RE-ENCHANTMENT

Tibetan Buddhism Comes to the West

by Jeffrey Paine

(W.W. Norton & Company, 2004, hardcover $24.95)

Jeffrey Paine's new book, Re-enchantment: Tibetan Buddhism Comes to the West, describes the meteoric rise in popularity of what might easily have become a lost and forsaken spiritual tradition. According to Paine, prior to 1968, Tibetan Buddhism was virtually unknown in the West. Sure, the Beats and Alan Watts had brought Zen into the public eye, but Tibetan Buddhism had been explored by only a handful of the most intrepid spiritual adventurers. However, that was all destined to change.

It was in 1968 that a chance encounter with the Dalai Lama's official translator ignited the heart of a Catholic monk named Thomas Merton, motivating his exploration of this mysterious tradition. Merton's subsequent writings, The Asian Journals, made him the first in a line of inspired individuals who literally forced this archaic tradition into the hearts and minds of the postmodern world. Lama Yeshe outlived cancer for fifteen years, traveling relentlessly across the globe and leaving 130 Tibetan Buddhist centers in his wake. Chogyam Trungpa traded his robes for tailored suits and his monastic vows for a lifestyle of worldly excess and, in the process, won the admiration of an entire generation of American hippies while simultaneously turning them on to the most profound Buddha dharma. Tenzin Palmo, a Western woman, returned from the East with death-defying tales of will and determination after spending twelve years, at times sealed in by snow, on a solitary retreat in a Himalayan cave. And of course, His Holiness the Dalai Lama's fierce compassion in the face of exile has made him second only to Pope John Paul II as the most popular religious figure in the West.

Paine's book is sparse on social critique and philosophical insight, but it beautifully describes one of the greatest cultural migrations of the twenty-first century, showing how a ravaged ancient religious society rocketed into modern history—not through the orchestrated enactment of a grandly conceived design, but through individual human lives moved by the power of spirit and recklessly dedicated to the call of the miraculous.

Jeff Carreira

THE PROGRESS PARADOX

How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse

By Gregg Easterbrook

(Random House, New York, 2003, hardcover $24.95)

Practically everything is getting better. This is the bold assertion that starts Gregg Easterbrook's optimistic assault on postmodern cynicism. For example: health care is better for more people on Earth than ever before; the incidence of armed conflict is declining worldwide; crime rates are dropping in urban America; smallpox, polio, and other fatal diseases have been eradicated; and one-third fewer people die of hunger than two decades ago. Wait a minute, you might be thinking: “What about global warming? What about species extinction?” But Easterbrook isn't denying our problems—he's simply saying that our fear-obsessed culture negatively slants our view of reality and will never give us the will, the drive, or the determination to find solutions.

The book's relentless onslaught of good news shows that by almost every measurable standard, life today is better than it ever has been. In fact, in the developed world, the average person enjoys a standard of living that far exceeds that of any king or queen in centuries past. Yet in spite of our outrageously good fortune, Easterbrook says, we seem to be sinking more deeply into negativity and pessimism, popping Prozac to fight depression, committing suicide at escalating rates, and generally feeling despondent about the possibility of making any real difference.

Easterbrook examines many sociological and psychological reasons for this paradox, but one seems particularly vital to consider: Hopelessness lets us off the hook. It allows us to feel incapable of and unaccountable for meeting the tremendous challenges we do face. And he won't let us get away with it. As the most affluent people who have ever inhabited planet Earth, he insists that we have an obligation to assume that nothing is impossible and that it's never too late to change the world. This very intelligent and meticulously researched book isn't offering solutions, but the shift it points to—into a higher and more optimistic context—just might be the only real solution there is.

Jeff Carreira

EVOLUTION'S ARROW

The Direction of Evolution and the Future of Humanity

by John Stewart

(The Chapman Press, Australia, 2000, paperback $19.95)

In this remarkably synthetic and cogently argued book, evolutionary biologist John Stewart insists that wherever life emerges in the cosmos, evolution will progress in the direction of greater cooperation, complexity, and “evolvability.” Atoms, molecules, cells, organisms, societies—with each step forward, a more complex system of cooperating parts emerges. And these new systems have an ever-increasing capacity to receive and respond to information from the environment, allowing them to adapt more efficiently to prevailing conditions and evolve more quickly into future forms.

