Journey to Mindfulness: The Autobiography of Bhante G.
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Amazon.com:
4.3 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Real Gem, 19 Nov 2003
By Eric Van Horn - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Journey to Mindfulness: The Autobiography of Bhante G. (Paperback)
This is the story of a Buddhist monk who was born and raised in poverty in Sri Lanka, and through dedication to the teachings of the Buddha became one of the great figures in Buddhism in the United States and the world today. This is an inspirational, charming and delightfully accessible book about a good life, well lived. However, for anyone who expects to find a story full of easy living and religious perfection, this is not the place to come! Buddhist institutions are made of people, and those people are subject to the same anger, fear, pride and jealousy as anyone else is. Bhante tells many stories of his difficulties with entrenched Buddhist institutions. There is no perfection there.Despite the fact that this is a kind of life that very few of us can relate to, so much of it is terribly familiar. Part of the beauty of this book is that it shows that we are all not so very different, that in the end we are all people, we all have problems, and that we all face the same challenges as human beings. The main reason that I love this book, however, is that what we are left with is the image of a good man who has lived an extraordinary life, but that this kind of life is within reach of all of us. Bhante G. does not, in the end, seem like a religious icon, so much as he seems like the better person in all of us.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Complete Story, 10 Jun 2008
By J. Clark - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Journey to Mindfulness: The Autobiography of Bhante G. (Paperback)
Journey to Mindfulness is an autobiography by Singhalese Theravadan monk Bhante Henepola Gunaratana that through stories and anecdotes tells the story of a little boy born in a "very poor" village on the island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) that had a dream of donning robes and living the life of a Buddhist monk.
The style of the book has a conversational tone as the author leads the reader through 75 years of his life, giving the reader a view into the world of a Buddhist monk that most wouldn't have thought of before. It's a very human tale that shows us the flaws of the author as well as the people he encountered throughout his long travels. Most Americans probably have an idea of Buddhist monks as being austere, serene people that never have to battle with the real failings of human nature. This book shows us that this is not the case.
This memoir is fascinating for other reasons, namely it gave me a glimpse into the culture of the Indian sub-continent and its surroundings that I hadn't seen before. Most of the books available on Buddhism are by Mahayanan or Vajrayanan authors of far Eastern (China, Japan, and Tibet) or American descent and rarely do people that study Buddhism get to learn about the culture of its oldest sect. For instance, I was surprised when I read a story about Bhante G. loosing his memory and as a last resort someone suggested practicing meditation even though other monks thought meditation in general was a silly waste of time.
This book is about an imperfect person in an imperfect world trying to live by the Precepts of his faith. It's long on worldly, mundane, happenings and short on high-minded platitudes, which is really what I liked about it. It's an excellent study of a Buddhist trying to deal with the suffering indicative of the human experience.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Journey to Mindfulness review, 12 Jun 2011
By Larry E. Manter - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Journey to Mindfulness: The Autobiography of Bhante G. (Paperback)
I've read this book and, as would be expected from an auto-biography, it's a history of this man's life. His basic Buddhist teaching is in other books (such as Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness, Mindfulness in Plain English, and Beyond Mindfulness in Plain English); this one is just what happened with some thoughts from the author about various events. One thing that's clear from it is that any large organization has 'lifers' who are primarily there for what they can get out of it and they simply don't really live up to the tenets of the organization.
This book is useful to read altho hardly necessary for understanding his other books. It's a slice of life book and succeeds at that. I liked it and am glad I read it.
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