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Waking the Buddha

HOW THE MOST DYNAMIC AND EMPOWERING BUDDHIST MOVEMENT IN HISTORY IS CHANGING OUR CONCEPT OF RELIGION

An exploration of what makes Soka Gakkai unique.
Strand (How to Believe in God: Whether You Believe in Religion or Not, 2008), a religion writer and former Zen monk, delves into the history and mission behind Soka Gakkai, a Buddhist sect perhaps best known for its peace activism and belief in fair wealth distribution among people. While this may be the denomination’s primary identity in America, Clark is quick to point out its racial and economic diversity, its international scope, and the political activity that sets it apart from other Buddhist traditions and from many other religions as well. He explores the lives of Soka Gakkai’s founders and major players—Makiguchi, Toda and Ikeda—and shows how each furthered a particular mission that gave the faith a global reach and broad appeal. Most notably, perhaps, he shows how Soka Gakkai’s seeming emphasis on material things, the aspect for which it receives perhaps the most criticism, in fact makes it “a dynamic and practical philosophy of life that, for the first time in human history, privileges life over religion, rather than religion over life.” Strand’s perspective is broad, with an academic distance that is nevertheless fair toward Soka Gakkai, and cogent in his analysis of American Buddhism as a “baby boomer” faith that suffers many of the flaws of the modern era. The ultimate goal and intended readership of the book, however, are somewhat unclear. It covers ground sure to be interesting to Buddhists, religious scholars and practitioners of Soka Gakkai in different measure but perhaps without fully serving the curiosity of any particular group. While the prose is clear and readable, there is a lack of organization that makes the narrative hard to follow, especially with regard to Soka Gakkai’s history and to Strand’s own place within the movement and within American Buddhism more broadly. Overall, the work perhaps best serves as a jumping-off point for people interested in learning more about this unique denomination.
Thoughtful, clear and informative, if somewhat scattered.

Pub Date: May 1, 2014

ISBN: 978-0977924561

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Middleway Press

Review Posted Online: July 23, 2014

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THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.

Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955

ISBN: 0679733736

Page Count: 228

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955

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THE ART OF SOLITUDE

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.

“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0

Page Count: 200

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019

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