RE-ENCHANTMENT

Tibetan Buddhism Comes to the West

by Jeffrey Paine

(W.W. Norton & Company, 2004, hardcover $24.95)

Jeffrey Paine's new book, Re-enchantment: Tibetan Buddhism Comes to the West, describes the meteoric rise in popularity of what might easily have become a lost and forsaken spiritual tradition. According to Paine, prior to 1968, Tibetan Buddhism was virtually unknown in the West. Sure, the Beats and Alan Watts had brought Zen into the public eye, but Tibetan Buddhism had been explored by only a handful of the most intrepid spiritual adventurers. However, that was all destined to change.

It was in 1968 that a chance encounter with the Dalai Lama's official translator ignited the heart of a Catholic monk named Thomas Merton, motivating his exploration of this mysterious tradition. Merton's subsequent writings, The Asian Journals, made him the first in a line of inspired individuals who literally forced this archaic tradition into the hearts and minds of the postmodern world. Lama Yeshe outlived cancer for fifteen years, traveling relentlessly across the globe and leaving 130 Tibetan Buddhist centers in his wake. Chogyam Trungpa traded his robes for tailored suits and his monastic vows for a lifestyle of worldly excess and, in the process, won the admiration of an entire generation of American hippies while simultaneously turning them on to the most profound Buddha dharma. Tenzin Palmo, a Western woman, returned from the East with death-defying tales of will and determination after spending twelve years, at times sealed in by snow, on a solitary retreat in a Himalayan cave. And of course, His Holiness the Dalai Lama's fierce compassion in the face of exile has made him second only to Pope John Paul II as the most popular religious figure in the West.

Paine's book is sparse on social critique and philosophical insight, but it beautifully describes one of the greatest cultural migrations of the twenty-first century, showing how a ravaged ancient religious society rocketed into modern history—not through the orchestrated enactment of a grandly conceived design, but through individual human lives moved by the power of spirit and recklessly dedicated to the call of the miraculous.

Jeff Carreira

THE PROGRESS PARADOX

How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse

By Gregg Easterbrook

(Random House, New York, 2003, hardcover $24.95)

Practically everything is getting better. This is the bold assertion that starts Gregg Easterbrook's optimistic assault on postmodern cynicism. For example: health care is better for more people on Earth than ever before; the incidence of armed conflict is declining worldwide; crime rates are dropping in urban America; smallpox, polio, and other fatal diseases have been eradicated; and one-third fewer people die of hunger than two decades ago. Wait a minute, you might be thinking: “What about global warming? What about species extinction?” But Easterbrook isn't denying our problems—he's simply saying that our fear-obsessed culture negatively slants our view of reality and will never give us the will, the drive, or the determination to find solutions.

The book's relentless onslaught of good news shows that by almost every measurable standard, life today is better than it ever has been. In fact, in the developed world, the average person enjoys a standard of living that far exceeds that of any king or queen in centuries past. Yet in spite of our outrageously good fortune, Easterbrook says, we seem to be sinking more deeply into negativity and pessimism, popping Prozac to fight depression, committing suicide at escalating rates, and generally feeling despondent about the possibility of making any real difference.

Easterbrook examines many sociological and psychological reasons for this paradox, but one seems particularly vital to consider: Hopelessness lets us off the hook. It allows us to feel incapable of and unaccountable for meeting the tremendous challenges we do face. And he won't let us get away with it. As the most affluent people who have ever inhabited planet Earth, he insists that we have an obligation to assume that nothing is impossible and that it's never too late to change the world. This very intelligent and meticulously researched book isn't offering solutions, but the shift it points to—into a higher and more optimistic context—just might be the only real solution there is.

Jeff Carreira

EVOLUTION'S ARROW

The Direction of Evolution and the Future of Humanity

by John Stewart

(The Chapman Press, Australia, 2000, paperback $19.95)

In this remarkably synthetic and cogently argued book, evolutionary biologist John Stewart insists that wherever life emerges in the cosmos, evolution will progress in the direction of greater cooperation, complexity, and “evolvability.” Atoms, molecules, cells, organisms, societies—with each step forward, a more complex system of cooperating parts emerges. And these new systems have an ever-increasing capacity to receive and respond to information from the environment, allowing them to adapt more efficiently to prevailing conditions and evolve more quickly into future forms.

