal Planet
• The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species

I can sincerely say this is an excellent book but that it is not the correct book for me at this time.   Books tend to be time sensitive documents, meaning if you read one at the “right” time, it can light fireworks under your butt, while if you had read the same book at an earlier or later time of your life, you might toss it aside and pick up instead the latest copy of Time (pun intended).  My experience with what is probably Kornfield’s most widely read book is somewhere in between, but again, this may be on account of personality or timing.  Anyway, having read the book and announced this caveat, I’ll plunge in to my review.

First let’s nail down what the book is about, because it’s not immediately clear by looking at the table of contents.  The title comes from an oft-quoted passage from Carlos Castaneda’s first book, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge:

For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart.  There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length.  And there I travel looking, looking, breathlessly…

The spiritual life is not just a path, but a forest, with infinite numbers of highways and byways and small trails, and if you’re not careful, or don’t have a good guide, it is easy to end up at a dead-end or some bad place you never intended.  This book is meant as a guide or map to this terrain.

Its range is necessarily vast, covering everything from the important questions of one’s life (“Did I love well?”) to making peace with oneself (“dealing with our stuff” as Daniel Ingram would say), and initial attempts to train the wayward mind (the “puppy” as Kornfield puts it).  Salient topics such as the stages of insight and the perennial debate of True Self versus No-Self are considered from Kornfield’s typically ecumenical and gracious standpoint.  The particular issues of Westerners dealing with abuse, codependence, and self-loathing are tackled, and the positive role psychotherapy can play in unwinding these issues is also discussed.  Karma is defined and the necessary role of compassionate, helpful work as “meditation-in-action” advocated. 

Kornfield is one of the godfathers of the American meditation scene, and his vast experience, sensitive expression and insight are abundantly on display.  It is not surprising then that while I would heartily recommend it as an introduction or preliminary text to one’s sadhana, it also bears reviewing at later stages of development.  In other words, this is neither a book for beginners, intermediates, or advanced students of the Way; it’s for everyone, since everyone at all times is running into at least one or two issues discussed in the book.

Quality-wise Kornfield’s insights, suggestions and clarifications are impeccable.  He is a very human and down-to-earth guide, one who sees beyond the starry-eyed ideals of perfection many traditions advocate (cf. Ingram’s Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha for more on this), and while the Theravada is his “home base” so to speak, his vision is all-embracing as regards the varieties of approaches one can take to the contemplative path.  I would recommend this book even to dyed-in-the-wool Christians—maybe an evangelical or two… (but maybe not)—without hesitation.  I don’t see how it could fail to inform or advise someone, regardless of where they are.  In the end, sincerity and a desire to learn are what count.

Despite all these good points, I found myself constantly irritated by Kornfield’s writing.  It is, to say the least, a little on the saccharine side; nay, sometimes it went down like seven packs of Splenda in my coffee.  There’s a little too much “wisdom and compassion,” “heart,” and “joy,” “being” and Buddha-nature here, and in Kornfield’s world everyone is a “master”: a Zen Master (with both words capitalized no less, like it’s a job title or something), a meditation master, a spiritual master, or just plain master.  I’m sorry, but not everyone can be a master.  If you’ve been on retreat for ten or more years or you’re a natural-born genius, you might qualify, but these sorts are rare; the word is overused.  (Besides, I don’t want a master; I want a teacher or guide or good friend, but I digress…)  To make a long story short: Kornfield is heavy on the “fufu jargon,” and for a spiritual curmudgeon like me it just doesn’t fly.

This kind of writing is unabashedly “popular,” politically correct, and “nice.”  The above is symptomatic of this, but his willingness to water down passages quoted from other (especially traditional) sources, to massage them into accordance with his way of presentation, also points to this tendency.  (Not to mention irritates the hell out of me!)  I groaned at one point (page 74) where, when quoting don Juan (from Castaneda) Kornfield felt it necessary to stick the word “spiritual” in front of the word “warrior,” as if without we might all think he was advocating something he clearly wasn’t.  Two pages later an even worse example of this sort of heavy-handed editorializing reared its ugly head.  In Kornfield’s words, the Buddha said:

Just as the great oceans have but one taste, the taste of salt, so too there is but one taste fundamental to all true teachings of the Way, and this is the taste of freedom (76). 

The source is Udana 5:6, where in the original Pali it says “Just as the great ocean has one taste, the taste of salt, so too this Dhamma and Discipline have one taste: the taste of freedom.”  Clearly, the Buddha was describing his teaching, not anyone else’s, but Kornfield, liking the passage, “adjusted” it to fit his message.  I think you can see why this sort of thing, indulged in on a regular basis, would rub some people the wrong way.

So, the brilliant and witty, the philosophically profound and the airy-fairy—it’s all here and much more.  I will leave you with some sage advice on this book from Daniel Ingram, who called A Path With Heart a “masterwork”:

Only major problem is that is it so nicely written and gentle you might not realize how hard hitting it is. Assume it is very hard hitting and technical despite its friendly tone and you will get more out of it.            

 My Amazon rating: 4 stars

This is not your daddy’s Dharma book!  (Your mommy’s neither.)

The differences start with the cover, and no, I’m not talking about the flaming dude with a chakra wheel for his heart.  I’m talking about the author’s title: Arahat.  Now, Ingram does have a regular title–he’s a medical doctor (M.D.) specializing in emergency medicine–”Everything from hangnails to heart attacks” he told me in a phone conversation.  As you ought to know by now (if you read this blog regularly), an arhat (there are variant spellings) is one who has completed the Buddhist path as laid out in the Pali Suttas.  “Done is what had to be done and there is no more of this to come!” goes the standard refrain by those who have attained such.  Clearly Ingram is, as the suttas say, ready to “roar his lion’s roar” in the spiritual marketplace.  He spells the differences out further in the ”Forward and Warning,” wherein he puts you on notice he does not intend to write a “nice and friendly dharma book”; you know you’re in for it when an author tells you he hails from a lineage of “dharma cowboys, mavericks, rogues and outsiders” (16). 

That said, the books proceeds normally enough through part one.  Ingram begins his discussion of dharma in terms of the traditional “three trainings”: morality (sila), concentration (samadhi) and wisdom (paññā).  I especially found his discussion of morality illuminating.  Going considerably beyond the standard list of things we shouldn’t do (the five precepts etc), he says 

Training in morality has as its domain all of the ordinary ways that we live in the world.  When we are trying to live the good life in a conventional sense, we are working on training in morality.  When we are trying to work on our emotional, psychological and physical health, we are working at the level of training morality…  Whatever we do in the ordinary world that we think will be of some benefit to others or ourselves is an aspect of working on this first training (24-5).   

