Well worth your time to read it (if youre interested in Philosophy, esp. Eastern)
What sets this book apart from the hundreds of other books on Buddhism is its main thesis, which is a novel departure from what most of us think of when it comes to Buddhism. According to Charity Fields, Buddhism is *useless* for tackling todays great problems (and neither is any other religion to be accurate in my paraphrasing). Buddhism, however, is proposed to be a solution to problems of a future advanced civilization. The following lines from Chapter one of the book summarizes its main message: Buddhism is not the answer to the question: Why am I suffering without all those things I want? Buddhism is the answer to the question: Why am I still suffering even though I have everything I want?
According to Fields, Buddhism is concerned with a higher kind of suffering which is usually masked by the abundance of everyday suffering. The terminology used to distinguish the two are profound suffering for the hidden existential angst and mundane suffering for the everyday type. The book proposes that our life is characterized by mundane plight because of which most of us (except wealthy intellectuals) cant see the existence of profound suffering. But despite this, Buddhisms main target is profound suffering because it cant do anything about the mundane stuff.
In actual fact, the author claims, nothing but modern Science can do anything about mundane suffering. This stance is another novel departure from the positions of many other books, even of writers like Joseph Campbell (or of Jay Gould in his final years). Many writers have assigned Science and Spirituality to two separate non-intersecting domains answering to different kinds of needs with fundamentally different modes of operation. But for Fields Science is more than highly relevant to the spiritual life. It is actually essential. For her, the truly spiritual experience cannot happen for the population at large unless our civilization is lifted to a high enough level which is possible only through advancements in Science and Technology.
As for the poetry intermingled with the prose or the writing style of Ms. Fields, Ill leave it to somebody else to judge. Im not an expert appraiser of literature. I found her writing to be very accessible and engaging, however, and I didnt lose anything in my first reading when I plain skipped all the poems in the book.
Four stars for the stimulating content and originality. BTW, the name of the book is misleading. It is a book about Buddhism, and to name the book I am not a Buddhist seems to invite those whose who are looking for arguments against the religion, rather than those who are favorably inclined, which is the target audience. Cosmic Buddhism would have been a better title.
What sets this book apart from the hundreds of other books on Buddhism is its main thesis, which is a novel departure from what most of us think of when it comes to Buddhism. According to Charity Fields, Buddhism is *useless* for tackling todays great problems (and neither is any other religion to be accurate in my paraphrasing). Buddhism, however, is proposed to be a solution to problems of a future advanced civilization. The following lines from Chapter one of the book summarizes its main message: Buddhism is not the answer to the question: Why am I suffering without all those things I want? Buddhism is the answer to the question: Why am I still suffering even though I have everything I want?
According to Fields, Buddhism is concerned with a higher kind of suffering which is usually masked by the abundance of everyday suffering. The terminology used to distinguish the two are profound suffering for the hidden existential angst and mundane suffering for the everyday type. The book proposes that our life is characterized by mundane plight because of which most of us (except wealthy intellectuals) cant see the existence of profound suffering. But despite this, Buddhisms main target is profound suffering because it cant do anything about the mundane stuff.
In actual fact, the author claims, nothing but modern Science can do anything about mundane suffering. This stance is another novel departure from the positions of many other books, even of writers like Joseph Campbell (or of Jay Gould in his final years). Many writers have assigned Science and Spirituality to two separate non-intersecting domains answering to different kinds of needs with fundamentally different modes of operation. But for Fields Science is more than highly relevant to the spiritual life. It is actually essential. For her, the truly spiritual experience cannot happen for the population at large unless our civilization is lifted to a high enough level which is possible only through advancements in Science and Technology.
As for the poetry intermingled with the prose or the writing style of Ms. Fields, Ill leave it to somebody else to judge. Im not an expert appraiser of literature. I found her writing to be very accessible and engaging, however, and I didnt lose anything in my first reading when I plain skipped all the poems in the book.
Four stars for the stimulating content and originality. BTW, the name of the book is misleading. It is a book about Buddhism, and to name the book I am not a Buddhist seems to invite those whose who are looking for arguments against the religion, rather than those who are favorably inclined, which is the target audience. Cosmic Buddhism would have been a better title.