Up until now, Stewart explains, evolution has advanced without the benefit of self-reflection. Human beings have not only become conscious of the evolutionary nature of the universe but are beginning to unravel the very mechanics through which it has progressed blindly for billions of years. We have literally become the eyes through which the evolutionary process can see its own methods. And this breakthrough in consciousness, the author concludes, has unimaginable potential. By choosing to align ourselves and our cultures with the natural “arrow” of evolution—toward ever-higher levels of cooperation—humanity will vastly accelerate the progress of its own development.

The immensity of the questions Stewart wrestles with is breathtaking. What will humanity look like when human organization becomes as spectacularly cooperative as, for instance, the interactions between the individual cells that make up an organism? What type of management and governance will be required for the human race to achieve this extraordinary degree of organizational efficiency?

The author has a habit of repetition, which some readers may find irritating, but I was grateful for it. By the time I closed the book, his main points had become so much my own that I can trust they will not disappear as a passing enthusiasm. Evolution's Arrow is, quite simply, both mind-expanding and confidence-building. By inviting us to trust the deep patterns of evolution's past, it opens the future to undreamed-of spiritual and social transformation.

Michael Dowd

Michael Dowd is an evolutionary evangelist who lectures internationally. His website is www.TheGreatStory.org

TERROR IN THE MIND OF GOD

The Global Rise of Religious Violence

by Mark Juergensmeyer

(University of California Press, 2003, paperback $16.95)

What do Jewish extremists, Christian anti-abortion activists, the American militia movement, Sikh militants, and Islamic jihadists all have in common? Religious terrorism is the obvious answer. But there is more to the story, and author Mark Juergensmeyer sets out to discover just how much more in his recent book Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence. Through conversations with leaders and participants in each of these militant organizations, Juergensmeyer makes a convincing case that is as simple as it is profound: Each of these extremist groups is fighting the same essential battle—a war against secular society. Their ideology may be different, the details of their faith may vary widely, but each is committed to a traditional, premodern worldview, and each sees secular society as a degenerate, irredeemable expression of everything that authentic religion stands against.

Juergensmeyer is a good tour guide through this harrowing world, and he managed to speak with some of the most prominent individuals at the heart of each of these movements, such as Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, the two leaders of Hamas who were assassinated by Israeli missiles this year. He strikes a good balance between presentation and critique, reporting the stories and words of these individuals, their explanations and justifications, with plenty of context and a minimum of comment.

What is perhaps most disturbing and intriguing is to read some of the criticism of our society by terrorists like Mahmud Abouhalima, the 1993 bomber of the World Trade Center, who Juergensmeyer interviewed in prison. “The soul of religion is what's missing” from Western culture, Abouhalima tells the author, and you don't have to look too far to see that there is some truth in that statement. It is the increasing dilemma of the postmodern era: How do we transcend the superficiality and materialism that have been the long-term side effects of the freedoms of liberal society? Of course, we are all beneficiaries of the great victory of modernity over the horrible strictures and intolerant dogmas of our premodern past. And these extremists would take us right back to that nightmarish world. But what Juergensmeyer offers through his reflections is the awareness that our society is yet incomplete, and that the victories of modernity and postmodernity, for all their tremendous importance, are not enough. We must look forward, not back, connecting with the deeper current of our human values, our cultural soul, if you will, in order to keep from succumbing to the reactionary currents that threaten us today. Maybe part of the answer to religious violence, as Juergensmeyer writes, is to acknowledge the place of religion in “elevating the spiritual and moral values of public life.” In a sense, Juergensmeyer is hinting at the need for a sort of Reformation in reverse—a societal shift that will bring the moral depth of the religious spirit into the modern world just as the Reformation brought new and radical values into the corrupt religious structures of premodernity.

The extremists featured in these pages, of course, represent the exact opposite of such a movement. But their words of hate and acts of violence can, in an unexpected way, help show us something they could never have intended—the inadequacy of present society to meet both the conditions of our globalizing world and the needs of the human soul. In the end, Terror in the Mind of God is a book not just about religious terrorists, but about us, and about the urgency of moving forward into the future even as the forces of reaction and rebellion try to drag us back into the worst hells of our past.

Carter Phipps