| ||||||||||||||||||
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A European intellectual reflects and comments on the East,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Lotus and the Robot. (Paperback)
By 1959, Koestler had a wide variety of life experiences that could have easily stimulated him to continue exploring the intellect in the unique way that was his style. Yet, as have many before him, he succumbed to the temptation to explore the Eastern traditions of self-realization in order to gain perspective on the predicament of the West and humanity in general. The Lotus and the Robot is the story of year and a half long journey to India and Japan and his study of Yoga and Zen in each respective country. With well balanced critical eye coupled with an open mind, Koestler's account reads like a spiritual ethnography, observing the implications of spiritual traditions within their cultures, their psychological manifestations, historical trends, and contrasts with his own collective Western ideals and biases. His ultimate conclusions are ambiguous; he is both fascinated by these traditions yet does not believe that the cultures studied can particularly "help" the West with the problems that they face. The deliberate irrationality of the East is not a direct antidote for the excessive rationality of the West, though a hybridization of the two may be beneficial. He also highlights similarity in Eastern traditions to diluted, forgotten, and vestigal Western traditions amd the vice versa unique embracement of Western technology and ideas by the East. While some sections lag, others show flashes of profound insight. All in all, a very instructive and illuminating book for those interested in the East-West dichotomy written by a brilliant observer of both.
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Both sides of Oriental Mysticism,
By R Bell (Dun Eideann/Edinburgh Scotland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Lotus and the Robot. (Paperback)
In recent decades, the wholesale rejection of many Western ideals by large chunks of society has meant that people have turned to other sources... in many cases this has meant that they see those other sources as a little too perfect through their ignorance of them and/or they actually forget the better points of Western culture, because they see it to be totally "bankrupt". While there are better guides to the overall "texture" and ideas of Asian philosophy and religion, Koestler doesn't flinch here from telling us some of the uglier details that don't generally reach the west. Yes, Koestler is at times a little prejudiced coming from a Western religious tradition (His family were Ashkenazi Jews), and you can see that in this book... but his descriptions of REAL Indian yoga, will show you how much it has been cleaned up and bowdlerised for western consumption. Koestler also reveals some of the darker side of Buddhism, particularly Japanese Zen, which as he shows can produce a doublethink which can avoid morality, and such thinking may have been partly responsible for darker moments of WWII in the East. He also comes up with many ideas that I haven't seen elsewhere... for example he considers meditation as almost a practice for death. He also reminds people of the similarity of lesser known Western movements to Oriental ones, and of the massive influence of the west on the east of the time (far greater by now of course). Koestler himself was not uninfluenced by certain Eastern thought, indeed he titled one of his other books "The YOGI and the Commissar", and often referred to the "oceanic feeling" in his works, a close lift from Buddhism. Koestler was no Hippie (he had seen enough of *real* war and totalitarianism not to fall in that trap)... but in some ways he anticipated some of their concerns by investigating eastern thought, doing laboratory tests with LSD and being involved in the anti-nuclear movement. This book is interesting, because it gives both sides of the story... not many books give a balanced view of the topic.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Understanding India & Japan,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Lotus And The Robot (Hardcover)
This book was published in 1960 soon after Arthur Koestler's visits
to India and Japan. The 285 page book is about evenly divided between these two countries. Since I come from India I was primarily interested in the section covering India and these comments are confined to that half of the book. Koestler is a very sharp, intelligent, sensitive and yet didactic observer. His visit to India was to check whether the country's culture and philosophy had anything worthwhile to offer to the West. His check on Indian philosophy is suppoerted by a meticulous and detailed analysis of origial sources of information and comment. This type of in-depth analysis is rarely done and it is a pleasure to read his observations. Koestler spent time meeting several several well known Gurus, both male and female, and their disciples. The accounts of these meetings increase the value of the book particularly for those readers who may not be attracted to erudite, sometimes abstruse, discussion of philosophic subjects. This book is strogly recommended to readers with a serious interest in India and its ancient spiritual culture.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
