Buddha: The Living Way - Hardcover

Pico Iyer

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679457844 ISBN 13: 9780679457848

Publisher: Random House, 1998

Synopsis

"Since Buddhism is a part of daily life for most of its adherents, it is, willy-nilly, entangled in the world, as a lotus grows out of mud," Pico Iyer writes in the essay that accompanies deForest W. Trimingham's remarkable
photographs of the places where Buddhism is practiced today. Trimingham traveled to remote regions of Tibet, where tattered prayer flags hang tangled on crude poles in lonely Himalayan mountain passes, as well as to a Shambhala center in Colorado, where American Buddhists practice Zen archery. He has visited some of the most beautiful places in the world--the temple compound of Pagan in Burma, ninth-century shrines in Java, a meditation garden near Kyoto. His photographs capture the essence of Buddhist life in all its diversity, "in part," Pico Iyer writes, "because they are so inescapably human, even with their lyricism, and in part because so many of them spin like a mandala with all the whirling energies of Buddhist devotion, its reds and golds, its glowing statues, its ornately carved doorways that seem to open onto a world of candles and sutras and scroll paintings teeming with forces both wrathful and benign."
            
The book was conceived to be read like a Buddhist scroll. But even if the reader starts in the middle or at some completely arbitrary point, he will get a sense of the serene heart of Buddhism--om, the universal hum of all and nothing.

About this title

Review

In Buddha: The Living Way, photographer deForest W. Trimingham takes you to the Buddhist centers of Asia. As though unrolling a scroll of photographs, you begin with vast landscapes and spires piercing clouds, then gradually move into an array of temple interiors, on to Buddhist sculptures and paintings, a panoply of trumpets and drums and such, and finally to practitioners in full regalia, including Westerners. Pico Iyer's introduction could just be the best 10-page capsule of Buddhism in print. --Brian Bruya

About the Author

deForest W. Trimingham, CBE, was born in Bermuda and was educated at the University of Virginia. He was a member of the Bermuda Parliament for twenty-three years, during which time he served in the cabinet as minister of tourism. He is a well-known international yachtsman. His photographs have appeared in several magazines in the United States and he has exhibited at the Bermuda National Gallery and the Leica Gallery in New York.

Pico Iyer is a longtime essayist for Time whose articles appear regularly in such magazines as The New York Review of Books, Harper's, Sports Illustrated, and Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. His books include Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk, Falling Off the Map, Cuba and the Night (a novel), and, most recently, Tropical Classical. He has lived for many years near Kyoto, Japan.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0679457844
• ISBN 13: 9780679457848
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 206