An intriguing look at an unusual religious and medical phenomenon. Harrison, a former religious affairs correspondent for the BBC, investigates historical and contemporary reports of stigmata, the strange bleeding marks that are said to resemble the wounds suffered by Jesus at the Crucifixion. Having interviewed both physicians and those who suffer from the stigmata, he tells us that the marks appear most often on the hands and feet but can appear as stripes on the back, where Jesus was supposed to have been scourged, or on the side where, according to the Gospels, he was pierced by a spear. The first documented case of the lesions happened to St. Francis of Assisi in 1224. Since then, it is estimated, 300 or more people have suffered the wounds. Are these the result of excessive religious fervor and mental imbalance manifesting itself physically? Or are the wounds a gift from God, a sign of blessing given to the truly faithful? Almost all the reported cases have come from poor Catholics living in Mediterranean countries. Officially, the Vatican admits the possibility that the marks are miraculous in origin while looking skeptically on any individual case. Medical science has scrutinized reported cases for 200 years. According to the scientific view, the wounds are the product of emotional stress. Women afflicted outnumber men by a ratio of seven to one. The wounds are more common in religious communities and monasteries. Recent years have witnessed an increase of cases in England and Latin America. The phenomenon is no longer confined to Catholics. And the United States has produced the first non-Caucasian sufferers as Native Americans and African-Americans have experienced the phenomenon. The author believes that global conditions (poverty, stress, a rise in charismatic Christianity) are right for an increase in reported cases. Fascinating and well told, this tale of religious fervor will appeal to believers and skeptics alike.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11372-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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