He goes on to point out that while absolute mastery of concentration and wisdom (insight) is possible, total mastery in the worldly sphere of ethics is not.  And so he calls it, rightly, the “first and last training.” 

Chapter 4 (oddly, the chapters are not numbered, only the parts) lays significant emphasis on seeing the three characteristics (tilakkhana) of phenomena–impermanence (anicca), suffering (dukkha) and not-self (anatta); indeed, this is a fundamental tenet of Ingram’s approach to meditation, derivable in part from his experiences in the Mahasi tradition which has a similar emphasis.  His discussion of anatta is clarifying: it means, simply, that when phenomena are investigated closely (as in vipassana), no agent, controller, or subject can be discovered; the things of the world are, in effect, ownerless.  This, too, is a significant part of Ingram’s dharma discussion, and comes up repeatedly later in the book.   Ingram also discusses the spiritual faculties, the factors of enlightenment, and the four truths. 

Most of the above can be found in other dharma books.  Where things really start to get interesting is in the section entitled “Practical Meditation Considerations.”  Here Ingram’s wealth of experience in formal retreat centers comes to the fore and makes for extremely informative, even entertaining, reading.  For example, he lists the things retreatants tend to get neurotic about, such as wake-up bells (“too quiet, too loud, someone forgets to ring it at all”), roommates (“those that snore, smell, are noisy or messy, etc.”), as well as “issues of corruption, romances, cults of personality, affairs, crushes, miscommunications, vendettas, scandals, drug use, money issues, and all the other things that can sometimes show up anywhere there are people” (94)–meaning everything and anything! 

This is a section that demands multiple readings.  Not because it’s in any way difficult, just because the nuts and bolts of doing a retreat, of daily practice, are often the very things that defeat us.  I repeatedly found Ingram’s advice to be forthright, informed, and practical.  Many people, for example, get obsessed over posture, but Ingram says simply “we can meditate in just about any position we find ourselves” (96).   He notes, for example, how “Many traditions make a big deal about exactly how you should sit, with some getting paricularly macho or picky about such things” (97)–making me recall my experience in a Zen monastery in Japan.  He writes how the four postures of sitting, standing, walking, reclining each have plusses and minuses, the principle differences being in the energy level and effects on concentration.  He further discusses issues such as meditation objects, the critical role of resolve, and offers some very illuminating remarks on teachers.  One clearly gets the sense Ingram knows what he says from firsthand experience. 

The fireworks start in Part II, “Light and Shadows.”  Little lightning bolts–the sign of something controversial ahead–adorn several chapters.  This is where Ingram gets up on his soapbox.  Usually, I would say that in a bad way, meaning someone was just spouting.  But here, I think, what Ingram does, even if you want to call it spouting, is all to a very good point, and that is to draw attention to some of the unconstructive shadow sides of Buddhist spirituality in America.  For example, in the section entitled “Buddhism vs. the Buddha,” he criticizes the religious trappings the Buddha’s teaching–in its original form an applied psychology–has been buried under, and how Americans have contributed to rendering the master’s technology of awakening into dogma or comfort food.  

However, Ingram’s purpose here is not controversy.  He speaks also about having a clear goal, and encourages asking oneself questions like “Why would I want to sit cross-legged for hours with my eyes closed, anyway?”  It’s important you know what you’re seeking, after all, and Ingram hammers this point throughout the book.  (It was also one of the first questions he asked me in our phone conversation!)  This section also describes the critical difference between dealing with one’s “stuff”–i.e. the content of your life–and seeing the true nature of the phenomena that constitute that stuff.  For example, if you’re depressed because your significant other dumped you, trying to figure out why he/she did that to you is reflection on your “stuff,” but patiently observing the emotions of anger or depression as they arise and pass away–i.e. trying to see the fundamental characteristics of those experiences–is insight.  The difference here, as Ingram makes clear, is night and day.

Part III, “Mastery,” forms the heart of the book, and this is where Ingram’s starkly non-dogmatic, critical, and pragmatic intellect shows its best.  This is also the part most likely to offend and where it becomes clear that if you’re after spiritual pabulum, you’ve come to the wrong man.  Ingram is all about “states and stages,” about achieving exactly what the old dead masters achieved.  We each have our purposes in our spiritual lives–and he acknowledges this–but he is not looking to comfort or console anyone, or make things seem easier than they are.  Ingram’s vision of the Dhamma is, rather, very goal oriented and effort driven.  It is a path of achievement, of distinct and discernible attainments.  If your mentality does not incline toward this way of thinking and acting, now is the time to bail out!

This section reviews in great, perhaps unprecedented detail, three distinct subjects: the concentration jhanas (1-8), the progress of insight, and the multiplicity of models and definitions of enlightenment.  There is plenty here to make for argument, but also to educate, warn, coax and cajole.  In short, this is some of the most stimulating, revealing and educational dharma reading I’ve ever done.  You could read a hundred dharma books and still not come up with this stuff.  And while Ingram is not a particularly great (or even good) writer (more on this below), he is at times eminently quotable.  I can’t resist offering a few snippets here.  These give you a good idea of what you’re getting into with this book. 

You may have heard, for example, about those teachers who say “there is nothing to attain, nowhere to go, no one to get enlightened, your seeking is the problem.”  Or, even more intriguingly, that “you are already enlightened.”  You find these teachings in some Buddhist schools, J. Krishnamurti, Adi Da, and others.  Here’s Ingram’s take on this take on enlightenment:

[It's] like saying: you are already a concert pianist, you just have to realize it, or you already are a nuclear physicist, you just have to realize it…  [It's] like saying to a severe paranoid schizophrenic: you already are as sane as anyone and do not need to take your medicines and should just follow the voices that tell you to kill people, or to a person with heart disease: just keep smoking and eating fried pork skins and you will be healthy…or saying to a greedy, corrupt, corporate-raiding, white-collar criminal, Fascist, alcoholic wife-beater: hey, Dude, you are a like, beautiful perfect flower of the Now Moment, already enlightened (insert toke here), you are doing and not-doing just fine, like wow, so keep up the good work, Man (360).

I read this while on the train to work and enjoyed an unrestrained guffaw–several times!

