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All Is Change: The Two-Thousand-Year Journey of Buddhism to the West Hardcover – August 30, 2006

by Lawrence Sutin (Author)

6 customer reviews

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Lawrence Sutin

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This hefty history of Buddhism in the West starts at the very beginning: combing through the works of ancient Greeks and proceeding from that time to find references to Western encounters with, or knowledge of, Buddhism in the East. Sutin, a teacher and author of biographies and memoirs, has set himself an ambitious and sometimes dusty task, querying Gnosticism, the missionary history of the Society of Jesus, Enlightenment thought and other currents of Western intellectual history, in his quest for the Buddha. Some of what he finds is fascinating, including the Jesus Messiah sutra, a 7th-century document that explains Christianity in Buddhist and Confucian terms. Other times what he considers Buddhist-influenced is a stretch that blurs distinctions: the mathematician Leibniz, for example, is roped into his analysis, but what Sutin cites shows the German philosopher to be an admirer of China, not necessarily of Buddhism. General readers may find this book ponderous, with lengthy quotes from source materials and occasional small side disquisitions about such matters as the racism behind the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. However, its comprehensiveness and depth will interest those in the field of Buddhist studies and others with patience to slog through it. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Sutin, biographer of Philip K. Dick and Aleister Crowley, proves himself to be a superb synthesizer in this avidly detailed chronicle of Buddhism's flow from East to West. After unearthing the footings of the bridge between cultures constructed 2,000 years ago as the Greeks and Buddhists in India found common metaphysical ground, Sutin provides an unusually cogent explanation of Buddhism's great schism and the resulting Theravada and Mahasanghika schools, one monastic, the other populist. He documents intriguing parallels between Buddhist and gnostic teachings, credits Marco Polo with writing the first popular Western account of the Buddha's life story, and discovers both racist and tolerant reactions to Buddhism in the writings of Jesuit missionaries. The influence of Buddhism on the work of various European philosophers and the theosophist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, as well as the impact of Buddhism on such seminal Americans as Thoreau, Emerson, Lafcadio Hearn, Jack Kerouac, and Gary Snyder, inspires Sutin to nimble analysis, accompanied by discerning profiles of various international Buddhist teachers, including D. T. Suzuki, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and the Dalai Lama. Sutin's uniquely comprehensive, interpretative, and vital history is a cornerstone study that maps a remarkable spiritual migration and evolution. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product details

Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; First Edition (stated) edition (August 30, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0316741566
ISBN-13: 978-0316741569
Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.2 x 9.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 6 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,563,205 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #729 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Eastern > Buddhism > History
- #1264 in Books > History > World > Religious > Buddhism
- #5975 in Books > History > World > Religious > General

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Seems a decent historical addition

January 14, 2007

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

-"Change" seems a reasonably good historical summary of Buddhism's entry into the West. The book begins at the dawn of Buddhist thought with speculation that Greek and Christian thought may have interacted with early Buddhism. It continues to early recorded contacts during the Age of Exploration (when a world-wide xenophobia misrepresented Buddhism as negativist), then outlines the developing appreciation of Buddhism's positive elements in the mid-19th Century, and concludes with the 20th Century (as Buddhism evolved into a sophisticated, specifically Western form).

-I learned much and found it a welcome addition. "Change" gives a well-written foundation for understanding how Buddhism has interacted with its Western hosts, and there is considerable research here. I'm not an expert historian, but based on some cross-checking, it does seem accurate, although the author is not a historian (that's OK, neither am I) and there will be the inevitable controversies here and there. The Bibliography is extensive, although many direct references are from secondary sources. The coverage of late 20th Century Buddhism reflects the author's apparent fascination with Beat Generation Buddhism, and he overemphasizes this colorful countercultural aspect at the expense of more genuine practices. But hey, this adds some spice to the book and there are plenty of other excellent sources on recent Western Buddhism. The author also refrains from discussing Buddhism's often-challenging philosophy or psychology -- this would stray from the range of his objective familiarity (and the book's topic) and besides, many good resources already exist.

