REVIEWS
Big Sky Mind: Buddhism and the Beat Generation, edited by Carole Tonkinson, Thorsons, London, 1996.
The Beats were a loose group of writers, including Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, who emerged on the East Coast of the United States in the 1950s. They became an influential literary movement, especially after making contact with writers on the West Coast such as Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Other writers as diverse as William Burroughs and Kenneth Rexroth had some degree of association with this group.
It may come as a surprise to many that many of the Beats considered themselves to be Buddhists, and all were to a greater or lesser degree influenced by Buddhist philosophy, literature and art. This book chronicles the Buddhist elements in the lives and work of these writers, and contains generous quotations from their short stories, novels, articles and, above all, their poetry. Their impact in part accounts for the very strong presence in the USA of the Mahayana, especially Ch'an or Zen, and of the Vajrayana. Big Sky Mind is a delightful read, and can be read cover to cover or dipped into at random with equal profit.
A Concise History of Buddhism, Andrew Skilton (Dharmacari Sthiramati), Windhorse Publications, Birmingham, 1994.
The author, Andrew Skilton, is well qualified to write this book. He has academic credentials, having been appointed as a junior research Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. He also has the direct experience of one who has gone for refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha, having been ordained as a member of the Western Buddhist Order in 1979.
A history of Buddhism in one moderately sized volume must of necessity be something of an overview, and specialist readers might find too little detail or depth in many chapters of this book. However for the average reader, it provides an excellent introduction. It begins with the historical and philosophical background of India before the Sakyamuni Buddha, followed by chapters on the development of the many schools of early Buddhism, and proceeding to an account of the spread of Buddhism beyond India. Unfortunately, the author has not attempted a history of Buddhism in the West. On the other hand, Dharmacari Sthiramati has been able to take advantage of the latest scholarship. Among other things, this has called into question the usually accepted dates for the birth of Siddhartha Gautama, and has provided intriguing evidence for the impact of Buddhism on Persia and, through it, the Middle East and Europe, from as early as the 6th century CE.