However…to double back to my criticism of Ingram’s writing: he’s badly in need of an editor, and the people at Aeon Books let him down.  Ingram grossly overuses the word “that”–it’s one of the most overused words in the language, so he is not alone in the bad habit of thatting this and thatting that–and after a while it started grating on my sensitive literary nerves.  He also does not seem to know the difference between “phenomena” and “phenomenon,” and, on a different note,  sometimes comes off sounding rather immature.  There were occasions, too, where he went on unnecessarily about whatever, and a little more self-control would have helped the text out a lot.  Again…where were his editors?

But this is minor stuff, mere bitching on my part.  Ingram is actually a pretty fun read, and the book is outstanding and unique in so many ways, I/we can and should forgive him.  He has much wisdom to offer and we should be grateful for all the hard work he’s done on and off the cushion.  I leave you with one nugget of insight that stood out for me:

      When I think about what it would take to achieve freedom from all psychological stuff, the response that comes is this: life is about stuff.  Stuff is part of being alive.  There is no way out of this while you are still living.  There will be confusion, pain, miscommunication, misinterpretation, maladaptive patterns of behavior, unhelpful emotional reactions, weird personality traits, neurosis and possibly much worse.  There will be power plays, twisted psychological games, people with major personality disorders (which may include you), and craziness.  The injuries continue right along with the healing and eventually the injuries win and we die.  This is a fundamental teaching of the Buddha.  I wish the whole Western Buddhist World would just get over this notion that these practices are all about getting to our Happy Place where nothing can ever hurt us or make us neurotic and move on to actually mastering real Buddhist practice rather than chasing some ideal that will never appear (330).

You have your marching orders.

My Amazon rating: 5 stars

Do not be fooled by the page count.  This is a dense little book with lots of Pali outlining in detail the stages of meditation development originally described in Buddhaghosa’s work the Visuddhi Magga.  Its purpose is not to teach you how to meditate.  The assumption here is that you’ve already been given the instructions and are now in a position to put them into practice.  What the book describes are the results of that practice, from your first meeting with the bare phenomena of experience until the moment everything winks out of existence–i.e. nibbana (nirvana).   

I’m not going to attempt here to explain what the seven stages are–that’s the purpose of the book, after all.  What I will say is that if you are planning to take up vipassana (i.e. insight, or satipatthana) practice in a serious way, you need to read this book or some equivalent substitute.  In other words, it behooves the one who would travel in his own mind to get a map and to master it–to know the terrain–before traveling there.  Failure to do so is likely to result in confusion, disorientation, lost time and wasted effort, not to mention needless pain and suffering.  You should view this as what it is–an atlas of mental states to be experienced by those who drive the vehicle of insight. 

As a guide, the book is excellent.  It tells you in detail what you’ll encounter, along with the dangers, rewards, and tips on what needs to be done to keep up momentum and keep the goal in sight.  Do not look for scintillating prose or touchy-feely New Age fluff–it isn’t here.  This is hardcore, to be known, used, and–ideally–mastered.  The goal is to make this material your own, not to debate its merits as a “philosophy” book.  All the philosophy the West has produced will do less for you than will following this little guide.  The dialogues of Plato,  Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, the aphorisms of Nietzsche–none will give as much to you if you are willing to sit down and do the work this thin text recommends. 

That goes for me, too, by the way.

Other books and resources in a similar vein you should check out are: The Progress of Insight by Mahasi Sayadaw, Practical Insight Meditation, by Mahasi Sayadaw, Daniel Ingram’s talk at Brown University’s Cheetah House, Kenneth Folk’s writings on the progress of insight.  Use them all.

My rating: 5 out of 5

I confess I was less than rousingly impressed by this book.  While the author, Shabkar, was one of Tibet’s greatest yogi’s since Milarepa, very little of the text is actually from his hand. 

The book has three parts.  The first, the introduction, is the lengthiest at 46 pages.  It discusses something of the history and place of vegetarianism in traditional Tibet, contrasting the situation with Tibetans in exile and Buddhists in the West.  The main section of the introduction paints a portrait of Shakar himself.  I can only say he must have been an extraordinary character, living homeless much like the Buddha’s early disciples, but instead of hanging out in jungles he lived amid the cold and treeless mountain crags of Tibet. 

The intro then discusses the place of meat-eating in Buddhism.  The traditions drawn from here–as in Shabkar’s writings–are from the three major “turnings of the wheel,” i.e. shravakayana (Hinayana), Mahayana, and Mantrayana (i.e. Vajrayana, the Buddhism of the tantras).  Underpinning everything is the notion that, as diverse and often contradictory as they often are, the Buddha taught all these doctrines as part of a gradual, or graded, dispensation.  And so, according to the introduction…

…there exists a hierarchy of teaching, a scale of validity, according to which basic instruction is regarded as provisional, set forth according to need and superseded by higher, more demanding instruction to be expounded when the disciple is ready.  For Shabkar, as for all teacher of Tibetan Buddhism the instructions set forth on the Hinayana level are of vital importance in laying the foundations for correct understanding and practice.  But they are not final.  They are surpassed by the teachings of the Mahayana, just as, within the Mahayana itself, the sutra teachings prepare the way for, and are surpassed by, the tantra.  It is thus that the entire sweep of the Buddha’s teaching fits together in a harmonious ad coherent system, in which teachings that seem incomplete from the standpoint of a higher view are assigned an appropriate, preparatory position lower down the scale (16).

This view has prevailed throughout much of the Buddhist world for a long time, and is the result of various cultures (China, Tibet, etc) receiving diverse canons and texts, many of which originated in different periods of Buddhist history, while believing them all to represent the Buddha’s words.  Given the discrepancies and outright contradictions of outlooks and practices between the many texts, the approach above is hardly surprising if one assumes they all sprang from one man.  Shabkar certainly believed this, and no one can blame him.  It irks me, however, that contemporary scholars and practitioners persist in perpetuating this nonsense, given what we now know about the history of Buddhist texts.   For example, the Lankavatara Sutra, a widely quoted work that harshly condemns meat-eating, is assumed to be the Buddha’s own words, yet it is clearly a composite work, first translated into Chinese in 443 CE, though probably originating several hundred years earlier.  While its dating is tricky, not even its seed ideas can in any way be attributed to Shakyamuni or any of his disciples.  (See E.J. Thomas, The History of Buddhist Thought, pp. 230ff.)  Similar remarks can be made about every other Mahyanist sutra, not to mention the various, still later tantras. 

Following the above, the introduction discusses the notion of ”three-fold purity” in the Hinayana (meaning, the Buddha’s teachings in the Pali Suttas), where the Buddha enjoins monks not to eat any meat offering if they have “seen, heard or suspected” it to have been killed specifically for them.  This ordinance, totally understandable as applied to mendicant monks, becomes problematic, however, when applied to laity, and this really is the source of the confusion and debate about meat-eating among Buddhists.  The Mahayana and Mantrayana (tantric) perspectives on vegetarianism are also discussed. 

