Circling the Sacred Mountain

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
When you arrive in a foreign country, you are routinely asked the nature of your visit. Normally, you have two choices: business or tourist.

When your Royal Nepal flight deposits you in in Kathmandu, however, you have a third choice.

Pilgrim.

Robert Thurman has been a pilgrim for many years. A leading light of the American Buddhist movement, he teaches in the Department of Religion at Columbia University and is director of its Center for Buddhist Studies. Readers know him as the author of Inner Revolution and translator of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, among other works. His Buddhist buddies call him Tenzin, which means "Upholder of Teaching."

In 1995, Thurman led a small group of people on a pilgrimage to Mt. Kailash in the Himalayas. One member of the group was Tad Wise, a former student and longtime associate of Thurman, and author of the novel Tesla.

Together Thurman and Wise have written Circling the Sacred Mountain, about that pilgrimage. In alternating sections, Thurman provides the meditations and Wise the travel narrative.

Mt. Kailash is, in Thurman's words, "the axis mundi, the cosmic pillar that upholds the vault of heaven...the most magical site on earth...the magic gemstone," and the campsite on the north face is "like a spiritual megaphone. Whatever prayer you make there is automatically transmitted instantaneously throughout the planet and even beyond."

Here's the plan, in Thurman's words: "Well, then, fellow pilgrims! If all goes well our preparations will bring us to a most magicalplace,together with the opportunity to become a more enlightened being. For a thousand years, Kailash has been a magnet for Tantric practice, the special, accelerated path designed for the extremists of the Dharma.... On our way to the mountain, we will work on meditation themes from the Tibetan Lamrim tradition, the Systematic Path of Enlightenment.... When we get to the mountain, we will turn to the Blade Wheel [The Blade Wheel of Mind Reform, an ancient text Thurman has been working on]. We will also perform a fire-offering ceremony at the heart of the mountain, dedicating all our merit and virtue to the transformation of the whole world for the sake of all beings. If all goes well, after the mountain, we will touch the wheel of bliss."

Wise's part of the story is bluff and direct. For example: "We go for dinner to different yak-butter-and-beer holes, where the greasy food is terrible. A four-man mountain-climbing team of mad Frenchmen barges in, soon filling a table with beer liters, wine bottles, and smoldering ashtrays."

The completion of their journey around the mountain coincides with an eclipse. Wise has the last word: "Tenzin sits tight, quietly reciting mantras as the eclipse roaches full darkness. The mountain people bang and shout in the distance. Some of our group get up and look through pinholes in the cardboard. I stay put, sending out waves of new resolve through the dark silver gap between the dimensions."

So, have the strenuous spiritual efforts of Thurman and his friends four years ago made a better place of the planet? And even beyond?

If you are seriously interested in Buddhism, Thurman offers an interesting and very personal take on the subject.

If you are only casually interested in Buddhism, Thurman will not win you over.

If you are interested in the travel literature on the Himalayas and "the carnival called Kathmandu," you will find Circling the Sacred Mountain a lively and vivid account. You can almost taste the yak butter.

And if you skip Thurman's meditations entirely and read only Wise's travel narrative, nobody will be the wiser.

—Alan Ryan

Library Journal

Thurman (religion, Columbia Univ.), one of the country's leading scholars on Buddhism, and Wise, Thurman's former student and a writer, have produced a vivid account of a spiritual pilgrimage to Kailash, a mountain sacred to Tibetan Buddhists. Along the way, Thurman teaches the group of nine travelers the Blade Wheel of Mind Reform, a Tibetan Buddhist approach to enlightenment. The authors' descriptions of the exotic places they see, the persons they meet, and their reactions to it all are so well written that the reader feels like a fellow traveler. Thurman relates his deep knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism to each aspect of the journey and to the external and internal experience of each traveler. This intriguing account of a great physical and spiritual adventure keeps the reader engaged from beginning to end. The combination of travel and Buddhist teachings makes this a special book indeed. Recommended for any library whose travel and Buddhist collections could use a wonderful addition. --David Bourquin, California State Univ., San Bernardino

New Age Magazine

This pilgrimage -- part high adventure, part Buddhist instruction -- is certain to empower and inspire.

NY Times Magazine

Thurman is the most visible and charismatic exponent of Tibetan Buddhism in America.

Kirkus Reviews

A guru-and-disciple account of a pilgrimage to a Tibetan Buddhist sacred site. Thurman (Religion/Columbia Univ.; Inner Revolution, 1998, etc.), president of Tibet House in New York City, teamed up with his former student and surrogate son, Wise (Tesla, 1994) and other pilgrims on a 1996 journey to Mount Kailash in Tibet. This is their account of the journey-or rather, Wise's account, because apart from Thurman's autobiographical introduction, his contributions consist of his daily teachings from the trip, which Wise tape-recorded. Since all of the trip participants were novices to Buddhism, this dharma/teaching is geared for the beginner and offers a helpful introduction to esoteric (tantric) Buddhism. As the pilgrims circle Mount Kailash, the most revered peak in Tibet, Thurman outlines the spokes of "the blade wheel of mind reform," encouraging the hikers to empty themselves of samsara (suffering) and to practice compassion for all beings. (All beings, that is, except for the occupying Chinese, who are vilified and stereotyped throughout the book as warlike, secular, and universally cruel, while the Tibetans' "whole culture [is] magical.") Apart from its overt political message and more oblique spiritual instruction, the book also extends to us the rare chance to enjoy armchair traveling in an area off-limits to casual tourists. Wise's sections make for an absorbing travelogue, complete with descriptions of altitude sickness and an exciting tundric mountain climb near the end (shades of Into Thin Air). But his own spiritual odyssey gets wearisome; his struggles with personal responsibility, alcoholism, and narcissism are so pervasive that the reader begins to wishfor a less introspective narrator. Wise's relationship to Tenzin (as Thurman is called by friends and family) is also much less interesting than Wise thinks it is. Valuable for its teaching and its setting, then, but marred by Wise's self-preoccupation.