Customer Reviews

Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West

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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.

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.

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.

This is a very unique analysis of how the idea of Tibet has been constructed by outsiders, especially those of far different Western cultures. Tibet has been described as everything from a backward haunt of crude barbarians to a paradise of pure thought and devotion. Lopez shows us that neither of these is accurate, and that Tibet is possibly the one location and culture on Earth that has been most heavily analyzed by outsiders who have never been there, or talked to its natives or leaders. Lopez tackles this subject from a purely academic angle, and his writing tends to get bogged down in esoteric theory (lighten up on the hermeneutics, sir), along with occasional egghead professor-speak like "Tibetan Buddhism was then constructed as the other of this other ('original Buddhism')."

Apart from those difficulties, we do get a mostly fascinating debunking of inaccurate Western pontifications about Tibet, like an exhaustive deconstruction of the West's misunderstanding of the familiar "om mani padme hum" mantra, or a treatise on why the European fraud Lobsang Rampa (not a real Tibetan) could be taken seriously. Of course Lopez has much to say about our modern celebrity Buddhists and the popular Free Tibet movement, all of which are riddled with inaccuracies. Lopez also gives us the true responsibilities and goals of the Dalai Lama, who is a worthy international icon but not necessarily the undisputed God of his people. Other books provide the background on Tibetan history, religion, and geography. But this book is a must-read for anyone interested in attaining accurate knowledge of the Tibetans and their struggles. [~doomsdayer520~]

to one of the biggest gigs touring the world right now.

The book, written in the best academese, presents a clear view of the West's distortion, and the history of that distortion-making, vis-à-vis Tibet and Tibet's version of Buddhism.

The book is laid out into seven neat chapters, each bearing a single-word title that feels Borgesian in its cryptic minimalism. Each chapter deals with one of the events and objects that have structured for the West the illusion called Tibet. They are (and refer to):

1. The Name (the term `Lamaism')
2. The Book (The Tibetan Book of the Dead)
3. The Eye (the book, `The Third Eye' by T. Lobsang Rampa)
4. The Spell (the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum)
5. The Art (Thangkas, Mandalas, Wrathful Deities, Skull cups, etc)
6. The Field (of Buddhist Studies and Tibetology in the US)
7. The Prison (the collective illusion regarding "Tibet" and her mysteries)

Yes, the debunking is sobering as well as entertaining, as it is done with solid scholarly information delivered with biting wit and even Wildean sarcasm at times.

But the most interesting things the author mentions are questions and remain still as questions: Namely, the question of Tibetan clergy's willing "collusion" or co-option of the West's tendency to "psychologize" the Buddhist doctrine. For example, there is a marked tendency on the part of the Tibetan Lamas and American academics to veer away from interpreting the Six Realms as anything more than so many "psychological states" in this present incarnation but that is certainly NOT the way most Tibetans have been taught.
Moreover, there is a Dalai Lama approved move to present to the West a user-friendly version of Tibetan Buddhism that is totally devoid of the really weird stuff that "formerly" took up (and still takes up for the average Tibetan) the bulk of what that faith used to be all about "back home": exorcism, magic, animistic rituals, etc., stuff that would be totally unacceptable in the modern West.

The last chapter deals a bit with the so-called Shugden Affair that may have played a part in the murder of an old Lama and his two students who supported the Dalai Lama's new policy (after consulting an oracle) to outlaw Shugden (a protecting deity of the Geluk sect) worship. This was not widely reported in the media but apparently this was/is a big deal among the Tibetans in the dressing room backstage even as they continue to put on a great show on stage.

No doubt, Tibetan Buddhism, even in its Americanized (low fat, low salt, Stuart Smalley) version has something to offer to some people - if not to the West as a whole, then at least to the Tibetans' image. But are we in the West willing, ready, and daring enough to meet the Tibetans on their own religious turf and do what they do and eat what they eat, so to speak? If not, maybe going back to church and listening to a familiar sermon may not be entirely a bad idea for those who must have religion.

Let's not forget, nobody in China has ever heard of, let alone eat, Chop Suey.

How we idealize Tibet as the white man's spiritual treasury, protected by monks within frozen lairs, links seven essays. Acerbic, dispassionate, and unromantic, Lopez demystifies what much coverage of the Dalai Lama and centuries of fables have obscured: Tibet's reality. This book talks little of politics, but much about the predicament that the West has placed Tibet within: we cannot allow it to escape our own fanciful prison, within which levitating lamas, carefree peasants, and many monks pursue beneath rarified skies the mysteries of a higher realm.