What bothered me most about the introduction–its moralising and lecturing quality, especially toward the end–got even worse in the second section of the book, entitled “The Faults of Eating Meat.”  This is a kind of compendium of Buddhist textual sources on the subject selected and arranged by Shabkar.  If one’s goal is simply to learn what Buddhists have said about meat-eating over the years, this section serves admirably.  If you are looking for well-reasoned, cogent arguments, look elsewhere.  Much of it is hellfire-and-brimstone preaching; apparently the Christians haven’t got anything on the Buddhists in this regard, sad to say.  Here’s an inspiring snippet:

It is written in the Sutra Describing Karmic Cause and Effect:

If you eat meat and chew on bones, you will lose your teeth!  If you eat intestines and the meat of dogs and swine, you will be reborn in an infernal state that is filled with filth.  If you eat fish after scraping off their scales, you will be born in the hell of sword-forests (77).

Very little of this section comes from Shabkar; he simply scoured sutras, tantras and commentaries and took whatever he could find to support his beliefs–a kind of eighteenth century Tibetan cut-and-paste creation. The third part of the book, however, is all Shabkar, though regrettably brief–only 28 pages out of the book’s 144!

Entitled “The Nectar of Immortality,” I found it a well reasoned, impassioned polemic against meat-eating.  The principal–and most persuasive–argument here can be summed up as “If there is no meat-eater, there will be no animal killer…” (101).  He discusses this idea at length, giving examples of how local monasteries, though themselves not involved in the act of butchery or animal killing, by their plentiful purchases of meat help to sustain the local meat industry. 

Which cuts quick to the bone, if you don’t mind the pun.  I once had a discussion with a friend on this subject, and he pointed out that I was hardly less guilty of the deaths of animals than the butcher himself since I basically employed the butcher to do the dirty work.  Indeed, I couldn’t escape the logic of it then, and readers will be hard pressed to miss Shabkar’s points.  This section of the book was easily the most rewarding and satisfactory, worth the rest combined.  While the book as whole was something of a disappointment, it gave me a bit of a sense of Shabkar the man and I look forward to reading his autobiography.  Perhaps I’ve found my patron saint.

My rating: 2.25 / 5.0

If you are going to read a book on diet, read this one.  The author, one of the most qualified people in the world to discuss the relationship between diet and health, was a lead scientist of the massive China Study, a two decades long look at diet and disease patterns in rural China.  More than 6,500 people in sixty-five counties participated.  To this day, the study is unmatched in its breadth.  To sum up, what they found amounted to a scathing indictment of animal based diets, whether in China or America or anywhere else. 

No doubt many people will try arguing with the conclusions, which are nothing less than a wholesale rejection of the standard American diet (SAD).  In place of our large quantities of meat and milk, processed sugars and denatured carbohydrates, Dr. Campbell argues for a whole grains, fruit and vegetables based diet, and demonstrates convincingly that such a diet is not only preventative of disease, but can actually reverse or ameliorate life threatening illnesses.  He supports this argument not only with the results of the China Study itself, but also with the findings of hundreds of other peer reviewed articles published in well-known scientific journals. 

The book is to an extent autobiographical in nature.  Dr. Campbell tells us about how he grew up on his family’s farm, eating–and enjoying–the typical hearty farm fare of bacon, sausages, eggs, milk, etc.  Then, early in his scientific career, while studying the conjoined effects of aflotoxin and various proteins, he noticed that rats ingesting lower quantities of protein did not succumb to the potent carcinogen.  This was the start of what became a life-long bucking against “established” knowledge that had assumed there was no relationship between diet and cancer; everyone had assumed it was “in the genes.”

The core of the book looks at several diseases of affluence and their relationship to diet, diseases such as heart disease, obesity, diabetes, common cancers (breast, prostate, bowel), autoimmune diseases, as well as others such as bone, kidney, eye and brain disorders.  All demonstrate significant linkage with diet, and all demonstrate significant treatability by diet.  A very short third section offers a guide to nutrition, basically a quick primer on how to live vegan and still get everything you need.  The final section of the book is the one most likely to cause people to gnash their teeth and groan, for here Dr. Campbell reveals the behind-the-scenes machinations of our government, corporations and scientific bodies as they scratch each others backs, work to maintain the status quo (an ignorant public), and do whatever it takes to maximize profits.  I found this section nothing short of infuriating, and realized that even the company I work for, a leading cancer research facility, is no different in its focus to develop drugs and devices that, while perhaps extending a few patients’ lives a few years, will exercise their most significant impact by enriching Big Pharma.

This book is a wake up call.  It’s the sort you want to tell people about, buy for your well-meaning but ignorant friends and relatives, and even put into practice.  I’ve considered and tried vegetarianism before; this book will likely prove the kick that sends me over the fence. 

Highly recommended!

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For a variety of reasons I’ve decided to dispense with my various book rating systems.  I’m just going to use the old Amazon-style five point system.

My rating: 5 stars 

If Walpola Rahula’s What the Buddha Taught introduced me to the thought of the early texts, this one introduced me to their practice.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get to it until I was already in Asia and losing some of my attraction for Zen.  Since I’d been reared on Sanskrit terminology, the existence of this other language (Pali) and its corpus remained somewhat hidden from me, despite my earlier exposure.  I remember the weird feeling just reading the world “satipatthana” gave me… 

Many of the compliments I paid to Rahula’s work I can pay to this one as well.  In fact, the two are even structured in a similar fashion–a dense yet lucid, non-sectarian exposition followed by an expertly translated and arranged set of selections from the suttas.  The chief difference lies in the more focused and practical thrust of this book.  If Rahula’s is for orientation, a gazeteer or general map, as it were, Nyanaponika’s is like the car you get in to travel to your destination.

The book’s focus is the Satipatthana Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 10), which is the same discourse as the Mahasatipatthana Sutta (Digha Nikaya 22) only minus the exposition of the four noble truths.  In effect, Nyanaponika’s little book is a commentary upon this great teaching.  The first chapter, “The Way of Mindfulness,” discusses the centrality of mental culture in the Buddha’s teaching, and places mindfulness (sati) at the heart of the practice of mental culture. 

