Review
THE SPIRIT OF BUDDHISM
by Sogyal Rinpoche
HarperCollins, 85 pp.
There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. – Shakespeare, Hamlet
Ten years ago, an unlikely bestseller, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, made Tibetan Buddhist scholar Sogyal Rinpoche a big name on the alternative book circuit. He took compassionate Buddhist common sense and applied it to a baby-boom generation hungry for some sort of guide to aging and the end of life.
Now, a decade later, North American readers have a short coda to Sogyal Rinpoche’s masterwork.
First published in France, where Sogyal Rinpoche lives, The Spirit of Buddhism: The Future of Dharma in the West is a slim quartet of two speeches from 1998 and two articles from 1994. Together, it presents a practitioner’s assessment of the current and future traffic between Buddhism and the West. While written in a tone of friendly good intention, The Spirit of Buddhism is more than an eloquent summary of the differences between two cultures.
"The ancient science of Tibetan medicine is rooted in the teachings of the Buddha, and the essence of these teachings is the central importance of the mind." With this simple sentence, Sogyal Rinpoche opens his talk, "The Spiritual Heart of Tibetan Medicine." Proceeding from this statement, Sogyal Rinpoche suggests a radical reality-shift from western medical science. What if we address the well-being of the mind, rather than medicate an ailing body?
The Alberta government may feel that a high-tech database can solve its problem with the health care system – that the system is too costly. But accessing files at wireless speed will not solve our fundamental problem as citizens – that we are too sick. Sogyal Rinpoche’s talk on Tibetan medicine and the three other miniatures contained in this book are like koans – the paradoxes Buddhist students are assigned for meditation. This collection causes the best kind of puzzlement – contemplation.
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