All is Change: The Two-Thousand-Year Journey of Buddhism to the West

by Lawrence Sutin

In the tradition of Karen Armstrong, Jack Miles, andThomas Cahill comes a magisterial history of the coming of Buddhism tothe West.

Genres: Buddhism, Religion, History, Philosophy

416 pages, Hardcover

First published August 30, 2006

Reviews

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sutin gives a remarkably full overview in the interaction of Buddhism and Western civilization. It's a kind of history writing that takes real literary sensitivity. To pull this off, Sutin has to attain helpful insight into the history of nations, art, literature, theology, philosophy and spiritual practice. For quite a while he catalogs the sporadic encounters between Westerners and Buddhists, detailing the almost stupefying misunderstanding that prevailed down to the late 1800s. Then we have a rising chorus of personal adventures and biographical sketches, showing those who popularized Buddhism in the West as teachers, charlatans, scholars, novelists, or history-changing activists. Even a partial role call of the people involved looks momentous for world history: Nyogen Senzaki, D.T. Suzuki, Helena Blavatsky, Paul Carus, Lafcadio Hearn, William James, Alexandra David-Neel, Okakura Kakuzo, Friedrich Max Muller, Christmas Humphries, Hermann Hesse, Nikos Kazantzakis, Alan Watts, T. Lobsang Rampa, Carl Jung, Thomas Merton, Allan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Thich Nhat Hahn, Gary Snyder, E.F. Schumacher, Chogyam Trungpa, Rita Gross, Jack Kornfeld, Geshe Wangyal, Maureen Stuart, Richard Baker, Pema Chodron, Joanna Macy and the 14th Dalai Lama. The story is huge, and it's told by a historian with a keen eye for turns in popular culture.

[Adam Zuwerink · Rating 3 out of 5]

First of all, I have a serious complaint with the subtitle. It should be "The 2,000-Year Journey of the West to Buddhism," not the other way around. Almost the entirety of this book is written from the perspective of Western voices being introduced to Buddhism.

I'm giving this one 3 stars instead of 2 stars because the author obviously put a lot of time into researching and reading secondary sources from around the world throughout hundreds of years. And there are enough disparate characters brought into the timeline that it provided me with a few new rabbit holes to go down in my journey.

But... the writing style is dry, the editing is choppy, and it's hard to know what to believe based on all of the levels of speculation presented throughout the narrative.

[Craig Kissho · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author seems to have a penchant for convulated, long winded wording that is all over the place. Most of the quotations selected were also extremely convulated you have to read them a few times. Stuck with it till finish out of interest for the subject matter. Not too sure how robust the research is as some arguments appear speculative and unclear. Enlightening however to read about many Buddhist masters and catch a glimpse of their not so perfect lifestyle. The ending is abrupt and although this saves us from more convulated sentences, it just seems odd.

[Sean · Rating 1 out of 5]

"All is Change: The Two-Thousand Year Journey of Buddhism to the West" by Lawrence Sutin is a book with what should be interesting material which is drowned in shoddy writing, poor organization, a clear lack of direction, and most disastrously, too much speculation with not enough evidence.

The book attempts to trace the history of Western-Buddhist interactions. This should be quite an interesting adventure through religion and history and at times is a thought provoking enterprise. In particular, I found the material on Jesuit missionaries in Asia to be enlightening. But in general Sutin seems to find ways to take the joy out of what should be interesting material through poor scholarship and bad organization. His writing is clunky and sloppy. The book is made up one to two page vignettes about various scholars stitched together. Given this, the book lacks coherent direction beyond its broad premise.

The biggest problem for Buddhist scholarship, especially in the West, is that scholars tend to pick out what they want to emphasize about the religion. The author tries to avoid this pitfall but ultimately creates a book that through its attempted objectivity does not engage the reader. I would not recommended it to anyone beyond the most seriously interested reader.

[Jessica Zu · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really appreciate the efforts of the author to chronicle, record and organize the information of how Buddhism came to the West and how Western Buddhism get started and deserve to be understood on its own terms.

However, I feel the Sutin could have made his own view points more explicit instead of hidden behind huge heaps of facts (sometimes anicdotal rather than representative).

I also find I don't like his attention to the weird and crazy behaviors of some of the pioneers, and present those craziness as "eastern way of thinking". It seems very stereotyping to me. Many other masters who might not have attracted much media attention yet are "quietly" propagating Dhamma with large number of Western followers, are not even mentioned in this book.

Sutin seems to be critical of German romanticism yet sympathetic to Tibetan Buddhism (which is simply another bias).

However, he is not a scholar, so maybe I should not hold he to such high standard.

But I have to admit that his writing is not that intriguing after all. Many times I really have to struggle to find the thread of thought in his writing so that I could make some sense of what he is trying to say.

[The Tick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not really sure what I expected from this book, but it wasn't really what I got. Much of the early part of the book deals with early and medieval Christians who went to Asia, which is...kind of the opposite of what I expected the book to be about. Most of the book also consists of mini-biographies of specific people who were related in various ways to how Buddhism developed in various Western countries. I really wish there had been more of a cohesive overview of this rather than these specific data points.

[Kurt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sometimes a struggle for me to get through, this is a history of religions and -- according to the author -- Buddhism has been journeying to the West since, well, the last 2,000 years. Some of his evidence looks like a stretch, but at other spots he's got some interesting early, early connections unearthed.

[Ariadna73 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book about how Buddhism has entered in our western culture without us even noticed it.