Chapter two, “Mindfulness and Clear Comprehension,” is the critical part.  Here the notion of ”bare attention” is defined, and for those who are entirely new to meditation, this may be a difficult concept to wrap the head around precisely because it is not a concept.  The teaching of Right Mindfulness is described within the context of bare attention.  Clear comprehension (sampajañña), the second aspect of Right Mindfulness, is discussed in various ways per the sutta commentaries, such as awareness of what one is doing, the suitability of one’s actions, etc. 

Chapter three, “The Four Objects of Mindfulness,” dives into the discourse proper, examining the various bases or foundations of practice, the body (breath, postures, contemplation of disgust for the body, etc), feelings (i.e. what is felt or sensed internally and externally), mental states (sleepy, clear, distracted, etc) and mental objects (thoughts and emotions that arise and pass away). 

Chapter four attempts to counter charges that these practices are “coldly intellectual,” “dry,” or “indifferent,” charges that have at times been leveled at Theravadin teachings in general (though to be exact, these teachings are pre-Theravadin).  I have to confess I’ve always found such objections to the Pali teachings rather hard to understand.  They clearly derive from people armed and ready with preconceived ideological agendas who are eager to avoid any evidence to the contrary. 

The last two chapters of Nyanaponika’s exposition cover the Burmese satipatthana method (the Mahasi style of practice) and anapanasati, which is mindfulness of the breath, traditionally as it passes through the nasal passages.  Here you get detailed instructions for how to put everything you’ve learned into practice.  It must be noted that these are simply instructions on “how to”–they are not equivalent to having an actual teacher who will tell you what to expect, or what you should do if–god forbid–you actually get enlightened!  

Part II of the text is a translation with extensive notes of the Satipatthana Sutta.  I have only one bone to pick here, and that is with the translation of ekayano maggo in the first sentence of the third paragraph as “sole way,” as if satipatthana was the only way to nibbana.  Numerous translators have done this, but it has been pointed out by many others that a better translation of this phrase is “a road that goes one way” or has “one direction”–meaning that satipatthana is a path that leads inevitably toward a single goal.  Maurice Walshe, in his note to the passage (from The Long Discourses of the Buddha, p. 589, n. 626), points out even the commentary is confused about how exactly to interpret it.  Part III, “Flowers of Deliverance,” collects other passages from the suttas and even the Mahayana sutras that concern mental culture, with particular attention to satipatthana and its related concepts.

While the book can at times perhaps be faulted for a somewhat dated prose style, this is in no way to say its contents are dated.  It is throughout a clear and intellectually rigorous work, quite complete as regards its subject matter, and represents an excellent starting point for anyone interested in Buddhist meditation practice.

Measured by my patented Five Qualities Book Rating System (FQBRS)™ we have: 

1. Readability: 4
2. Clarity: 4.5
3. Import: 5
4. Insightfulness: 4.5
5. Uniqueness: 4.5

Combined score: 4.5

Amazon rating: 5

This is my last book review of the year. It will not be, however, the last review I do of something not on my Ultimate Buddhist Reading List.  There are still a half-dozen volumes hanging around on my shelves that I’ve read over the years I’d like to review, and when time and chance align, I’ll write up something on them too.  

This project of reading and reviewing is the biggest intellectual endeavor and commitment I’ve undertaken since I finished my novel (unpublished) back in 2007.  That was something I’d wanted to do for much of my life—I once aspired to be a fantasy novelist, by the way—but when I was a hundred thousand words into a second novel depression hit and I understood intuitively I would not be able to continue.  Life had kicked me in the gut and I had no choice but to change.  A complete reorientation of priorities was the result, and a re-commitment to Buddhist study and practice followed.  It remains to be seen what fruits will be born from this. 

Anyway, thanks so much for reading my blog and happy New Year to you! 

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The book consists of five related essays based upon lectures Gombrich delivered in 1994 at theSchoolofOrientaland African Studies.  Certain characteristic interests, however, give them a semblance of unity.  In each case Gombrich attempts to look at how specific doctrines developed based on the texts, and how those doctrines often misconstrued the texts via over-literalism, lack of a sense of context, or by readings based on corrupted words or phrases.  His approach is primarily investigatory and exploratory as opposed to strictly didactic.  He starts with these words: “In these lectures I am more concerned with formulating problems and raising questions than with providing answers” (1).  In this, Gombrich is certainly successful.  That is, he excels in illuminating issues begging further clarification.  However, I have to confess that despite my enjoyment of his work I am not convinced by some of his arguments.  More on this to follow… 

The first essay, “Debate, skill in means, allegory and literalism,” discusses the role of debate in the evolution of the Buddha’s teaching.  Gombrich writes: “…the Buddha, like anyone else, was communicating in a social context, reacting to his social environment and hoping in turn to influence those around him” (13).  He therefore emphasizes the importance of understanding the Buddha’s environment to understand his message, while at the same time noting the difficulty of properly reconstructing that environment.  

Consider, for example, the anatta teaching.  Hindus, emphasizing the Buddha’s role as a “reformer,” have downplayed it, attempting to claim the Great Man as one of their own.  (Anatta, of course, flies in the face of Upanishadic teachings.)  Westerners, however, have misconstrued the “soul” the Buddha was apparently denying, seeing it from a Judaeo-Christian-Platonic perspective.  “But none of this has anything to do with the Buddha’s position,” Gombrich tells us (15).  “[The Buddha] was opposing the Upanishadic theory of the soul…”  He then goes on to elaborate how anatta only makes sense from that context. 

This was my first point of significant disagreement with Gombrich.  Did the Buddha argue against the notion of an atman such as you find in the Upanishads?  Certainly.  Consider, for example, Brahmajala 1:30, 2:18, 2:38, all of which condemn Upanishadic teachings of one form or another about the Self.  (The Upanishads, it should be noted, are not monolithic, but contain multiple stances on this issue.)  But the Buddha’s anatta teaching is not primarily concerned with a metaphysical Self that, for most of us at least, is little better than an abstraction.  It is concerned, rather, with our experience of a locus of control, of inherent identity, of continuous being-ness, of “I am-ness,” as Ken Wilber likes to say.  (One of my gripes with the Great Integral Master…)  If it purely concerned the Upanishadic doctrine, the Dhamma would have no relevance to anyone today, unless they were followers of Upanishadic teachings.  (A few hundred million Hindus, I would guess.)  But then Gombrich redeems himself to an extent when he says “[The Buddha] was refusing to accept that a person had an unchanging essence.  Moreover, since he was interested in how rather than what, he was not so much saying that people are made of such and such components [i.e. the five aggregates], as that people function in such and such ways, and to explain their functioning there is not need to posit a soul.  The approach is pragmatic, not purely theoretical” (16).  I would go one step further and say it’s one hundred percent practical and not theoretical at all.  (As I’ve noted elsewhere, a three month Vipassana retreat should convince you of the reality of the anatta teaching, even if you don’t reach stream entry.  The moment-to-moment examination of experience and the inability to find a controller, a doer, even though suffering the sense one is lurking there somewhere, severely challenges any notion of identity.  Heady stuff…) 

My objection here though is minor compared to the delights offered by this essay.  Gombrich goes on to discuss the Buddha’s skill-in-means, the assertion that the later tradition attempted to “level out” inconsistencies in his modes of expression, and concludes with a marvelous discussion of the simile of the raft (which confirmed a suspicion I’d had for a long time). 