Up until now, Stewart explains, evolution has advanced without the benefit of self-reflection. Human beings have not only become conscious of the evolutionary nature of the universe but are beginning to unravel the very mechanics through which it has progressed blindly for billions of years. We have literally become the eyes through which the evolutionary process can see its own methods. And this breakthrough in consciousness, the author concludes, has unimaginable potential. By choosing to align ourselves and our cultures with the natural “arrow” of evolution—toward ever-higher levels of cooperation—humanity will vastly accelerate the progress of its own development.

The immensity of the questions Stewart wrestles with is breathtaking. What will humanity look like when human organization becomes as spectacularly cooperative as, for instance, the interactions between the individual cells that make up an organism? What type of management and governance will be required for the human race to achieve this extraordinary degree of organizational efficiency?

The author has a habit of repetition, which some readers may find irritating, but I was grateful for it. By the time I closed the book, his main points had become so much my own that I can trust they will not disappear as a passing enthusiasm. Evolution's Arrow is, quite simply, both mind-expanding and confidence-building. By inviting us to trust the deep patterns of evolution's past, it opens the future to undreamed-of spiritual and social transformation.

Michael Dowd

Michael Dowd is an evolutionary evangelist who lectures internationally. His website is www.TheGreatStory.org

TERROR IN THE MIND OF GOD

The Global Rise of Religious Violence

by Mark Juergensmeyer

(University of California Press, 2003, paperback $16.95)

What do Jewish extremists, Christian anti-abortion activists, the American militia movement, Sikh militants, and Islamic jihadists all have in common? Religious terrorism is the obvious answer. But there is more to the story, and author Mark Juergensmeyer sets out to discover just how much more in his recent book Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. Through conversations with leaders and participants in each of these militant organizations, Juergensmeyer makes a convincing case that is as simple as it is profound: Each of these extremist groups is fighting the same essential battle—a war against secular society. Their ideology may be different, the details of their faith may vary widely, but each is committed to a traditional, premodern worldview, and each sees secular society as a degenerate, irredeemable expression of everything that authentic religion stands against.

Juergensmeyer is a good tour guide through this harrowing world, and he managed to speak with some of the most prominent individuals at the heart of each of these movements, such as Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, the two leaders of Hamas who were assassinated by Israeli missiles this year. He strikes a good balance between presentation and critique, reporting the stories and words of these individuals, their explanations and justifications, with plenty of context and a minimum of comment.

What is perhaps most disturbing and intriguing is to read some of the criticism of our society by terrorists like Mahmud Abouhalima, the 1993 bomber of the World Trade Center, who Juergensmeyer interviewed in prison. “The soul of religion is what's missing” from Western culture, Abouhalima tells the author, and you don't have to look too far to see that there is some truth in that statement. It is the increasing dilemma of the postmodern era: How do we transcend the superficiality and materialism that have been the long-term side effects of the freedoms of liberal society? Of course, we are all beneficiaries of the great victory of modernity over the horrible strictures and intolerant dogmas of our premodern past. And these extremists would take us right back to that nightmarish world. But what Juergensmeyer offers through his reflections is the awareness that our society is yet incomplete, and that the victories of modernity and postmodernity, for all their tremendous importance, are not enough. We must look forward, not back, connecting with the deeper current of our human values, our cultural soul, if you will, in order to keep from succumbing to the reactionary currents that threaten us today. Maybe part of the answer to religious violence, as Juergensmeyer writes, is to acknowledge the place of religion in “elevating the spiritual and moral values of public life.” In a sense, Juergensmeyer is hinting at the need for a sort of Reformation in reverse—a societal shift that will bring the moral depth of the religious spirit into the modern world just as the Reformation brought new and radical values into the corrupt religious structures of premodernity.

