Quest Magazine

Circling the Sacred Mountain: A Spiritual Adventure through the Himalayas

By Robert Thurman and Tad Wise
New York: Bantam, 2000. Paperback, 353 pages.

This is a book of a genre that happens to be a favorite of mine, as I suspect it is for many readers of the Quest as well: a chronicle of travel combining the exploration of exotic realms on both physical and spiritual planes. In this case, the two authors, together with a handful of other companions, journey to remote western Tibet to perform the traditional Vajrayana (Tibetan) Buddhist pilgrimage-circumambulation of the sacred Mount Kailas, and in the process learn much about Buddhism and themselves. Robert Thurman, a practicing Vajrayana Buddhist and former monk, now a professor at Columbia University, is perhaps the best-known Western scholar of Tibetan Buddhism today. Tad Wise, a much younger former student of his, has practiced several trades including stonemasonry and writing: he has published one novel.

The two writers alternate in presenting the narrative; Wise provides the day-by-day account of the journey, and Thurman (under his Buddhist name Tenzin) offers virtually daily sermons on their exercises and experiences. In the process, the two are uninhibited in displaying themselves as they are. Wise comes across as a voluble, witty, irreverent, and sensual, but very likable, young man; only half-convinced of the Dharma, he nonetheless felt a strange compulsion to leave his life behind for a month to join his old pedagogue on this expedition. Thurman is a learned, sagacious, but occasionally overbearing guide to the mysteries. But the real star of the story is Mount Kailas- -the silent, towering, oddly-shaped, yet unimaginably numinous presence always kept to their right as the foreign party, together with countless devout Tibetans, circles the slow trail round her widespread base, stopping for traditional devotions at ancient shrines and temples. The journey is not entirely out of time, however; there arealso unpleasant encounters with Tibet's heavy-handed Chinese overlords.

Circling the Sacred Mountain is sometimes a bit verbose; introspective surveys of other persons' (the two writers') inward sins and salvations can eventually become tiresome. At those moments I would have preferred more cultural description of Tibet's temples, Buddhas, rites, priests, and pilgrims instead, or else a few cuts. But overall the book moves and is a good read, highly recommended to all who enjoy the more adventurous kind of spirituality.

--ROBERT ELLWOOD

January/February 2002

The Odyssey of a New Religion: The Holy Order of MANS from New Age to Orthodoxy

By Phillip Charles Lucas
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Hardback, viii + 312 pages.

Every now and then a worthwhile book comes out but never gets the recognition it deserves. The Odyssey of a New Religion is one such book. This is a book that many Theosophists should read because of its Theosophical overtones.

Why did the Holy Order of MANS (HOOM) exist for only about 22 years, whereas the Theosophical Society is still in existence more than 125 years after its founding? Both the Theosophical Society and HOOM had similar beginnings. Yet the small esoteric Christian community continued only by changing its mission and joining the larger Orthodox Christian community. Lucas's book tells the story of HOOM with skill, scholarship, and such grace that his sociological insights never get in the way of the unfolding story.

The Holy Order of MANS was founded by Earl Blighton (known as Father Paul) in 1968 in the San Francisco Bay area. The core group actually started two years earlier when Blighton taught a type of "esoteric Christianity." His message borrowed heavily from many alternative religions, but, as Lucas continually reminds us, it was primarily Rosicrucian and Theosophical in nature. Any Theosophist reading this book will recognize much of the Order's structure and teaching.

The group had a monastic image and its members wore clerical garb. Much of their early mission was service, charity, and missionary work, "for example, for homeless families and single mothers in shelters called 'Raphael House.'" The members, dressed in their clerical garb, would walk around crime-filled neighborhoods and visualize a ray of healing light. Blighton, judging from antidotal evidence, was a gifted psychic, like H. P. Blavatsky in the formative years of the Theosophical Society. Blighton wrote a "Tree of Life" series around which the "ancient Christian mysteries" were studied. About half of Lucas’s book explains the details of this early history.

Following Earl Blighton's death in 1974, the group's history became turbulent. After the usual power struggles that occur with the death of a charismatic leader, Andrew Rossi rook over and about 1978 began to lead the group from its Rosicrucian-Theosophical roots toward a more mainstream Christian identity. From a peak of about 3000 members in 1977, the membership began dropping. In 1988 Rossi led a mass conversion of 750 HOOM members into the Eastern Orthodox Church and changed the group's name to Christ the Savior Brotherhood.