This emphasis, despite Lopez's knack for deadpan dismissal of tall tales, can be dispiriting. While I admire his efforts to dismantle the Orientalist construct that freezes Tibet, I wondered why he remained so dispassionate about its current plight. The final chapter, "The Prison," appears to castigate the Dalai Lama for his difficult balancing act between political leader and spiritual director, but it's hard to see why Lopez ignores the destruction of so much of the learning and culture that he, as a professional Tibet expert, would surely lament.

Perhaps the "surely" betrays my own prejudice, however. In professorial mode rather than as gulled tale-teller, he seeks to distance himself from Western stereotypes of Eastern wisdom. He studies how Western reception makes "things Tibetan become not particular to a time and a place, but universal, and in the process Tibet is everywhere and hence nowhere, functioning as an element of difference in which everything is possible." And in this non-historical, non-geographical, nonsensical depiction, Westerners form their own deluded knowledge of what they claim to know.

Chapter One examines at great length the term Lamaism as a definition for what Tibetans believe. Often Protestant or rationalist interpreters sought to taint Tibetan practice and belief as "papist," and while Lopez does not cite Ram Dass' later summation of Tibetan Buddhism as "Roman Catholicism on LSD," this later, and perhaps approving, tie of the Vatican to the lamasary may be a rare instance of a positive spin on the topic. Even early friars visiting Lhasa despaired at finding an eerie funhouse mirror of Catholic ritual seemingly repeated by the panoply they found. It later became justification for the fears of the West that the Church and Tibet both represented, to be conquered by either reforming Christians and/or rational imperialists. He concludes: "The very use of the term Lamaism is a gesture of control over the unincorporated and the unassimilated, used first by the Qing over Tibet, then as a code word for 'Papism' by the British over Catholic Ireland and Europe, and finally by European Buddhology over the uncolonized and unread." (44)

Chapter Two extends the reach of the West through Jung's commentary and the various editors and renderers of the mislabelled (to allude to the 1920s King Tut craze, a point Lopez does not mention) "Tibetan Book of the Dead." Lopez repeats a minor error in recounting the tale of its earliest popularizer, Walter Y. Evans-Wentz. Lopez notes that Evans-Wentz "enrolled at Stanford, where he studied with William James and William Butler Yeats." (52) While W.Y. Evans-Wentz pursued Yeats to his Irish home at Coole in the summer of 1908, and dedicated his 1911 "Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries" (originally his Rennes thesis, published by Oxford) to WBY, I can find no record in the standard biography by R.F. Foster that Yeats himself taught at Stanford, only that his lecture tour from 27 Jan.-3 Feb. 1904 covered the Bay Area, with a lecture on 29 Jan. at Stanford. ("W.B. Yeats: A Life" 1:305; Foster makes his own minor slip, indexing "William" rather than "Walter.")

Lopez, here and in his edition of the life of Milarepa, appears to borrow the last phrase of the blurb (repeated on Wikipedia) in "Fairy Faith" that's "about the author." This claims: "He received both his B.A. and M.A. from Stanford University, where he studied with William James and William Butler Yeats." In "Fairy-Faith," Evans-Wentz dedicates it to AE (George Russell) and Yeats, "who brought to me at my own alma mater in California the first message from fairyland and who afterward in his own country led me through the haunts of fairy kings and queens." This seems more accurate. The earlier claim repeated by Lopez about the "where" is the point in question; Evans-Wentz came in 1908 to learn from Yeats; Yeats did not come to teach Evans-Wentz per se-- unless a few conversations with WYE-W by WBY during California speaking engagements count as such.

