Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West [Hardcover]

Donald S. Lopez Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 28, 1998

Prisoners of Shangri-La is a provocative analysis of the romance of Tibet, a romance that, even as it is invoked by Tibetan lamas living in exile, ultimately imprisons those who seek the goal of Tibetan independence from Chinese occupation.

"Lopez lifts the veil on America's romantic vision of Tibet to reveal a country and a spiritual history more complex and less ideal than popular perceptions allow. . . . Lively and engaging, Lopez's book raises important questions about how Eastern religions are often co-opted, assimilated and misunderstood by Western culture."—Publishers Weekly

"Proceeding with care and precision, Lopez reveals the extent to which scholars have behaved like intellectual colonialists. . . . Someone had to burst the bubble of pop Tibetology, and few could have done it as resoundingly as Lopez."—Booklist

"Fascinating. . . [A] provocative exploration. Lopez conveys the full dizziness of the Western encounter with Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism."—Fred Pheil, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review

"A timely and courageous exploration. . . . [Lopez's] book will sharpen the terms of the debate over what the Tibetans and their observers can or should be doing about the place and the idea of Tibet. And that alone is what will give us all back our Shambhala."—Jonathan Spence, Lingua Franca Book Review

"Lopez's most important theme is that we should be wary of the idea . . . that Tibet has what the West lacks, that if we were only to look there we would find the answers to our problems. Lopez's book shows that, on the contrary, when the West has looked at Tibet, all that it has seen is a distorted reflection of itself."—Ben Jackson, Times Higher Education Supplement

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

In this fine scholarly work, Lopez (Asian Languages and Cultures/Univ. of Michigan) warns his readers away from romanticized visions of Tibet, which ultimately harm that beleaguered nation's prospects for independence. Buddhism, the religion of enlightenment, takes as its task the dispersal of human misconceptions of reality. It is only fitting that, in the wake of heightened popular interest in Tibet, Lopez should write a corrective to both positive and negative misconceptions of Tibetan Buddhism. Among the sources of misinterpretation he notes are: psychological interpretations of the Tibetan Book of the Dead; The Third Eye, by Englishman Cyril Hoskin, a fantastic (and popular) tale of Tibetan spirit possession published in 1956; mistranslations of the famous mantra, Om Mani Padme Hum; exhibitions of Tibetan art in Western museums; the institutionalization of the academic discipline of Tibetology; increasingly airy spiritualizations of Tibetan culture. What all these acts of interpreting Tibetan Buddhism share, says Lopez, is a whole or partial disregard for the concrete, living contexts of Tibetan religion. Elements of Tibetan Buddhism become abstract symbols onto which Western writers project their own spiritual, psychological, or professional needs. For example, the chant Om Mani Padme Hum, mistranslated as ``the jewel is in the lotus,'' is allegorized into an edifying symbol of conjoined opposites when, in fact, it is simply a prayerful invocation of the Buddhist god Avalokiteshvara. The irony is that Tibetans affirm these Western misreadings in hopes of winning more sympathy for their struggle for independence. The danger, according to Lopez, is that the full particularity of Tibet will be lost in ineffectual platitudes. He is angry about many of the more outrageous manglings of Tibetan belief and culture; he can also be quite witty over the more ridiculous applications by New Agers of ostensibly Tibetan beliefs. As an interpreter of interpreters, Lopez functions here twice removed from the actual religion of Tibet; readers should approach with some prior knowledge of Buddhism. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

...Lopez explores with skill, and a barely concealed delight in the debunkings... -- The Boston Globe, Michael Kenney

Product Details

• Hardcover: 294 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (May 28, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226493105
• ISBN-13: 978-0226493107
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #246,781 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #32 in Books > History > Asia > Tibet

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life following Art, October 23, 2000

By 

Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Paperback)

This is a most interesting account of the reception and influence of Tibetan Buddhism in the West. Towards the end of his book, Professor Lopez discusses Oscar Wilde's paradoxical maxim that "Life imitates Art" and views this as summarizing in a nutshell the West's attitude towards Tibet. Professor Lopez shows how the West's fascination with Tibet is of long duration and stems from a need to project to this esoteric little-known culture a spiritual search the West, or some people in it, are making for themselves. Tibet and its Buddhism thus become vehicles for the transmission of ideas that sometimes are only remotely related to this source.

Thus, most broadly, in the late 19th century, the Victorians viewed Buddhism as a form of rational religion under which one could live ethically and spiritually without a theology, a frightening God, or revelation. (This remains one of the attractions of Buddhism today for Westerners.) Tibetan Buddhism, with its mantras, its many divinities, its paintings and chants was viewed by many as in derogation of the teachings of "original Buddhism."

Later writers, influenced by Theosophy, the occult, the drug culture, or New Age, found in Tibet materials to support their predelictions, sometimes on the most questionable bases. What was missing in all of this, according to Professor Lopez, was an attention to Tibetans themselves and to Tibetan sources.

Thus we learn about the Tibetan "Book of the Dead", the Tibetan mantra "Om Padhe... Hum", its art, as reflected through different Western eyes. We learn about the Tibetans in exile and about the Dali Lama's attempts to hold his people together while creating a world-wide basis of support. I was particularly interested in Professor Lopez's discussion of the growth of Tibetan Buddhist studies in the Universities and of his discussion of the sometimes uneasy alliance between the worlds of scholarship and reflection on one hand and popular culture on the other hand.

This book is valuable for what it shows about distortions of Tibet and of how we mold reality to suit our needs. There is some spritual quest, though, or need that underlies the interests that many bring to Tibetan Buddhism and to Buddhism in general. That seeking, and the message that one may find in Buddhism of an analysis of the human condition that is separate from particularities of time and culture, is what is of value, I think, in the revival of interest in Buddhism. It will survive distortions or cultural fads of the moment.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Iluminating..., May 29, 2001

By 

Alamander (Altamont, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Hardcover)

It seems to me that the unblinking and unforgiving light of rationality and critical deconstruction (such as textual criticism) has already been shining for a century or more on Christianity. This kind of examination of other religions is just beginning; this book is an example.

I disagree that it is "too scholarly" -- I was engaged pretty much from beginning to end. If you need to counterbalance years of overly-romantic information about Tibet, this book fits the bill.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars West meets East!, June 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Paperback)

Lopez, Donald S. Prisoners of Shangri-la: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (University of Chicago, 1998) is a meticulous analysis of the misinformation, disinformation and fantasies promulgated by various people, well-intended and otherwise. They include charlatans like T. Lobsang Rampa, famous for having written a series in the 1950's about his "life" as a lama in Drepung monastery. Trungpa Rinpoche's psychologization of Tibetan Buddhism as exemplified by his version of the Bardo Thodol, and Leary and Alpert's psychedelic-isation of that Nyingma text, as well as Lama Sogyal's well-received edition of the same, are examined. Lopez offers an amusing look (and a fascinating one, to someone who has partaken of all these notions in her own journey of discovery) at a wide variety of topics including the notion of Tibet, itself; of that invention of the West known as Lamaism, of Tibetan art (the implication being whether there is such a thing or not), and the history of the dispute over misconceptions concerning the meaning of the six-syllable Chenresi mantra, among other subjects.

Of particular interest to me was the revelation of Jeffrey Hopkins's methods of teaching traditional philosophical debate at the University of Virginia. This book is an excellent complement to Stephen Batchelor's The Awakening of the West. It will be remembered that Batchelor's final chapters, in which he expressed the idea that the West could never accept Buddhism into the mainstream until concepts and language became more Westernized, created a bit of a stir.