-"Change" gave a good understanding of Buddhist historical interactions with the West (especially prior to the mid-20th Century) and may be a nice addition to your understanding of contemplative, psychological, and philosophical interactions. I found it well worth the time it took to read, and hope you will too.

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Brian Griffith

A subtle, non-partisan tale of cultures in transformation

June 1, 2014

Format: Hardcover

Sutin gives a remarkably full overview in the interaction of Buddhism and Western civilization. It's a kind of history writing that takes real literary sensitivity. To pull this off, Sutin has to attain helpful insight into history of nations, art, literature, theology, philosophy and spiritual practice. For quite a while he catalogues the sporadic encounters between Westerners and Buddhists, detailing the almost stupefying misunderstanding that prevailed down to the late 1800s. Then we have a rising chorus of personal adventures and biographical sketches, showing those who popularized Buddhism in the West as teachers, charlatans, scholars, novelists, or history-changing activists. Even a partial role call of the people involved looks momentous for world history: Nyogen Senzaki, D.T. Suzuki, Helena Blavatsky, Paul Carus, Lafcadio Hearn, William James, Alexandra David-Neel, Okakura Kakuzo, Friedrich Max Muller, Christmas Humphries, Hermann Hesse, Nikos Kazantzakis, Alan Watts, T. Lobsang Rampa, Carl Jung, Thomas Merton, Allan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Thich Nhat Hahn, Gary Snyder, E.F. Schumacher, Chogyam Trungpa, Rita Gross, Jack Kornfeld, Geshe Wangyal, Maureen Stuart, Richard Baker, Pema Chodron, Joanna Macy and the 14th Dalai Lama. The story is huge, and it's told by a historian with a keen eye for turns in popular culture.

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Sarakani

A Sweeping but no generalisation

December 19, 2006

Format: Hardcover

This easy to read book has got to be the most comprehensive book to date on the connection between Buddhism and the Occident in a span of 2400 years. My main two criticisms to begin with is that I don't think the cover is very nice and secondly, Sutin does not pay much attention to the Buddha's latest birth dates (concluded by scholars) - but everything else is a meticulous, balanced expose that is sharp, subtle and vast in scale.

No book of this nature can hope to be comprehesive. I expect the author had to leave about the same volume of stuff as the book itself, out of it. He has effectively squeezed in so much. It is very much as a work a successor to Buddha and the Sahibs by Charles Allen that aims to be more comprehensive. So much is marshalled in and the most poignant passages from all sources are quoted. The book itself is highly quotable:

"For all the growing availability of Orientalist knowledge, it remained the unquestioned prerogative of European philosophers to interpret Eastern religions according to their own preconceptions and fantasies. In no country did this process take on more vivid and epochal form than in Germany ..."

Just tell that to your German friends will you.

What's clear is that most of Buddhism went to the West via Western thinkers thanks to the meddlesome misunderstandings of missionaries as well as lovers of Oriental Wisdom from the West who discovered the wonders of India. Sutin marks the destructive effects of missionary activity on native cultures casually - the fate of Buddhism in the East is not his perogative.

He remains goal oriented and totally comprehensive. Theravada, Mahayana, Vajrayana, Zen, hippies, psychotherapy and the Dalai Lama. Practically nothing of worth is excluded - nothing has past his beady observation.

I think this book is a triumph, a placeholder to an evolving unknown of a contact of the Orient and Asia that almost threatens to overwhelm the Occidental intellectual millieu. But Buddhism has always been a delicate influence, like a silk cloth brushing against a cheek. I don't think it has ever had missionary pretentions like Christianity, and this is precisely what the book, between the lines reveals, about the entry of Buddhism through a back door to a receptive, uneasy, Eurocentric audience.

The Dharma will probably survive the West as the author pointedly concludes.

A wonderful gift and this is likely to command a discerning, growing audience. Mindblowing scope, deftly summarised.

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