Vishvapani reviews Schettini’s heartfelt and vivid account of becoming a Tibetan Buddhist monk and his valuable reflections on what it means for westerners to practice Buddhism When I first encountered Buddhism in the UK around 1980 there was already a generation of...
The Book of Enlightened Masters: Western Teachers in Eastern Traditions by Andrew Rawlinson (Open Court, 1997) £31.50 Review by Vishvapani Not long ago, when the East was axiomatically ‘mystical’, teachers of eastern religions were assumed to be possibly mad, probably...
Madame Blavatsky’s Baboon: Theosophy and the Emergence of the Western Guru by Peter Washington, Secker & Warburg, 1993, pp. 470 h/b, £20.00 Riding the Tiger by Lama Ole Nydahl, Blue Dolphin Publishing, 1992, pp. 496, £14.95 p/b Zen In America by Helen...
What, if anything, do we ‘know’ about the Buddha? In addition to its importance for Buddhist studies, this question is — or at least should be — of fundamental interest to those who consider themselves the Buddha’s followers. But scholars have grown increasingly...
The powerful imagery and intense personal vision of the London-based Jewish artist and sculptor David Breuer Weil makes him an heir to Epstein, Kitaj, Freud and Auerbach. This article recalls my own connection with David, which goes back to our time as fellow...
Like many literary youths just out of college, Pankaj Mishra dreamt in his early 20s of being a writer. He holed up in the Kashmiri Himalayas of his native India to read and reflect, and he found his imagination caught by the maroon-robed Ladhaki monks. Dreaming of...
