A lucid and insightful introduction to Buddhism.
A sweeping history of Chinese Buddhism that includes personal reflections on meditation and practical instruction for beginners.
The historical development of the Buddhist faith is obscure, partly because the intensely personal experience of meditative practice itself resists scholarly documentation. Nevertheless, with extraordinary rigor and erudition, debut author Zhi reconstructs both the emergence of Buddhism in general and of Chinese (or Chan) Buddhism in particular. By the time Buddhism arrived in China, it had already evolved in India from Vedism, Brahmanism, Jainism, and Hinduism. Then, as early as the second century B.C.E., it was again refashioned by the political, sociological, and religious influences of its time—in this case, Confucianism and Taoism. The author discusses the original forms of Buddhism practiced in India and its metamorphosis when it traveled all over Asia. The author specifically focuses on the ways in which, in China as elsewhere, Chan Buddhism split into strains that were either more meditatively spiritual or institutional. After he impressively concludes this “broad picture of Chan Buddhism,” he turns his attention to its practice and furnishes a thorough introduction for the novice, including an accessible discussion of the benefits of maintaining a meditative practice and “Hindrances” that could undermine it. Zhi is a fully ordained Buddhist monk, and his knowledge of the subject matter is astonishing; he not only demonstrates an academic mastery of Buddhism as a historical phenomenon, but also a philosophically profound understanding of its spiritual core—which, contrary to many Western misconceptions, is not enlightenment: “Enlightenment is best viewed as a consequence rather than an objective of spiritual labor,” Zhi notes. “The purpose of spiritual life is to unravel mysteries and transcend suffering. It’s a fluid, evolving process.” The author permits himself some gratuitous digression—there’s an entire chapter devoted to explaining Carl Jung’s theory of psychological archetypes, for instance. Still, this is a remarkable study that’s intellectually stimulating, historically edifying, and spiritually instructive.
A lucid and insightful introduction to Buddhism.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-73331-430-5
Page Count: 439
Publisher: Songlark Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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