From Publishers Weekly
This hefty history of Buddhism in the West starts at the very beginning: combing through the works of ancient Greeks and proceeding from that time to find references to Western encounters with, or knowledge of, Buddhism in the East. Sutin, a teacher and author of biographies and memoirs, has set himself an ambitious and sometimes dusty task, querying Gnosticism, the missionary history of the Society of Jesus, Enlightenment thought and other currents of Western intellectual history, in his quest for the Buddha. Some of what he finds is fascinating, including the Jesus Messiah sutra, a 7th-century document that explains Christianity in Buddhist and Confucian terms. Other times what he considers Buddhist-influenced is a stretch that blurs distinctions: the mathematician Leibniz, for example, is roped into his analysis, but what Sutin cites shows the German philosopher to be an admirer of China, not necessarily of Buddhism. General readers may find this book ponderous, with lengthy quotes from source materials and occasional small side disquisitions about such matters as the racism behind the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. However, its comprehensiveness and depth will interest those in the field of Buddhist studies and others with patience to slog through it. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
*Starred Review* Sutin, biographer of Philip K. Dick and Aleister Crowley, proves himself to be a superb synthesizer in this avidly detailed chronicle of Buddhism's flow from East to West. After unearthing the footings of the bridge between cultures constructed 2,000 years ago as the Greeks and Buddhists in India found common metaphysical ground, Sutin provides an unusually cogent explanation of Buddhism's great schism and the resulting Theravada and Mahasanghika schools, one monastic, the other populist. He documents intriguing parallels between Buddhist and gnostic teachings, credits Marco Polo with writing the first popular Western account of the Buddha's life story, and discovers both racist and tolerant reactions to Buddhism in the writings of Jesuit missionaries. The influence of Buddhism on the work of various European philosophers and the theosophist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, as well as the impact of Buddhism on such seminal Americans as Thoreau, Emerson, Lafcadio Hearn, Jack Kerouac, and Gary Snyder, inspires Sutin to nimble analysis, accompanied by discerning profiles of various international Buddhist teachers, including D. T. Suzuki, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and the Dalai Lama. Sutin's uniquely comprehensive, interpretative, and vital history is a cornerstone study that maps a remarkable spiritual migration and evolution. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