Returning to the main text, I disagree with Lopez' assumption that Sogyal Rinpoche's "Tibetan Book of Living and Dying" too heedlessly sidesteps the idea of the "six realms of rebirth" by avoiding a "literal rendering." (80) As a Californian, I liked Sogyal's analogy of my state as, for "the demigod realm," reified by deluded, "high on meditation," surfers and lounging, affluent layabouts. He, as Lopez glances at only, simply gives us a comparison Westerners can relate to. He later shows in his book much more about traditional depiction of the bardos, but his purpose is not the straight translation (or as Francesca Fremantle later in "Luminous Emptiness" strove to do, the applicability of it to life and not only the afterlife) or commentary that Thurman may have favored--admittedly with his own very contemporary slant. After all, Fremantle & Chogyam Trungpa, Thurman, and Sogyal Rinpoche tried to shift the text from Evans-Wentz's esoteric eclecticism and Jung's archetypes so as to position it for post-hippie, post-lysergic readers today. This mission in the Penguin complete edition (by Gyurme Dorje, Graham Coleman, Thupten Jinpa, with the inevitable if certainly welcome prefaces and comments by the Dalai Lama) continues to strive to overcome Evans-Wentz's Theosophical & New Age bias. And, as Lopez deadpans, if E-W had found in the 1919 detritus of a returning British officer instead a Buddhist logic tract, we'd be telling a far different tale of the dharma in the West today.

Lopez raises an excellent question. Perhaps New Age devotees of Evans-Wentz's Theosophical and willfully eclectic "California Cosmology" (see Ronald Hutton's "The Triumph of the Moon" history of modern paganism and witchcraft) and eager Tibetophiles such as Tim Leary, Richard Alpert (Ram Dass), and Robert Thurman might agree: early Buddhism anticipates later Western physics, regarding deeper levels of consciousness accessible by psychedelics, meditation, tantra, or combinations thereof. Yet, Lopez interrupts, why do we believe Buddhists and their sympathizers? "When we read the claims of Hindu fundamentalists that locomotives and rocket travel are described in the Vedas or that the beam of light emitted from S[h]iva's brow is really a laser, we smile indulgently." Compare to Buddhist claims from the same time and culture for "a universe that moves through periods of cosmic evolution and devolution," for which many may "assume that this is simply something that physicists have not yet discovered." (76)

Such claims permeate those who, as with Lama Govinda, may not even know Tibetan, yet speak as purveyors of hidden wisdom from "treasure texts" long preserved in Shangri-La. By contrast, Lopez is almost gentle in Chapter Three with Lobsang Rampa, the "mystifier" in a double sense, born Cyril Hoskin in Devonshire. He handles the persistently popular New Age assertions that this British man had his "body actually taken over by the spirit of an Easterner"-- to quote him-- and so he "became" a lama, although unable to speak any Tibetan in his Anglicized manifestation, although he could communicate with cats. His many pulp paperbacks recount his adventures in Tibetan and spiritualist realms, and while shelved among "occult" titles today, Lopez notes with a touch of sympathy how many of his professional colleagues first learned about Tibet in the pages of such as 1956's début by Rampa, "The Third Eye."

Chapter Four takes on "om mani padme hum" at much length, equalling that of "lamaism." Again, he delves into how interpretations-- eventually by Tibetans themselves in their explanations-- turn into a rote recital of "the jewel in the heart of the lotus" to sum up this endlessly recited formula as speaking for Tibet. I found its most evocative, if provocative, exposure near the end of a rather exhausting chapter. It may be that early missionaries quailed at its meaning, if they dared to penetrate its mystery. If the "feminine form of the Sanskrit vocative" for "mani padme" apparently as "O Jewel Lotus" appeals to Avalokiteshvara, who holds both items, why would this masculine figure receive a feminine form? Lopez quotes June Campbell's "Traveller in Space"-- it's unlikely that "mani" means phallus, as "vajra" [often "thunderbolt" in common translations] is "more common." Campbell posits "mani" as clitoris and so the mantra invokes "the deity of the clitoris-vagina," an indigenous deity before the coming of the dharma, who underwent a sex-change by those Campbell deems "the zealous missionaries of Tibetan Buddhism." (133)

The tendency to misinterpret art in Western exhibitions and catalogues takes up Chapter Five; Chapter Six presents a fascinating topic that I have never seen raised in a popular account of Tibetan Buddhism. Jeffrey Hopkins, along with Thurman the pioneer of Western transmission of Tibetan dharma into academia, is also a practitioner. Many of his American Ph.D.'s-- as with Lopez, I gather-- in the field turn "scholar-adepts." Unlike Continental scholars emerging out of Oriental Studies programs, for the U.S., the seminary model influenced the Religious Studies set-up for colleges here. Tibetan Studies Ph.D's often link their study to their practice.

