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Title: Questions of Heaven: The Chinese Journeys of an American Buddhist by Gretel Ehrlich ISBN: 0-8070-7311-3 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: April, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (4 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Ehrlich's mountain wandering.
Comment: After reading a Gretel Ehrlich essay in the recent BEST SPIRITUAL WRITING, 2000, this book was a disappointment. For me, the best travel writing requires a sense of entrance into the subject. Describing her three-year visit to Bhutan in her 1999 memoir, BEYOND EARTH AND SKY, Jamie Zeppa explains the difference between arrival and entrance: "Arrival is physical and happens all at once. The train pulls in, the plane touches down, you get out of the taxi with all your baggage. You can arrive in a place, and never really enter it; you will get there, look around, take a few pictures, make a few notes, send postcards home. When you travel like this, you think you know where you are, but, in fact, you have never left home. Entering takes longer. You cross over slowly, in bits and pieces. You begin to despair: will you ever get over? It is like awakening slowly" (p. 101). Although Ehrlich's collection of five essays is interesting and informative, it lacks a sense of entrance into China.
In May, 1995, Ehrlich travelled to Western China and Tibet to climb four sacred Buddhist mountains (p. 1). "Mountains," she tells us, "were thought to connect heaven with earth, spirit with body" (p. 8). She explains, "I had come to China to pick up threads of a once flourishing Buddhist culture and thought I could find it in their sacred mountains" (p. 4). During a cab ride to Emei Shan, however, Ehrlich fears she has arrived "a thousand years too late" (p. 3). "Bumping along," she also wonders: "Are mountains really mountains? Are mountains a form of enlightenment? "Are rivers mountains running? Can we walk through them? Why do mountains walk through us?" (p. 9). These questions remain unanswered. Hoping for a spiritual experience, Ehrlich only discovers "tourist sites," "gaudy" (p. 33), "dank and dirty" hotels (p. 35), "blaring karaoke music" (p. 36) and "tourist monks" (p. 24), all of which leaves her with a "sense of defeat" (p. 70).
In addition to climbing Buddhist mountains, Ehrlich also went to China "to see where and how the animals lived, if their culture had survived" (p. 39). Her search for pandas leads Ehrlich to "dirty, cement stalls" (p. 48), leaving her feeling "sick at heart" (p. 49). However, Ehrlich's journey is not without its moments of sanctuary ("Lijiang"), and her narrative is filled with many informative digressions into China's political and religious history.
G. Merritt
Rating: 4
Summary: Well written, but take it only as a PERSPECTIVE of a foreign
Comment: If you are looking for a book about the current state of buddhism in China, this is not for you. The four stars are given to its enjoyable prose, not to the information it conveys.
Well intentioned as she might be, Ms. Ehrlich apparently did not have a chance to understand the current revival of buddhism in China, being a tourist whose knowlege and DREAM about China was only from books and a few exemplary persons she knew. Recent accounts from oversea Chinese pilgrims painted a different picture. I suppose that with the brisk pace in which everything is carried out in China these days, many things can change in four years. Moreover, it would be surprising if the communists do not learn that in order to make these pilgrimage sites attractive to oversea devotees, at least a semblance of religious atmosphere has to be fostered. It wasn't surprising to read of the accounts of monks whose only practice in the evening was to watch TV. Those are the vestige of the turmoil and destruction of the Cultural Revolution. I only feel sorry that Ms. Ehrlich did not have a chance to read the corpus of works, in Chinese, that aptly and vividly delineate the deplorable state of buddhism in China in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. These deplorable sacrileges no doubt still exist but now there are many young and well-educated monastics who enter the order for authentic and admirable purposes. It is them that carry the standard of the revival of buddhim silently, unknown to the westerners--which is good, in the current political atmosphere.
Ms. Ehrlich also did not (or does she) know that there is now a Buddhist college in Emei and that the abbot of one of its monasteries was a highly revered monk who had just passed away in his 90s (if I remember correctly) last year.
To the contrary of the first reviewer, I do not find Ms. Ehrlich's accounts condescending, I only find some of the accounts inaccurate. There are major and serious problems in China and Ms. Ehrlich's insight of the materialistic obsession of the Chinese and the huge toll it levies on the environment is quite correct, although I am much more optimistic then she was. As I told my friends who complained about the filth and disorder of the Chinatown in Manhattan, what touches me more is the dynamic undercurrent of lives there. As a student, I have toiled for a few months in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant (although not in Manhattan) and have learnt that an outsider who carries too much delusion and expectation lacks the capacity to appreciate life as it is without being too judgemental. Afterall, what is the meaning of pilgrimage? Isn't it simply an amplification of the point of contact between our own minds and the great minds of the bodhisattvas embodied in these mountains? The mountains are in the mind and in essense has nothing to do with how the itinerary is run. A pilgrim with such a "mindset" will always possess the capacity to be touched even in the most arduous and grotesque circumstances.
But then again, I am an oversea Chinese who is yet to set foot on China myself. In that regard, take my words only as a biased perspective and go see for yourselves, although if you are a westerner, that experience might always be one from the outside, sadly...
Rating: 4
Summary: Interesting
Comment: Questions of Heaven offers some insight and education to what China is " like." I found the book very interesting and thoughtful as to what some of the culture is like in China. It offered me a much greater understanding of what it is like to be a Buddhist an a spiritual journey in search of some sort of enlightenment AND it also offered a grat deal of hope - that you may find what you are "looking for" (i.e. answers from heaven as in Ehrlich's case) but the journey may be difficult, thoght-provoking, and quite lonley on the way. I am embarrased to admit that I knew nothing about China before I read this book. So I must call this book THOUGHT PROVOKING AND EDUCATIONAL!!
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Title: This Cold Heaven : Seven Seasons in Greenland by Gretel Ehrlich ISBN: 0679758526 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 07 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlich ISBN: 0140081135 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: December, 1986 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Islands, the Universe, Home by Gretel Ehrlich ISBN: 0140109072 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1992 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: A Match to the Heart/One Woman's Story of Being Struck by Lightning by Gretel Ehrlich ISBN: 0140179372 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Heart Mountain by Gretel Ehrlich ISBN: 0140109064 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: December, 1989 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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