All Is Change: The Two-Thousand-Year Journey of Buddhism to the West

by Lawrence Sutin

Book Overview

In the tradition of Karen Armstrong, Jack Miles, andThomas Cahill comes a magisterial history of the coming of Buddhism tothe West.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316741566
• ISBN13: 9780316741569
• Release Date: August 2006
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.51 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

"The current of Buddhist thought always flows eastward."

Having enjoyed Sutin's "Divine Invasion," his biography of Philip K. Dick, and learning from the blurb that he's also published on Aleister Crowley and two memoirs about his Holocaust survivor parents, I figured this new book would be equally eclectic. You sense from Sutin's previous works the range of his interests, where personalities intersect with ideas under the force of historical moments of change. This book starts off very slowly, nonetheless. The sections on the earliest contacts of what the subtitle calls "the Two-Thousand-Year Journey of Buddhism to the West" passed with all the verve of a solidly prepared but stolidly produced term paper. Still, when the Jesuits (it figures) entered, the pace picked up and the rest of this narrative raced by- sometimes too much so-- with ease. Don't start here if you know nothing about Buddhism. Sutin warns right away that many authors tell its teachings and background well, while he seeks to chart the places where the twain meet, East and West. He's done his research. The "Works Consulted" lists 24 pages in small type of his sources, and this exceeds many dissertations, I bet, in its scope. While I'm no expert in his use of these scholars, for a popular audience, Sutin succeeds in portraying the little-known encounters with Buddha's dharma by curious Westerners over (more than) two millennia. It's intriguing to learn that noble Japanese converts to Catholicism brought to Europe around the 1550s were not told about the Reformation or that a condition less than "unbroken peace" had reigned in Christendom since the Prince of Peace. Or, that the idea of religion as opiate, long before Hegel and Marx, originated with Diderot, who sensibly wondered what Timothy Leary would two centuries later: can chemical intoxication be a shortcut to the enlightenment sought by fasting, self-denying practitioners? Sutin shines when discussing not only famous figures such as Sir William "Asiatic" Jones and the polymath Fr Matteo Ricci, but obscure scholars and missionaries deserving notice. Guillaume Postel, an ex-Jesuit, in the mid-16th century insisted that religions shared the same ideals. For this he was interned in a monastery as mentally ill. Fabian Fucan in Japan renounced Buddhist monasticism and entered the Society of Jesus, only to leave the Church and preach against the latter faith with the same vehemence he had earlier given in writing to the dharma. Another Jesuit Ippolito Desideri entered Tibet, while the Hungarian adventurer Csoma de Koros finally arrived there after years of study on its frontiers. We learn that Buddhism as a word only entered the language through French in 1820. It took until 1880 before Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Orcutt took vows as the first recorded Westerners to become Buddhists, and it's telling that the first American to convert in the U.S. was a New Yorker of Jewish descent. Sutin, a secular Jew, notes briefly but accurately, I think, the attraction of Buddhism for many Am

Seems a decent historical addition

-"Change" seems a reasonably good historical summary of Buddhism's entry into the West. The book begins at the dawn of Buddhist thought with speculation that Greek and Christian thought may have interacted with early Buddhism. It continues to early recorded contacts during the Age of Exploration (when a world-wide xenophobia misrepresented Buddhism as negativist), then outlines the developing appreciation of Buddhism's positive elements in the mid-19th Century, and concludes with the 20th Century (as Buddhism evolved into a sophisticated, specifically Western form). -I learned much and found it a welcome addition. "Change" gives a well-written foundation for understanding how Buddhism has interacted with its Western hosts, and there is considerable research here. I'm not an expert historian, but based on some cross-checking, it does seem accurate, although the author is not a historian (that's OK, neither am I) and there will be the inevitable controversies here and there. The Bibliography is extensive, although many direct references are from secondary sources. The coverage of late 20th Century Buddhism reflects the author's apparent fascination with Beat Generation Buddhism, and he overemphasizes this colorful countercultural aspect at the expense of more genuine practices. But hey, this adds some spice to the book and there are plenty of other excellent sources on recent Western Buddhism. The author also refrains from discussing Buddhism's often-challenging philosophy or psychology -- this would stray from the range of his objective familiarity (and the book's topic) and besides, many good resources already exist. -"Change" gave a good understanding of Buddhist historical interactions with the West (especially prior to the mid-20th Century) and may be a nice addition to your understanding of contemplative, psychological, and philosophical interactions. I found it well worth the time it took to read, and hope you will too.

A Sweeping but no generalisation

This easy to read book has got to be the most comprehensive book to date on the connection between Buddhism and the Occident in a span of 2400 years. My main two criticisms to begin with is that I don't think the cover is very nice and secondly, Sutin does not pay much attention to the Buddha's latest birth dates (concluded by scholars) - but everything else is a meticulous, balanced expose that is sharp, subtle and vast in scale. No book of this nature can hope to be comprehesive. I expect the author had to leave about the same volume of stuff as the book itself, out of it. He has effectively squeezed in so much. It is very much as a work a successor to Buddha and the Sahibs by Charles Allen that aims to be more comprehensive. So much is marshalled in and the most poignant passages from all sources are quoted. The book itself is highly quotable: "For all the growing availability of Orientalist knowledge, it remained the unquestioned prerogative of European philosophers to interpret Eastern religions according to their own preconceptions and fantasies. In no country did this process take on more vivid and epochal form than in Germany ..." Just tell that to your German friends will you. What's clear is that most of Buddhism went to the West via Western thinkers thanks to the meddlesome misunderstandings of missionaries as well as lovers of Oriental Wisdom from the West who discovered the wonders of India. Sutin marks the destructive effects of missionary activity on native cultures casually - the fate of Buddhism in the East is not his perogative. He remains goal oriented and totally comprehensive. Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana, Zen, hippies, psychotherapy and the Dalai Lama. Practically nothing of worth is excluded - nothing has past his beady observation. I think this book is a triumph, a placeholder to an evolving unknown of a contact of the Orient and Asia that almost threatens to overwhelm the Occidental intellectual millieu. But Buddhism has always been a delicate influence, like a silk cloth brushing against a cheek. I don't think it has ever had missionary pretentions like Christianity, and this is precisely what the book, between the lines reveals, about the entry of Buddhism through a back door to a receptive, uneasy, Eurocentric audience. The Dharma will probably survive the West as the author pointedly concludes. A wonderful gift and this is likely to command a discerning, growing audience. Mindblowing scope, deftly summarised.

One with Everything

I'm no history buff but this book put me on that path - as well as the path to enlightenment. It is serious - but also seriously readable, making connections between the past and present, even while explaining the subject matter in comprehensive and fascinating style. Sutin, who also wrote the definitive biography of sci-fi avatar Philip K. Dick, has found a way to synthesize a huge quantity of material into a single compelling book that examines time-honored ideas in a new and exciting way.