Perhaps, one cannot easily sever study from inculcation, as one seeks "salvation by scholarship" in by collegial tenure rather than as a celibate monk. This intrigued me, for how many other departments may boast this psychic identification by professors? Can one teach communism or Freud or Islam without avowing its tenets? Certainly. Given the transmission that Buddhism relies upon of the teaching in a one-on-one chain over 2500 years, I wonder if this can be adapted to academia, or if the monastic pattern will be substituted in universities. What he does not explore is whether a non-believer in the dharma can truly comprehend Tibetan texts, that need-- if Lopez and Hopkins are correct-- to be taken in by those encountering them by methods defying mere translation or equivalents.

Lopez shows how Hopkins at the U. of Virginia took his students into in-depth re-thinking so they could learn the syllogisms and rationales upon which non-Western philosophy as taught by the lamas rested for their students. This re-orientation of the mindset necessary for understanding Tibetan teaching, due to its difficulty, means that a UVA dissertation may still aspire to the level that, among Tibetans, may be reached by a twelve-year-old schoolchild in a monastery. It's that arcane. Just comparing the Tibetan transliterations to their Western compression shows the challenge of crossing what I imagine may loom as a considerable barrier for those not fluent in Sanskrit and Chinese before tackling Tibetan and its cousin languages.

The final chapter raises how we construct prisons around fantasies. Pico Iyer in "The Open Road" (reviewed by me last year here and on Amazon US) raises the same example as Lopez. How many who revere in stadiums or seminars the Dalai Lama know of the "Shugden affair"? Westerners tend to respond to a secularized, ethical, and non-theistic, non-ritualistic, ecumenical style of Buddhism as packaged for wide audiences. "The Tibetan Buddhism practiced by Western adherents was generally of the Buddhist modernist variety, with an emphasis on meditation on emptiness and on compassion, and did not include ritual offerings of fire from a lamp made of human fat with a wick made of human hair." (191) While Tibetan teachers themselves propitiate this controversial "demon" deity, such veneration to say the least does not constitute the retailed version of what gurus offer to their students abroad.

And, on such contrasts, Lopez ends his uneven but worthwhile study. This book feels as if he wrote separate essays-- as an expert-- on aspects of how Westerners interpret Tibetan Buddhism, and then he later linked them, often loosely, packaged to draw in a broader readership. Unlike Jeffery Paine's popularized "Re-Enchantment," Lopez includes substantial scholarship with complete references; many of the endnotes are essential for complete appreciation of what can be advanced academic discourse. Despite the apparent outreach to a wide readership, this book tells almost nothing about the basics; I'd recommend it after Paine, who while he eschews the learning appended and permeating Lopez, would be more accessible for newcomers. Thomas Laird's "History of Tibet" compiled with interviews with the Dalai Lama would also be a good start for those craving more background. (I reviewed Thurman's TBoD edition, and Fremantle-Trunpga's audio book reading by Richard Gere, Fremantle's "Luminous Emptiness," Laird and Paine on Amazon US.)

I am a scholar, not of Tibetan Buddhism, but of North American death and dying literature. Lopez' book is a marvelous change from the mushy-romantic "Noble Exotic" vision of Tibet that emerges in the literature written for popular consumption on "Tibetan Book of the Dead" and related topics. As other traditionally Buddhist countries became heavily industrialized - particularly Japan - they became un-idealizable, while Tibet has been given that role and continues to hold onto it. Lopez's book is a corrective, accessible to non-specialists, and raises important questions about how and why we construct "Shangri-La."

As worthy as the Tibetan people's cause is, Lopez demonstrates that Western sentimentality and condescension aren't the ways to help. Tibetan Buddhism is not just a fashionable metaphor, as so many celebrities and intellectuals take it. It's a *religion* that is taken literally and seriously by its adherents. As such, it has customs and beliefs that shouldn't be shrugged off by upscale college kids looking for their worldview-of-the-week. People who are too quick to judge any religion, for good or ill and whatever their motives are, just get in the way. This book should be required reading for anyone who assumes they know something about Eastern thought.

