Living Buddhism/West

This is a very fine book by a sensitive, 20th century practitioner, a German who became a Buddhist monk in a SE Asia monastery and traveled through Tibet with his wife Li Gotami (who published a book of fascinating photographs). The author is probably best known for his "Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism" which is probably a modern classic and for "The Way of the White Clouds" a more personal description of Buddhism. The present book also reflects his personal approach which makes it, perhaps, more easily comprehended and accessible than some of the more recent texts translated from past or present Tibetan Buddhist masters. From the title, this would appear to be his intention. As I've heard Lama Govinda (Anangavajra Khamsum Wangchuk) quoted (but I don't know the source), "A religion whose ideal is only a matter of the past or the distant future has no living value for the present day." He has considerable insight into the human condition and its relation to religion and spirituality as demonstrated in some quotes from this book: "Truths cannot be taken on trust. They need to be continually rediscovered and formed afresh if they are to retain their spiritual content, their life and nutritive value. It is a law of spiritual growth that the same truths must be continually experienced and thought through in new forms." page 36 "When we intellectually reproduce experiences that by their nature belong to other dimensions, we are doing something similar to what the painter does when he represents three-dimensional spaces on a two-dimensional surface...The laws of this perspective are essentially similar to the laws of logic: both sacrifice the qualities of a higher dimension by arbitrarily limiting themselves to a particular point of view, so that their objects are always seen only from one side and in a foreshortening and proportion appropriate to the angle of vision. But whereas the painter consciously transfers his impressions from one dimension to another and has no intention of imitating or reproducing an objective reality, but rather wishes to express his reaction to that reality, the thinker generally falls into the trap of supposing he has grasped reality with his own thinking, because he mistakes the "foreshortening" perspective of his one-sided logic for universal law. The use of logic for the process of thinking is undoubtably just as necessary and justified as the use of perspective in painting, but only as a means of expression and not as a criterion of reality." pages 32-3

Lama Anagarika Govinda described himself as a German national of Indian heritage who was a member of a Tibetan Buddhist order. He began his study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism prior to the Chinese invasion of takeover of Tibet. He explains Buddhism, he does not describe it as say an academic would. Few like him, a very worthy person to learn from.