The extremists featured in these pages, of course, represent the exact opposite of such a movement. But their words of hate and acts of violence can, in an unexpected way, help show us something they could never have intended—the inadequacy of present society to meet both the conditions of our globalizing world and the needs of the human soul. In the end, Terror in the Mind of God is a book not just about religious terrorists, but about us, and about the urgency of moving forward into the future even as the forces of reaction and rebellion try to drag us back into the worst hells of our past.

Carter Phipps

BIO EVOLUTION:

How Biotechnology Is Changing Our World

by Michael Fumento

(Encounter Books, 2003, hardcover $28.95)

Imagine bioengineered crops that could eliminate starvation and disease in the Developing World—and be grown on a fraction of today's land, thus returning millions of acres back to the environment. How about final cures for cancer, Alzheimer's, and every other major health scourge known to humankind? Or consider body armor made from silk three times tougher than Kevlar, spun from goat milk proteins that have been modified by spider DNA. And don't forget microorganisms that could consume toxic and even nuclear waste, quickly and cheaply rendering it harmless. Think of what it would mean to be able to grow organs from your own DNA for future transplants. What about the implications of a whole spate of technologies likely to inhibit—and reverse—the aging process? Could human beings live for two hundred years or more?

Sound absurd? Perhaps, but according to author Michael Fumento, this is just a taste of what the field of biotech has in store for us during the next five to ten years.

In Fumento's thoroughly researched, engagingly written, and unabashedly pro-biotech book, he explores this mind-boggling subject in layperson's language. And folks, it's a brave new world. In chapter after chapter, Fumento explores the impact of biotechnology on medicine, agriculture, hunger, and the global ecology while also examining the economic and political pressures on the field. He also goes to great pains to debunk many of the myths and controversies surrounding biotech, including the highly charged issue of embryonic stem cells. And this, of course, brings us to ethics.

While Fumento clearly states that ethical concerns must be addressed every step of the way and clarifies a number of misconceptions, it's evident that he is far more excited about the possibilities of biotech than he is concerned about its potential negative long-term consequences. In fact, in his most impassioned statements, Fumento verges on suggesting that opposition to biotech is unethical. This position is a touch ironic, to say the least, given that biotechnology has generated more ethical concerns than any other field to date. So while Bio Evolution is both exciting and exhilarating, as well as a great place to start an exploration of the field, it should definitely not be the only book you read on the subject.

Michael Wombacher

THE HAND OF GOD

Thoughts and Images Reflecting the Spirit of the Universe (1999)

INSIDE THE MIND OF GOD

Images and Words of Inner Space (2002)

Both edited by Michael Reagan, with introductions by Sharon Begley (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press)

“Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world,” said Arthur Schopenhauer. If seeing is believing, these two small-format coffee-table books will measurably expand those limits, even at a moment's glance. Pairing cutting-edge photography with provocative quotations by everyone from Albert Einstein to Annie Dillard, Herman Melville to Dr. Seuss and the Pope, they are visual and philosophical odes to the furthest reaches of scientific knowledge—and by extension, odes to the sacred.

The Hand of God is the first and better of the two. Many of its images of outer space are so spare, elegant, and overwhelming, they brought tears to my eyes. Planetary nebula NGC 3132, for example, looks like a glossy geode or divine eye floating in black space, half an incomprehensible light year in diameter. Best savored like wine or poetry, just a page or two will send your imagination reeling across the universe, there to behold both the mystery of creativity and the awesomeness of human purpose. Inside the Mind of God, on the other hand, inverts its lens into the deceptively enormous landscape of molecular biology, presenting microscopic shots of neurons, hormones and viruses, cancer drugs, heart valves, and cybernetic circuits. Like a combination science lab and art show, it both educates and impresses.

Too many coffee-table books just sit there; these, like stars or microscopes, will brighten your vision of reality.

