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Title: Bones of the Master : A Journey to Secret Mongolia by George Crane ISBN: 0-553-37908-9 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 29 May, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.71 (49 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Read it!
Comment: I don't understand why this book isn't a best seller; like most of your reviewers, I found it exceptional. If the subject matter appeals to you at all, read it!
Rating: 3
Summary: This Book [is not good] and Here's Why
Comment: What you are looking at is a travelogue masked as a desire by the author to legitimize the only thing that ever (apparently) happened to him (aside from maintaining some sort of marriage w/child), and then corrupt that thing into a self-serving manuscript that actually undermines its own goal of bringing about an understanding of Ch'an.
Here's the deal: He meets an ex-patriot Ch'an Master who stumbles out of the woods and into his life. The Master includes this otherwise n'er-do-well on a mission to Mongolia to retrieve his Master's bones, put them in a new Ch'an monastery, and return Ch'an to China. The voice of the book is ostensibly cultural reportage, and is idiomatically told as truthful, although the author doesn't outright say "this is the truth" and that's part of the problem with this book: The author, intentionally or not, manipulates perceptions and lines of thought in the book in a manner that is ultimately self-serving and distracting to the person who actually seeks to learn anything real about Ch'an.
Here's what's good about the book: It's an interesting travel story that's well told structurally, a gripping read, with interesting (albeit a bit simplified) characters.
Here's what [is not good]: At the heart of the book is the theme of a) delivering an understanding of Ch'an to the reader, and b) communicating some sense of the author's experience in Ch'an. (Remember, we're supposed to believe this is true.) Problems arise in communicating Ch'an when the author basically tells the audience, "I tried to read the Diamond Sutra, it was too hard, but I offer this poem I translated instead."
This part of the author's subversive intent: It is clear that the author would prefer the audience to use his poem as their reference for Diamond Sutra (made entirely approachable by Red Pine, by the way) than approaching the text. This is troublesome because it subverts the nature of the Ch'an tradition of learning texts. Sure, why read the freakin' text when freakin' Joe Author is available to command a speaker's fee at your freakin' charity event in Woodstock?
In terms of the author's own experience with Ch'an, there is a gap here that is just too big to be crossed. He narrates his experiences with sitting meditation by saying he gets bored on the several times he tries it up until about halfway through the book. Then he says, all of a sudden, "I sat empty for an hour." (or something to that effect: I don't have the text on me at the moment.) Anyone who has tried sitting meditation knows that sitting empty for an hour just suddenly does not happen after a few half-hearted attempts. Sitting empty for one second would be a miracle in itself: What is it, then, that the author is attempting to do? Legitimize himself in the audience's mind as a direct practcioner, nee Master, of meditation. Clearly this m-f'er doesn't have the chops as he seems to prove throughout the book. And then all of a sudden, he dvelops a habit that is developmentally, neurologically something that actually takes time to reprogram your biology to do ??? Just like that? Not bloody likely.
This author is just trying to establish himself as a religious authority which clearly, he shouldn't. He would probably not own up to it anyway if you were to ask him directly. But he's not a direct guy. He's sneaky. Subversive. Perhaps even unaware of his own hubris. Which would be acceptable if he were just a guy sitting sitting on a buckwheat pillow in the den. But he's not, because he's in a (self-assigned) position of responsibility. He tells things that are both religiously and journalistically unacceptable. I don't know what his intentions are. I can't say as he does or doesn't, but I'd be surprised if he were honest enough to say, "Yes, I'm just trying to establish a little corner of the publishing world here. I said a few things that weren't exactly true." In this author's drive for legitimacy, success, and establishing himself (which poses a huge problem for anyone in search of a their not-fixed self), he bends the truth to sell the s-word as Shine-ola.
Not to mention, by the way, this author has a preoccupation with mentioning many incidences of body function, i.e., I took a ____, we p____'d, blah blah blah. ...
Rating: 3
Summary: Good but not great
Comment: This is a great story and it'd make a great movie. Unfortunately, the author and his writing ability are not up to the task and, by the end of the book, I was wishing he'd just shut up and let the monk talk.
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Title: The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton ISBN: 0345378482 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 20 September, 1992 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Road to Heaven: Encounters With Chinese Hermits by Bill Porter, Steven R. Johnson ISBN: 1562790412 Publisher: Mercury House Pub. Date: June, 1993 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Women of Mongolia by Martha Avery ISBN: 0937321052 Publisher: Avery Pr Pub. Date: September, 1996 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Mongolia: Empire of the Steppes (Odyssey Illustrated Guides) by Claire Sermier, Helen Loveday ISBN: 9622176895 Publisher: Odyssey Publications Pub. Date: 20 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Lonely Planet Mongolia by Robert Storey, Bradley Mayhew ISBN: 1864500646 Publisher: Lonely Planet Pub. Date: May, 2001 List Price(USD): $17.99 |
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