The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 7 December 2000
by Robert Thurman and Tad Wise
Mount Kailash, located in western Tibet, is one of the most sacred sites in Tibetan Buddhism. Robert Thurman ("Tenzin" to his friends, noted Columbia University Buddhist scholar, and Uma's dad) longed to make a pilgrimage to this holy site, walking around the mountain in devotion to the cause of compassion and enlightenment for all beings. Tad Wise is a man much more firmly planted in our illusory material world. He joins the trek (with others) despite Thurman's skepticism. This becomes a challenge to which Wise aspires. The book is assembled from Wise's account of the trek and Thurman's Buddhist lectures and meditations along the road. Thurman himself is deeply devoted to the cause of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhist thought. For him, this is a holy pilgrimage, and his words here reflect that. Wise, however, is refreshingly honest about his doubts on this spiritual journey. He looks at the troubled world around him and wonders how to integrate Thurman's esoteric teachings into the everyday experience of suffering and material attachment.
If Thurman were not so well known, this reader would have to say that Wise should have been the real first author of this book. The framework of the trek, and even Thurman's lectures, are filtered through his point of view. Wise, like anyone starting on a journey, doubts himself, and looks for a practical way to live with these teachings. Thurman's lectures and meditations are a very basic introduction to Buddhist philosophy. These are somewhat difficult, but generally accessible writings about a very complicated view of the world. Embedded throughout is his powerful hope for humanity and, particularly, the Tibetan people. There is a lot to meditate upon here. Meanwhile, Wise tells us further details of the trek, from the caves of Milarepa, on to the Tibetan plateau, around the tremendously powerful mountain, and even a solar eclipse visible across Asia. It is easy to relate to his struggle, from altitude sickness to an essential existential question of hope and compassion. The book has its small flaws. A more personal view from Thurman would have been refreshing, and there is something abrupt about its end. In the end, it left this reader wondering about his own view of the world. Tibet is a suffering land, and these trekkers paid lots of money to experience Mount Kailash. These issues of accessibility and basic survival seem curiously distant in from this book. Yet it remains a very good introduction to Buddhism, and, at the very least, an engaging adventure.