Ross Robertson

THE HEART OF THE QUR'AN

An Introduction to Islamic Spirituality

by Lex Hixon

(Quest Books, revised edition, 2003, paperback $18.95)

It's hard to imagine a more timely re-release of Lex Hixon's elegant meditation on the Qur'an, entitled The Heart of the Qur'an. For most Westerners, our limited interest in this classic religious pillar has unfortunately sprung from the arid soil of escalating tensions between premodern Islamic culture and the postmodern West—not from the fertile loam of spiritual aspiration. That is why we are fortunate to have such a heartfelt rendering from a Westerner like Hixon, who was steeped in the mystical ways of Islam. Before his death in 1995, he was not only an ordained Sufi sheikh but also an accomplished student of many great mystical traditions, including Vajrayana Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, Soto Zen, and Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

In fact, an essential part of the journey into The Heart of the Qur'an is the mysterious and captivating story of Hixon's personal experience with Islam, described in the opening chapters of the book. This otherworldly introduction—filled with dreamlike visions, spiritual masters, and holy pilgrimages—flows seamlessly through meditative and poetic prose into a selection of passages from the holy text itself. Hixon presents the spirit of the Qur'an through passages that keep returning our attention to Allah, the omnipotent source of the universe speaking through his chosen prophet, Muhammad. Through metaphors of fertility and earthen bounty, Allah's all-generous and all-encompassing nature is conveyed in images and values clearly suited to the agrarian cultures of the time. But nowhere is the affirming spirit of Allah more profoundly expressed than in the passages about the hereafter, where even hell is but one stop on the soul's imminent journey home.

All the while, the simple cadence and rhythm of Hixon's language bring the reader into a mood of spiritual readiness, transmitting a deep and vibrant peace. Indeed, you can read The Heart of the Qur'an as a cultural artifact or for religious edification, but I recommend it for the hidden depths that reward those who are sincerely interested, like Lex Hixon himself, in the awesome mystery and rich meaning of life.

Morgan Dix

TRANSCENDENT SEX

When Lovemaking Opens the Veil

by Jenny Wade, Ph.D.

(Paraview Pocket Books, 2004, paperback $14.00)

Imagine dimming the lights, turning your cell phone off, and enticing your partner into bed for an evening of lovemaking, only to find yourself, while wrapped in your lover's embrace, suddenly overwhelmed by an utterly inexpressible, ecstatically blissful experience of divine communion with the source of creation itself—an experience in which orgasm becomes not just irrelevant but even an irritating distraction. Based on the narratives of ninety-one people interviewed by transpersonal psychologist Dr. Jenny Wade, Transcendent Sex sets out to demonstrate that these kinds of powerful and potentially transformative experiences not only are quite common but are in fact “happening every day behind closed doors with people you know, people without any special sexual or spiritual training—people like you.”

As one participant described, “I [broke] apart, [fell] into the Light . . . merged into the fires of God like a planet plunging into the furnace of the sun. . . .” Experiences like these show that sex can be a portal to a numinous world that is, Wade concludes, more ubiquitous and readily available to us than we might imagine. It is a world that exists beyond the delimited realms of space and time, in which past lives and future destiny can be revealed, time warps, magical connections with plants and animals can be perceived, and union with the Divine is made manifest. And this world can be revealed spontaneously through sex, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, personal history, religious orientation, or sexual mechanics. This is not about tantra.

“At that moment,” one woman recalled, “the universe was revealing itself, and all the secrets were there. . . . So we're all-knowing. We're all-experience. We're the universe. . . . We are All That Is. All That Is.” It's no wonder that Wade compares transcendent sex to near-death experiences, which are similarly unpremeditated and also often irrevocably transform a person's life. Thus, she concludes that transcendent sex “can become a vehicle for a grace that transfigures all of the human condition, [a] nexus of Spirit and flesh [which] illuminates and sanctifies all creation.” And what spiritually inclined person wouldn't want to pursue that? But can one consciously cultivate these kinds of experiences? Wade isn't so sure. Nonetheless, the dozens of vividly compelling, consciousness-shifting events she conveys are indeed awe-inspiring.