In response to the question of why the Theosophical Society has lasted more than 125 years whereas HOOM had a 22-year existence, one of the relevant factors may be that the Society elects its officers on a regular schedule. The believers in the Holy Order of MANS did not have that option. One recalls Winston Churchill's observation that "democracy is the worst form of government' except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

-RALPH H. HANNON

January/February 2002

A New Religious America: How a "Christian Country" Has Now Become the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation

By Diana L. Eck
New York: HarperCollins, HarperSanFrancisco, 2001. Hardback, xli + 404 pages.

As Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies and Director of the well-known Pluralism Project at Harvard University, Diana Eck dispensed students into countless communities scattered across the United States, where they studied our proliferating religious pluralism. These youthful researchers and their professor discovered that the United States harbors more American Muslims than American Episcopalians, Jews, or Presbyterians and that at present Los Angeles has more than three hundred Buddhist temples and the world's most varied Buddhist communities.

Eck presents this extensive diversity as a present-day Main Street phenomenon, although many Americans are unaware of this profound change. Eck depicts this submerged or concealed culture by describing Muslims worshipping in a former mattress showroom in Northridge, California, and Hindus gathering in a warehouse in Queens, New York. She identifies the growing religious diversity in America as a great challenge in the twenty-first century. Eck's study probes religious diversity in the United Stares by showing both the tragedies that develop through ignorance and misunderstanding and the hope for cultivating new spiritual communities.

-DANIEL ROSS CHANDLER

January/February 2002

Budo Secrets: Teachings of the Martial Arts Masters

Ed. John Stevens 
Boston, MA: Shambhala, 2001. Hardback, xii + 109 pages.

Budo Secrets is not a picture gallery of bearded septuagenarians gracefully launching their opponents airborne from one side of the dojo to the other, nor is it a recipe book of 101 ways to slice and dice your opponent before he can say "ginsu knife." John Stevens, who lives and teaches in Japan, has compiled an eclectic assortment of texts on the martial arts- including philosophies, principles, and instructive stories meant not only for the practitioner of the arts but for the layman with an interest in the Martial Way, called Budo.

Stevens has culled this admirable collection from a diversity of training manuals, transmission scrolls, and modern texts, many of which are available only in the original Japanese. Stevens keeps his own commentary sparse and economical, preferring to let the precepts and teachings speak for themselves. His Spartan use of commentary, however, is enhanced by the inclusion of elegant brush calligraphy attributed to the hands of various martial arts masters.

Just as learning the technique of playing the piano or the violin does not in itself elevate a musician to the level of the artist, so too, the mastery of wrist locks, arm throws, and flying side kicks does not make a warrior. One can be a technician without understanding the meaning of the Martial Way. There is an ethos that must be learned and lived. Being a warrior has nothing to do with belligerence, intimidation, and vulgar displays of self-promotion. It has everything to do with self-control, respect, and intelligent use of force. This is made clear by the number of injunctions and precepts listed here, which form a universal warrior ethos, regardless of whether one's discipline is judo, karate, aikido, or jujitsu.

Legendary figures quoted include Kyuzo Mifune, a modern-era judo master who could easily defeat opponents twice his size, although he was only 5 feet-4-inches tall and weighed less than 140 pounds. One of Mifune's tenets “the soft controls the hard") has a distinct Taoist flavor. His favorite teaching principle was that of the sphere: a sphere never loses its center and moves swiftly without strain. Another luminary is the famed sixteenth-century swordsman, Miyamoto Mushashi, whose austere code of conduct shows striking similarities with Buddhist thought. Mushashi's life was brilliantly depicted by the incomparable Toshiro Mifune in Hiroshi Inagaki's 1955 cinematic classic, Samurai Trilogy.

In an age of culture wars that has seen the erosion of traditional male role models to the point where even feminists such as Pulizer-Prize-winner Susan Faludi (Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man) become alarmed, there is much to be said for the study of the mental and moral disciplines of the martial arts tradition. Both men and women can, of course, excel in any of these disciplines, but the tradition is based on qualities generally considered masculine in nature, such as strength, courage, restraint, and perseverance. According to Budo, the warrior is not one who is ready to throw a knockout punch at" the drop of an insult, nor is he the weepy-eyed effusive type who sobs at the slightest hint of pain or suffering. Those who faithfully follow the ways of Budo will find that, at the highest level, martial arts and spirituality converge. But that culmination is based on years of hard physical work, tolerance of or indifference to pain, and practice, practice, practice.

So what is the secret of Budo? In the words of twentieth-century karate master Kanken Toyama, "Secret techniques begin with basic techniques; basic techniques end as secret techniques. There are no secrets at the beginning, but there are secrets at the end."

-DAVID BRUCE

January/February 2002