Customer Reviews

Psycho-Cosmic Symbolism of the Buddhist Stupa

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This book offers a few pleasing surprises, but many more disappointments. It is another one those books that is essentially a reworking of a series of lectures, and one gets the impression that the reworking was rather cursory. While the subject matter is sublime and the information at times interesting, it is so difficult to follow the author's thought processes that I came away with little understanding of the subject matter. It often seemed just thrown together. The author tries to present the history and the architectural significance of the Buddhist Stupa, and some interesting points are made about the role of the historical context and the Hindu influences on the evolution of the design. But the points are not made clearly. The book is even less clear when it comes to its stated theme of the "Psycho-cosmic Symbolism" of the stupa. Perhaps a Hienrich Zimmer or a Joseph Campbell would have been able to rise to the profound task of rendering this subject intelligible, but this author fails. I came away from the reading of this book not at all sure that I really now clearly knew anything more about the subject than when I started.