Jessica Roemischer

WAKING LIFE

Directed by Richard Linklater

(Twentieth Century Fox Home Video, video and DVD formats, 2002)

Richard Linklater's Waking Life just might be the most hypnotically perceptive film ever made. Perceptive because it delves into postmodern philosophy, culture, and consciousness without getting lost in it. Doubly perceptive because it pioneers a form of animation that deepens that investigation as surrealism deepened rationalism in the early decades of twentieth-century Europe. That animation, traced on top of live footage as though layering a fourth, slightly-out-of-focus dimension over the usual three, induces a reverie something like walking through an endless museum of living paintings. And through it all, as he poses the biggest questions of human purpose and human destiny, Linklater's most spellbinding genius is to leave them so vividly unanswered.

The loose narrative of his self-described “cinematic fever-dream” involves a nameless young man (Wiley Wiggins) caught in a curious predicament: he's dreaming and unable to wake himself. Unfolding through a kaleidoscopic sequence of encounters with a host of minor characters whose extraordinary philosophies guide him progressively toward self-awareness, his strange voyage is a hymn to the unknown and an ode to curiosity. “Creation seems to come out of imperfection,” one woman says, leaning intently forward. “It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration.” “Throughout history,” muses a novelist, “attempts have been made to contain those experiences which happen at the edge, at the limit, where the mind is vulnerable.” A wild-haired drifter on a bridge remarks: “Our eyesight is here as a test to see if we can see beyond it.”

Via physics, reincarnation, free will, biology, collective memory, art and alienation, lucid dreaming and enlightenment, Linklater threads together a ceaseless plea for authenticity. “This movie was very consciously trying to find the connective tissue, the connective ideas,” he says on the DVD commentary (also highly recommended). And it fulfills that endeavor with such creative intelligence, it has to be seen to be believed. If you have any doubt that a film can be “a record of God, or of the face of God, or of the ever-changing face of God,” as one character proposes, watch Waking Life. Just be ready to join Wiggins in free fall, helplessly involved, “absorbed by eternity.”

Ross Robertson

EMPATHY

Written and directed by Amie Siegel

(First Run/Icarus Films, 2003, www.empathythemovie.com)

In recent years psychoanalysis seems to have fallen out of step with popular culture. Of course there was Analyze This or That, and there's The Sopranos' weekly exchange between Tony and Dr. Jennifer Melfi, but that's not saying much. How surprising then to see Empathy, a masterpiece of a film that approaches psychoanalysis with total originality and creative dynamism.

Directed by twenty-nine-year-old video installation artist Amie Siegel, the film explores the “tricky intimacy,” as Siegel puts it, between psychoanalyst and patient. Watching Empathy is a truly multidimensional experience. The film breaks with convention at every turn, thrusting us from the genres of “documentary” to “movie” to “interview” to “reality” in deeply uncomfortable yet evocative ways. Anchoring the film are interviews with three fifty-something white male psychoanalysts, who, provoked by Siegel's penetrating questions, begin to candidly deconstruct their relationships with their patients, revealing an endearing vulnerability. When asked how therapy is different from prostitution, for example, one replies wryly, “Well . . . I guess you get to know each other better.” We're also shown the actual screen tests of the painfully self-conscious actresses who auditioned for the film's central role of thirty-eight-year-old Lia Graf. In the film, Lia makes a living as a voice-over artist and suffers from depression. Although we see her day-to-day life, it is her sessions with a real-life psychoanalyst (though he is “acting” for the movie) that will captivate and surprise you. Lia is played by Gigi Buffington, who we see in the screen tests as herself and also enacting a tongue-in-cheek TV interview about being a famous actress (which, obviously, she is not). Numerous interwoven plotlines such as these, indiscriminately fact and fiction, embellish each other in surreal and brilliant ways. By the end, you'll realize that Empathy isn't a puzzle that's meant to be solved but an experience intended to literally expand our minds.

