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 enlarge | Author: Pico Iyer
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
Buy New: $13.51
You Save: $10.49 (44%)
New (48) Used (13) from $13.29
Avg. Customer Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 4097
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.2
ISBN: 0307267601
Dewey Decimal Number: 294.3923092
EAN: 9780307267603
ASIN: 0307267601
Publication Date: March 25, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20080704211911T
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| Customer Reviews:
 Boring May 8, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book is ok. I feel the author could have written in a more personal manner about the Dalai Lama then about his own interaction with him. I feel he was talking about his own feelings instead what the Dalai Lama is really about.
Timely insight May 4, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Mr Iyer provides a tender, yet seemingly detached view of the Dalai Lama himself and the context in which he lives and has to try to balance his spiritual and political duties. Very insightful and without some of the spiritually breathless language that sometimes obscures accounts of the leader of the Tibetan people. Eminently readable!
Looking past the clichés May 4, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
To a skeptic steeped in Western tradition, the Dalai Lama is a puzzling figure. A celebrity created and exploited by the media? A shrewd politician? A religious icon transcending strife and ambition?
How 'authentic' a spokesman is he for Buddhism, for Tibet?
The almost simultaneous visits of the Pope and the Dalai Lama in the U.S. invite comparison. The Pope, obviously, addresses himself primarily to Catholics of any nationality or ethnicity. His speeches are circumscribed by Catholic doctrine, although he attempts to reach out to other religious faiths.
The audience of the Dalai Lama, on the other hand, is meant to include everybody, regardless of religious affiliation. He does not try to convert people to Buddhism.
Pico Iyer, by birth and education a wanderer between East and West, is uniquely suited to shed some light on the problem. His close relationship with the Dalai Lama gives him easy access, his journalistic training allows him to keep a certain distance. He clears away some of the misconceptions: the Dalai Lama is not a mystic; not a "living deity". His word is not gospel - he encourages debate and criticism. He emphasizes selflessness and compassion, the interconnectedness of all human beings. But what foreigners are usually drawn to is the exotic, spiritual side of Tibetan Buddhism - the images of skull-headed creatures riding monsters and of strange, copulating deities.
Iyer attempts to reconcile these different aspects: the rational and the irrational, the daylight side and the nighttime side, as he puts it, of Tibetan Buddhism. And he gives us a taste of some of the divisions inside Buddhism, of competing factions (such as the followers of Shugden) and rival candidates put forward as incarnate lamas.
The Dalai Lama insists that he is a "simple monk", a student as well as a teacher. Meditations, prayer and reading take up most of his day. But his rigorous training in Tibetan philosophy does not serve him well when he is confronted with tourists eager for a spiritual adventure, or impatient youths seeking a fast and efficient way to enlightenment. Therefore his message has to be watered down to what often sounds like simple tenets you might find in a Boy Scout manual. You could even buy a T-shirt displaying purported sayings of the Dalai Lama....
Iyer's vivid description of Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile, puts you right in the middle of the rather chaotic goings-on, and you understand that the vision of a "global village" is still far from reality. When the Dalai Lama admonishes the displaced Tibetans to "build a home within" he knows it's an idea that is hard to implement; and it is not made easier by the hippies and drifters crowding the scene.
There is growing tension between the Dalai Lama's message of non-violence and increasing restlessness among younger Tibetans who are calling for political action. As I write this, the Chinese government has received emissaries of the Dalai Lama, who advocates "meaningful autonomy" for Tibet. A glimmer of hope for the Tibetans?
"The image of the Open Road speaks for a perpetual becoming" writes Iyer. His own struggle for peace and clarity is reflected in these pages - an attempt, as he sees it, "to bring the Dalai Lama out of Tibet and Buddhism and into the larger community of ideas and thinkers".
Conundrums Facing a Holy Man and a Political Leader April 23, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Iyer has spent years interviewing the Dalai Lama, going along with him on his travels to the West and to Japan, as well as interviewing those close to and critical of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala,India the home of Tibet in exile. Viewed as a god and as the leader of a nation now occupied by China, this book explores the pressures upon this man who teaches non-attachment, no-self and peace while his people live under the yoke of a brutal oppressor. This is a fascinating look at this holy man's public and private personae. The author states that he is not a Buddhist. I couldn't help but wonder how he felt about Buddhism and since he is not a Buddhist what drives his fascination with the Dalai Lama. These questions remain unanswered.
 14th and Possibly Last Dalai Lama April 12, 2008
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
The colors of Tibet come alive, and Dharamsala rocks (quite hilariously) into clarity. Iyer brings us into the orbit and inner sanctum of the 14th Dalai Lama -- possibly the last in a long line of Dalai Lamas -- and creates a profoundly thoughtful, intelligent, skeptical, provocative and moving portrait of the most beloved spiritual leader of our time and also a breathtaking bird's eye view of what has become of Tibet and its people in the last 50 years.
The thing that's rare here is the perspective and intellectual honesty: Although he has known the Dalai Lama for thirty years, Iyer isn't a student, a follower, or even a Buddhist pracitioner. There are no overwrought feelings or needless demonstrations of somber respect, or attempts to please a big daddy figure. Iyer asks the hard questions -- has the Dalai Lama done enough for his people? -- and guides us perceptively through a rich assortment of encounters with the spiritual leader, both public and private, while skillfully revealing to us the wild projections we cast upon the smiley icon of Tibet.
I can't imagine a more deliciously highbrow yet gentle-hearted portrait of anybody, much less a human being who has come to play such a huge role in our imaginations but of whom we know (and expect) so little.
Pico Iyer's books are all so good -- I hope you've read The Lady and The Monk -- that I am reluctant to say this is his best work yet, but I feel it is.
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