The second essay, “How, not what: kamma as a reaction to Brahminism,” illuminates the differences between the Buddha’s ethical orientation and the more ontological orientation of Brahminism. Here, too, he sees the Buddha in argument with the Upanishads, specifically the Brihadaranyaka U. (31).  The Upanishads asserted essence (especially as regards consciousness), the Buddha denied it (viz. dependent arising).  Gombrich says “that just as Being lies at the heart of the Upanishadic world view, Action [karma] lies at the heart of the Buddha’s” (48).  He runs with this idea, citing Lamotte, who called karma “the keystone of the entire Buddhist edifice” (49).  I think, however, that Gombrich goes too far.  In the Tevijja Sutta (D.13) the Buddha discusses how to attain the Brahma worlds via meditation on the four immeasurables (brahma-viharas).  Gombrich correctly notes that the Buddha says by such practice one can become like Brahma in his moral qualities, and gain ceto-vimutti, “release of the mind.”  He equates this with the liberation of nirvana.  “I am claiming that a close reading of the Tevijja Sutta shows that the Buddha taught that kindness—what Christians tend to call love—was a way to salvation” (62). 

Now, I don’t need to cite texts to make my point here.  If you’ve got enough meditation practice under your belt, you will know that a heart practice like loving kindness (metta-bhavana; Mahayana practices to develop bodhicitta and Tibetan lojong are elaborations on this) is fundamentally different from an insight practice like vipassana or anapanasati.  While the former is intellectual and emotive and can develop concentration (i.e. it works with the contents of consciousness), the goal of the latter is to see directly the nature of experience itself.  While not at cross purposes, they are, you might say, at 90 degree angles to one another.  The development of concentration, which is absorption in a particular state of consciousness, as well as (in the brahma-viharas) the development of positive emotions and feelings, does not enable one to see the nature of one’s experience, which is what insight is all about.  Here we have Gombrich the scholar missing the truly applied—that which lies beyond the texts, in their lived experience—nature of the Buddha’s teaching.  

Chapter three, “Metaphor, allegory, satire,” examine the Buddha’s manner of communication; specifically, how he used turns of speech, the flipping of terms, satire, etc to make his points.  This is probably the least weighty—and controversial—of the essays.  For me it was of interest in that it served to give a more human and concrete feel for the Buddha and his time.  Subjects discussed here include time, naga cults, allegory and satire, Mara, the Enlightenment, cosmology, and apperception.  (A lot!) 

Chapter four—“Retracing an ancient debate: how insight worsted concentration in the Pali canon”—is controversial in the way the second essay was: it questions long-held assumptions about the nature and meaning of Buddhist practice and soteriology.  Briefly put: Gombrich believes the suttas point up tension between those who took an intellectual approach to the Dhamma (the insight or “wisdom” school) and those who advocated meditation (which he identified as concentration practice).  As Gombrich puts it, it was a battle between those who think “Enlightenment can be attained without meditation, by a process of intellectual analysis (technically known as paññā) alone” (96) and those who do not.    

While it is clear there are tensions in the suttas between scholasticism and practice, I am not aware of the Buddha or any of his enlightened disciples propounding the notion one could get enlightened simply by thinking about it.  In other words, the identification of paññā solely with intellectual analysis is gravely mistaken.  What in fact appears to be the case is that those who favored paññā were monks (or laity) who were “dry insight” practitioners, much like the Mahasi satipatthana practice out of Burma.  Thus we have those who follow the more conventional concentration-and-insight path (attaining jhanas first and then the insight stages) versus those who go straight to insight.  But insight practice is not an intellectual exercise; anyone who has any familiarity with the Mahasi system can tell you that. 

If you think the above is a trivial discussion, I want to assure you that in Sri Lanka, where opposition in the Sangha to the Mahasi practice was for a long time wide and vocal, a lot of ink has been spilled—and, probably, a few harsh words or blows exchanged—concerning which is the “right” or “correct” method of practice.  Regrettably, I have to say I don’t think Gombrich adds much to this discussion. 

“Who was Angulimala?” is the last essay of the book, and possibly my favorite.  Who has not wondered about the true origins of this sutta, with its fantastic story of the homicidal bandit collecting fingers from his victims?  Who was this man, really, and what his motivation?  The sutta (and even its commentaries) does not come across as particularly reasonable in its internal logic, so these questions ought to naturally arise.  In this essay Gombrich offers some ingenious speculation on these questions that is quite possibly correct—though of course, we’ll never know.  

All in all, while I found some of Gombrich’s arguments implausible, his book is a pleasure to read and a worthy contribution to the literature of Buddhist textual analysis.  His is a refreshing, learned and intelligent voice, and he admirably succeeds in unlocking closed doors, leaving it to us to open them and peer in and wonder what might be hidden behind them.

Measured by my patented Five Qualities Book Rating System (FQBRS)™ we have: 

1. Readability: 4.5
2. Clarity: 4.5
3. Import: 4.5
4. Insightfulness: 4.5
5. Uniqueness: 5

Combined score: 4.6

Amazon rating: 5

Having written several lengthy book reviews of late, I’m going to try to keep this one–my second-to-last of the year–relatively brief.

I was looking for an up-to-date, well researched biography of the Buddha, and I sort of found it in this book.  I say “sort of” because it wasn’t as heavy on the scholarship as I would have liked, though it was enjoyable, generally insightful, and informative.

Blomfield takes his time getting to the Buddha’s birth, first drawing a picture for us of the world Gotama grew up in.  He describes the political and economic scenes and gives us a sense of the religious ferment of the time.  I was disappointed though that while Blomfield adopts the more recent scholarship dating the Buddha to c.484 – 404 BCE, the rational for this new dating is never discussed.