How Siegel manages to accomplish this expansion is truly wonderful: by shaking us out of our habitual movie-watching modes, she enables us to witness the tenuous boundaries between truth and artifice, empathy and self-interest—to trespass into the dangerous territory of human relationships and psychology in ways we wouldn't normally do. The movie actually provokes our curiosity, and the payoff for our interest is the pleasure of genuine revelation—the joy of watching a rare original unfold in front of our eyes. Interestingly enough, some critics have claimed that the film is stuck in the postmodern obsession with “style” and “surface” and so isn't very original at all. This is an unfortunate conclusion to draw, for Siegel actually proves that postmodern art can do more than chase its own intellectual tail. That in fact, while still embracing the wildly creative innovations that have defined our present era, beneath all the style and surface, there can exist real heart. The best surprise of Empathy is that its heart is so big.

Maura R. O'Connor

KUMBH MELA

Shortcut to Nirvana

Produced and directed by Maurizio Benazzo and Nick Day

(Mela Films, in theaters nationwide September 2004)

Take seventy million pilgrims, two holy rivers, and more gurus, fakirs, swamis, and yogis than you knew existed. Add in the rich color, swirling dust clouds, countless contradictions, and irrepressible humanity of the world's most complex culture. Condense it down to eighty-five minutes of video footage, set it all to an alternately upbeat and haunting soundtrack, and you've got Kumbh Mela: Shortcut to Nirvana, the just-released documentary from filmmakers Maurizio Benazzo and Nick Day.

Chronicling “the greatest gathering of people in the history of humanity”—the 2001 Maha Kumbh Mela in Allahabad—this award-winning film follows the adventures of a small group of young Westerners and their recently befriended interpreter, Swami Krishnanand, as they encounter the beauty, mystery, and mayhem of India through the lens of its most ancient and revered religious festival. While the comments of the Westerners themselves do little to illuminate the subject matter, and the lack of a single narrative voice gives the film a somewhat disjointed feel, the filmmakers have nonetheless managed to create a delightful and surprisingly full portrait of this world sliced out of time.

Indeed, at an event so massive and multifaceted, with so much to distract the camera's eye, Benazzo and Day show an impressive commitment to capturing breadth without sacrificing depth. The film's backbone is a series of encounters with the holy men and women whose living realization of the divine has infused the Hindu tradition with its mystery and vibrancy since time immemorial. Orange-clad swamis, like Divine Mother Purna Praghnamataji, remind us of the timeless call to leave the world behind: “If you want to achieve that supreme reality, that supreme consciousness, and you are not ready to pay for it, not ready to renounce anything, then how can you expect to achieve it?” Devraha Hans Baba, reputed to have transformed the lives of thousands simply by looking at them, chants hypnotically through a loudspeaker as a young sari-clad woman whirls in ecstatic trance, ultimately collapsing unconscious on the ground before him. Kali Baba, an African Masai shaman-turned-sadhu, issues a fervent call to see through all duality to the Self that was never born and will never die. Even the Dalai Lama makes an appearance to pay homage to the great tradition that gave birth to his own and to call for religious harmony beyond doctrinal differences.

And then, of course, there are the ascetics. At the camp of airforce-pilot-turned-yogi Pilot Baba, we witness the revered master's top disciple emerge gracefully from a closed pit where she has been immersed in samadhi [meditative absorption] for three days. Next, we meet Bharti Urdhvati, a fakir who has been holding his left arm stretched overhead for twenty years in hope of reaching enlightenment. Then there is Avadhoot Baba, who not only walks on sandals made of upturned nails but sits atop a throne of heated spear points suspended over an open fire.

Weaving together this string of encounters is a loosely assembled collage of video footage and penetrating still photography, illuminating the kaleidoscopic life of the festival—from the hundreds of street theaters that pop up every night to the vendors and fair stalls that line the paths by day. Yet, the countless religious gatherings large and small remind us that, despite its sometimes carnival-like atmosphere, this is a festival devoted to God. The film reaches its crescendo, as does the festival itself, on Mauni Amavasya, the main bathing day. As thousands of naked, ash-smeared naga babas storm the holy Ganges, “purifying the water” for the twenty million pilgrims who will follow, any doubts one might have had as to whether Hinduism will survive modernity are washed away like the sins of the faithful.

Craig Hamilton