Lopez's "Prisoners of Shangri-la" pulls off the delicious trick of being both informative and funny! The subject of his study is not so much Tibetan Buddhism, but Tibetan Buddhism as it has historically taken shape in the Western mind. What we're dealing with here is therefore a history of illusion, projection and self-reflection. There is a very serious point to it, in that the interaction between Tibetan teachers and Western students is a very two-way thing. Students have certain interests and expectations; teachers wish to satisfy them. This process of mutual self-reflection takes on a life of its own and tends to define how the Tibetan approach to the Dharma is translated, taught and practiced in the Western context. Lopez's study is fascinating and thought-provoking.

I was originally turned off from reading this collection of critical essays because of some of the negative reviews here, but curiosity got the better of me and I'm glad it did. Other reviewers cover the book's content well enough, I just want to add that reading these essays, and looking more critically at the presentation of Tibetan culture in the West, has helped liberate me from being a 'Prisoner of Shangri-la'. This doesn't mean I no longer respect and cherish the teachings and experiences I've had relating to Tibet, on the contrary, I appreciate them more as part of my life (more intimate, less exotic). There were a few times I felt Lopez was belaboring a point or grinding an axe, and then I recognized he was having to say something too many of us are glossing over, or just plain ignorant of. He is after all a well informed and dedicated participant in the recent importation of Tibetan Buddhism to the West. He may be a scholar, but the passion in these essays should make it clear he is no "dead letter scholar" (as another reviewer dismissively put it).

My history with Tibet goes back to the 60's with the influential and delightfully sweet Tintin In Tibet comic book, which probably helped lead to my discovery of Lobsang Rampa in the late 70's (quite serendipitously when a copy of The Third Eye literally fell into my lap as I was reaching for a top shelf edition of the Evans-Wentz Tibetan Book of the Dead at the library). Rampa was entertaining for a book or two, and helped fuel my interest in genuine teachings, but I had more trouble seeing through the hype presented by many of the various other teachers I subsequently encountered (Govinda, Trungpa, Sogyal, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Tenzin Gyatso etc...), until many years later. Perhaps that time of wandering and discovery is all a necessary part of the path..., but a healthy and open and fearless sense of skepticism should be as well!

Generally the basic premise of this book, that Tibet has been misunderstood and misrepresented for many different reasons (idealized romantic projection by Westeners, cultural and personal survival and monetary gain by Tibetans) is clearly true and easily seen in the history of the past 150 years as well as today. Tibet is interesting and special in many ways, but it is also just another place on this planet. The religious and political cultures that developed there weren't perfect (and very often far from it compared to modern democratic and capitalistic sensibilities). The Tibetan's may be earthy, rugged and warm hearted but they are also just people like you and me - even the high lamas. I was especially interested in the details of the 'Shugden Affair' that Lopez wrote about, and am sure if this was written (or updated!) today it would include a chapter on the (ongoing) 17th Karmapa controversy. Too many times critical analysis and questions of these kinds are suppressed as violations of one's spiritual vows (disrespect to the 3 Jewels), so the harm just continues to deepen and spread.... The current Catholic Church is a prime example.

The books ends with a rather chilling depiction of the Dalai Lama subversively recruiting warriors for the future Shambala battle of good over evil (Tibetan Buddhist's version of 'End Times'), through his mass public Kalachakra initiations. It would make a great Hollywood sci-fi drama, or maybe Dan Brown could apply his pulp fiction religious-establishment/conspiracy-theory formula to it next...but it would have to be more complex and ambiguous than our current (politically correct) vision permits.

It wasn't until I recently went to Tibet that I saw how clearly so much of what I carried was a projection of my ideals. The Tibetan's are, like people of many rural and 3rd world economies, simple and kind and mainly concerned with their daily survival. They are clearly oppressed by the Chinese now, but they were probably oppressed by the Tibetan theocracy before... Tibet (at least where I was, where ever there were people) is often a filthy mess, with no apparent understanding of recycling or conservation and environmental ethics. What 'environmentalism' there was in the past must have just been from necessity. It was a bit shocking to go to Tibet and realize my Western education (general at public schools, and spiritual at the feet of Tibetan Lamas) was way better than any I could have gotten in Tibet (past or present)! Going to Tibet helped burst the romantic bubble I had created (with help from modern media and Tibetan Buddhist norms). I'm better off for being (a bit more) free of that dream/illusion.

Don't avoid the need (at every opportunity) to look critically and diligently into your own mind! For students of Tibetan Buddhism, this book makes a fine contribution to this endeavor...