Blomfield mostly adopts a realistic tone in portraying the events of the Buddha’s life and upbringing, though inevitably mythical elements intrude.  All in all, I think he does a pretty good job at indicating what sort of person the Buddha was–energetic and sincere, inquisitive, skeptical, a brilliant raconteur, adaptable, charismatic, a genius.  His treatment of Gotama’s search for enlightenment draws on recent scholarship (I recognized Alexander Wynne’s contributions) but for me his account of the enlightenment falls flat.  I actually got the sense Blomfield doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  I’m not saying he doesn’t know his way around the suttas, just that he doesn’t really seem to grasp what the Enlightenment actually entailed or meant.  (This despite the back flap claiming Blomfield has been practicing and/or teaching meditation for thirty years.)

After Gotama became the Buddha, the sequence of events is difficult to nail down, so Blomfield pauses to discuss the teaching.  I thought this the weakest part of the book, for the coverage here is incomplete, and let’s face it–I’m very hard to satisfy as regards these matters!  Admittedly though, saying something about the Teaching here is  unavoidable, and Blomfield takes a decent shot at it despite limited space.

Further chapters take up the formation of the Sangha, how the Buddha interacted with the society around him (“A Holy Man In the World”–an excellent chapter), the Devadatta crisis and then the last years.  By the end I realized just how much had either been left out or only skimmed over, and it occurred to me that if anyone is ever going to do a really thorough, scholarly treatment of the Buddha’s life it may well run to a thousand pages (not including a hundred pages of notes).  Personally, I would like to have seen more discussion of the important disciples, as well as something more about the various rival shramana sects (Ajivakas, Jains, etc) who competed with the Buddha.  Blomfield could have said more too about the archaeology of the Buddha’s life–e.g., the debate over exactly where Kapilavastu was (generally now thought to be Tilaurakot in Nepal) is a fascinating story in itself.  Anything at all to lift this man’s life out of the realm of legend and lost kingdoms and to place it on a solid footing, on the earth, connected to real things we can see and touch, would have been appreciated.  (And I can always dig talk of relics!)

I have one other specific complaint: the use of Sanskrit terms, place and personal names instead of their Pali equivalents.  I really don’t understand this practice.  The earliest texts, the only ones that can lay any claim to being truly biographical, are all in Pali.  It is simply logical to defer to those texts.  Using Sanskrit instead bespeaks an ideological prejudice of some sort, I am convinced.  Exactly what that prejudice might be, though, probably differs from one writer to the next.

Don’t take my complaints here too seriously though.  This is a worthy book and ought to prove inspirational to many.  While it is not quite the biography I would have liked, I can honestly say that what Blomfield has done here both moved and informed me.

My rating: 3.5 (out of 5)

Amazon rating: 4

I found this an extremely thought-provoking, occasionally riveting, speculative account of the Buddha’s life before he was the Buddha, though it was also heavy going at times.  Wynne’s fundamental thesis is that by closely examining, through linguistic and comparative textual analysis, the earliest Buddhist scriptures, it is possible to not only detect earlier and later strata of material, but to actually catch the historical Buddha in action.  If this last phrase doesn’t set your ears on fire, I don’t know why you’re reading my blog. 

Wynne tells you what’s on his mind right up front: “The biggest problem in Buddhist Studies is that nobody knows what the Buddha taught” (1).  While I actually don’t agree with this statement, it is fine as an operational standpoint or working hypothesis.  Indeed, it is the justification for Wynne’s entire project (with which I do agree), and if you want a magnifying lens view of the Dhamma, Wynne is a good guide.  He is to the point about what he intends to do:

 In this book I will reconsider the problem [“of establishing a relationship between early Buddhist doctrine and historical fact”].  I will attempt to prove that facts about the Buddha’s early life are historically authentic and can be used to identify some of his teachings in the early literature.  The historical facts in question concern the mysterious figures who are said to have taught meditation to the Buddha-to-be (the Bodhisatta), Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta.  I will claim that the primary text in which this account is contained, the Ariyapariyesana Sutta, is probably the earliest and most historically valuable biographical tract in the early Buddhist literature.  This being the case, it is quite likely that the Bodhisatta really was taught meditation by these two men.  This text does not say anything about the content of the earliest Buddhist teachings, but I will use it to provide a historical background to early Buddhist thought in another way.  I will attempt to show correspondences between the early literature on the two teachers and some of the speculations contained in the philosophical literature of early Brahminism.  By this means I will try to reconstruct the philosophical presuppositions of the two teachers’ meditative practices.  This will lead to a much improved understanding of the teachings that the Bodhisatta rejected and thus, I will claim, some idea of his intellectual development (2-3). 

I actually believe he accomplishes most, if not all, of the above.  There are trials and tribulations along the way though, interspersed with sections of wonderful insightfulness and interest, and these—the good and the bad—are what I’ll be talking about in this review. 

First the good:  You can learn a lot of really cool stuff from this book!  Wynne is a skillful detective, and he leads you step by step via meticulous analysis of the texts, their words and their histories, to ferret out clues to the Buddha’s life story.  Consider a neat little revelation he offers in the introduction.  Starting with an insight Richard Gombrich offered concerning jokes and puns attributed to the Buddha (“Are jokes ever composed by committees?”) (2), he goes on to point out that even the Vinaya’s monastic laws can be sources of historical insight:

 …one of the rules in the Bhikkhu-patimokkha forbids the teaching of the dhamma ‘word to word’ to a layman.  From this evidence we cannot conclude that such things never happened…  However, in stipulating that the teaching out not to be ‘word for word’ (padaso), the rule indirectly indicates the manner of teaching the dhamma to ordained monastics… and implies that Suttas were transmitted ‘word for word’ even in the earliest period, thus raising the possibility that some of the Buddha’s teachings, and perhaps even his words, have been preserved verbatim (7). 

 I offer this as an example of the sort of deductive textual analysis Wynne employs, and which, it seems to me, yields much fruit. 

The book’s chief focus, as noted, concerns the two teachers the bodhisatta studied under before his enlightenment, the meditation masters Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta.  Personally, I’ve never had any doubt they were real people, but Wynne pursues the reality of their existences with the enthusiasm of a prosecuting attorney. 

