188 Book Reviews / Religion and the Arts 14 (2010) 173–197

Paine, Jeff rey, ed. Adventures with the Buddha: A Personal Reader. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2004. Pp. 410. $27.95 cloth.

n Adventures with the Buddha: A Personal Buddhism Reader, Jeff rey Paine Iwrites that he hoped to compile a group of works that served as “a Bud- dhist narrative entertainment, to be read principally for enjoyment,” and he has largely succeeded. Th e exploits described in this collection are widely diverse. Th e opening half of the book off ers passages from the accounts of several of the fi rst westerners to travel to Asia to study Buddhism, who provide vivid descriptions, through their astonished eyes, of a world of elaborate ritual and inexplicable mystical feats. Th e mesmerizing intrica- cies of these cultures’ spiritual practices captured in such detail here have either disappeared completely or become so much more accessible to west- erners as to seem commonplace. Th us, the chance to experience them as if for the fi rst time, as these writers did, is a welcome pleasure. Th e second half of the book, however, off ers very diff erent satisfactions. It is composed of selections from the works of contemporary Buddhist students whose physical travels to Asia may have been less groundbreaking, but who, therefore, write more piercingly of the internal journeys their practice has driven them to make. While the experiences described in these accounts vary widely, the spe- cifi c Buddhist traditions followed by most of these writers are quite similar. Eight of the nine works selected were written by Tibetan Buddhist practi- tioners (or one-time Tibetan Buddhist practitioners). Since this reviewer is an American student of Buddhism, it may be expected that a wider representation of Buddhist practices was longed for, and that the selections which were found to be most appealing were those that focused less on ritual and mysticism and more on what Paine calls the exploration of “the uninhabited places of [our] own interior beings.” Th at said, the mystical phenomena described in the fi rst four passages in this collection (those by Alexandra David-Neel, Anagarika Govinda [née Ernst Lothar Hoff man], John Blofi eld, and Peter Goullart) are unde- niably compelling—if, at times, hard to believe. Donald Lopez, in his 1998 book Prisoners of Shangri-la (University of Chicago Press) and Th ierry Dodin in his 2001 anthology Imagining Tibet (Wisdom Publications) have dealt in depth with the question of how fully these westerners’ fantastical accounts of Tibetan culture (particularly Govinda’s) are to be trusted. Whatever conclusions a reader draws from such warnings, however, needn’t be an obstacle to relishing the off erings here. In a selection from David-

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI: 10.1163/107992610X12592913032107 Book Reviews / Religion and the Arts 14 (2010) 173–197 189

Neel’s Magic and Mystery in Tibet, for example, that author recounts her experiences witnessing a number of baffl ing events: the telepathic powers of and sometimes of their students; the ability of students to “chan- nel” their teachers when the teachers are absent; the birth of children () who seem to have a curiously fl uent familiarity with places, objects, and events related to deceased lamas, suggesting they are the rein- carnations of those lamas; the extraordinary powers of lung-gom-pas who seem to be able to travel great distances with uncanny endurance and speed (often called “fl ying monks”); and the art of tuomo, the ability sev- eral advanced Tibetan Buddhist practioners have developed of warming themselves without fi re. Govinda, Blofi eld, and Goullart provide corrobo- rating accounts of similar marvels, and Goullart also provides a fascinat- ing description of a Taoist exorcism which he observed while alternately enthralled and terrifi ed. Only in the last selection of Part One, from Janwillem van de Wetering’s memoir Th e Empty Mirror, in which we hear about his struggle to survive the rigors of the daily schedule in a Kyoto Zen monastery, do the mystical and geographical wonders begin to seem secondary to the internal ones. Van de Wetering writes about the incredible sense of failure he felt when he fi nally decided to return to Europe, convinced that he had learned nothing from his time in Japan. On a fi nal visit to the monastery, the gives van de Wetering a stick on which is written the saying, “ ‘A sword which is well forged never loses its golden color’” and tells him, “ ‘Th e forging of swords isn’t limited to monasteries. Th is whole planet is a forge. By leaving here nothing is broken. Your training continues. Th e world is a school where the sleeping are woken up. You are now a little awake, so awake that you can never fall asleep again.’” In Part Two of the book, Paine shares with us the works of writers , Tsultrim Allione, , and Michael Roach, who he says, “demonstrate how an age-old Buddhism gets integrated into indi- vidual make-do existences today, without communal or family support, regardless of job and personal obstacles that get in the way.” Willis writes about the peculiar inheritance she embodies as a student of Tibetan Bud- dhism who grew up black, female, and “conspicuously intelligent” in the American south in the middle of the twentieth century. She relates how her practice allowed her to begin to have a sense of humor about herself, and marvels at the ironic fact that it was the strictest demands of her train- ing which forced her to learn to be gentle with herself, to learn when to let go. For Allione, it is the willingness to take on the roles of mother and wife