Apparently some smart people have doubted they ever lived—Messers Zafiropulo, Bareau, Bronkhorst and Vetter among the guilty.  Wynne has first to undermine their arguments and then set his own in place as superior.  I will not here attempt to reconstruct the points-counterpoints (I’m trying to encourage you to read the book, after all), though I can’t help but note one passage on page 13 where Wynne discusses the Bharandu Sutta of the Anguttara Nikaya.  Bharandu, it turns out, was also known as Bharandu Kalama, and the Buddha was visiting the man in the hermitage of their former teacher, Alara Kalama.  “It is even possible that Bharandu, and not the Buddha (who had forsaken the community), was the son or spiritual heir of Alara.”  I don’t know why, but the image of these two old companions on the Path reminiscing in that hermitage (where is it now?) gave me a quite indescribable thrill.  I think the text has indeed recorded a moment in time, and the sutta seems to corroborate the story of the bodhisatta’s apprenticeship under Alara Kalama.  

Similarly, in the discussion of Uddaka Ramaputta (the “son of Rama”), Wynne makes much of idiosyncrasies of the Ariyapariyesana Sutta, noting that some scholars (e.g. I.B. Horner) have “been duped by [its] repetitive oral style” into missing the differences between the Udakka Ramaputta and Alara Kalama accounts.  For example, upon close reading it becomes clear it was Uddaka’s father Rama and not Uddaka himself who had attained the “sphere of neither perception nor non-perception” (fourth of the arupa jhanas).  And that is why, before the bodhisatta departs, Uddaka offers him not co-governorship of the community (as Alara Kalama had done), but total control.  (This says a lot for the kind of person Uddaka was, by the way.)  

I don’t want to dwell overlong on particulars here.  Suffice to say that anyone interested in Shakyamuni the man (as opposed to simply the myth) will find great pleasure in Wynne’s textual revelations.  I think he proves well that the suttas have much to offer the historian, not only in terms of discovering what kind of person the Buddha was (I was so impressed by what I read about the Buddha on page 99 I scribbled “fucking genius!” in the margin), but also his teaching.  

As noted though Wynne does hit some stumbling blocks.  The biggest is his insistence that Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta necessarily represent a Brahminic meditation tradition as opposed to shramanic.  (This is, by the way, the chief complaint Vishvapani Blomfield brings against Wynne in his review.)  Discussion concerning the shramanas—the wanderers and free-lance ascetics so numerous in the Buddhist suttas—is curiously absent from Wynne’s book.  The emphasis is almost entirely on brahminism, but the region around Magadha where the Buddha lived and taught lay somewhat outside the main sphere of Brahminic influence, which was more to the northwest; you might even call it a backwater.  I have always been inclined therefore to assume the Bodhisatta’s teachers were not members of the established tradition of rituals and sacrifices, but stood more on the fringes, offering alternative, perhaps even controversial or exotic ideas and practices.  If, for example, you look at the Buddha’s brahmin interlocutors versus the wanderers, you’ll see the spheres of interest of the two groups are almost mutually exclusive: one is all about “hearth and home,” community and rituals, the other is interested in meditation, other worlds, and the value—or lack thereof—of various ascetic practices.  

(At the same time, if you look at the larger picture of Indian mediation systems and their associated beliefs, I think it is difficult, indeed artificial, to say that one group of meditators’ practices were “Brahmin” while another’s was “Jain” or Buddhist or shramanic or whatever.  The reason, simply, is that contemplatives are on the whole a fairly practical lot—that is, they tend to use what works—and the reason the Buddha continued using the practices of his teachers was because they delivered genuine benefits.  Similarly, whether the teachers came from a brahminical tradition or not is somewhat irrelevant given the religious environment of the time.  The suttas clearly reflect a world in which people of all different stripes—loners, community followers, intellectual leaders, freelance philosophers—all went around competing, arguing and sharing what they did and why they did it.  I think any notion of a tight, “pure” tradition—brahmin or otherwise—is illusory.)    

I also wonder if Wynne understands a lot of what he’s talking about, specifically as regards the meditative states that are front and center in some of his discussions.  He talks a lot about “element meditation” but never really defines it, and then on page 39 says “Early Buddhist and Brahminic meditators, so it seems, believed that liberation was achieved by means of a meditative progression through the material elements and a few higher states of consciousness beyond them.”  This statement is patently false in the light of the Pali suttas (nibbana is not the top of an ascending stair of meditative states) and it puzzles me how he could actually believe it.  Also, on page 43 he essentially says the Upanishadic doctrines are based on experience of the formless realms.  But for anyone with firsthand experience of these states of consciousness this has to appear a dubious assertion at best.  While the early Buddhists did indeed draw equivalencies between mental states and ontological states (realms) of existence, the jhanas are not nondual in character; that is, the Upanishadic philosophy (tat tvam asi = “That thou art”) is unlikely to have been deduced or derived from them. 

I think this lack of understanding of meditative states shows itself most seriously on pages 102-3. There Wynne discusses the meaning of “consciousness stopped,” in the process asking a number of questions.  For example: What is meant when the text says consciousness is “stopped”?  What does this have to do with liberation?  Do these passages contradict other passages in the suttas?  Does consciousness disappear when liberation is attained?  (Which, I must say, would be quite a trick!)  The best Wynne can manage in response to these psychological quandaries is a bit of philological wiggling and then what amounts to a shrug of the shoulders and the decidedly unsatisfying conclusion that perhaps it all comes down to “poetic license.”     

My final complaint—and what will probably bother most readers far more than anything I’ve said thus far—is the specialist-level depth of some of the philological discussions.  Consider the following riveting passage from page 62 (note: I am missing the diacritical marks):

 The relative/correlative construction yad…tan in 3cd may be pronominal or adverbial, and both possibilities suggest different cosmogonies.  The problem is confused by the fact that tan in 3d agrees with (e)kam: this suggests that the subject of 3d may be identical with the subject of v. 1-2, named in 2c as tad ekam.  This identification is accepted by Brereton, but according to the alternative interpretation offered above, which generally agrees with Macdonell’s translation, this is not so and the word ekam in 3d is a red herring.  The same confusion surrounds the word tad in 4a—it could be either a pronoun or an adverb.  Moreover, a confusion over the relative clause, similar to that found in 3cd, is again seen in 4b.  Macdonell and Bereton think that yad in 4b picks up kamas of 4a, but it could be a relative pronoun agreeing with tad in 4a… (62)

If after reading this you are not experiencing at least a small degree of mental constipation you clearly possess a stronger constitution than do I.  (Or perhaps you finished fourth year Sanskrit…)  So, fair warning: you will have to endure a bit of this sort of thing—especially in chapter four—to get to the pearls I noted earlier. 

My advice?  Endure!

Measured by my patented Five Qualities Book Rating System (FQBRS)™ we have: 

1. Readability: 2
2. Clarity: 3
3. Import: 4.5
4. Insightfulness: 4.5
5. Uniqueness: 5

Combined score: 3.8

Amazon rating: 4