Land of No Buddha, by Richard P. Hayes
Idiosyncratic essays by a Western Buddhist; ranting but redeemed
(Review posted 24 Feb 2005 14:02:27)

At one level this is a nice collection of essays on various Buddhist topics by a Westerner, an American, writing in the mid to late 1980s. It's especially nice for me, in that the author shows various habits of mind and style that I can identify with, having been there myself.

At another level, that last part is a problem. These particular habits of mind and style include a very self-conscious hyper-rationality, a determination to face the hard cold facts of reality, to put aside mere convention, to be undeterred by irrational social norms, to be willing to speak the truth even when it hurts, etc, etc. And, despite an official humility, a great confidence in the correctness of one's own reasoning and conclusions coupled with what are in fact wild overgeneralizations and whopping non sequiturs, and conclusions seized upon (one cannot help but feel) partly because they feel brave and controversial.

Prostitution is the only honest form of sexual relationship. Most Westerners who become Buddhists do so because they are losers who can't succeed at anything else. The only function of a true friend is to point out where one is mistaken or lazy. The only possible reason for religious ritual is to instill in those practicing it a blind and quasi-military obedience to the teacher. One should minimize social relationships in order to reduce the amount of travelling one does, because travelling uses energy and is bad for the environment. And so on and so on.

The rants surrounding these claims can be fun to read, but they do get old. And when they're mixed with commentaries on various aspects of Buddhism, they detract from whatever less idiosyncratic truth might be in those commentaries.

But even this flaw is pretty much redeemed by the last essay in the book, written at least a decade after the rest. In that essay, the author looks back at his younger self with considerable insight, humor, and fondness. It's not clear that he's abandoned all of his sillier earlier opinions, but at least he's realized that there's no point in being so dogmatic about them. He describes his attempts to actually put some of these fanatical rationalisms into practice, how those attempts failed, and what he learned from the experience. From this we get some interesting insights into the function of community and ritual, and into the life and mind of the author and of people in general.

So this isn't a book to come to primarily for information about or objective insight into Buddhism. But as a character study, and an interesting picture of a certain stage in a certain kind of development (one that, in this case, does include Buddhism in significant ways), it's a keeper.

(A side-note: the author was also for awhile a regular poster to various related Usenet newsgroups; look for postings by rhayes at wilson.lan.mcgill.ca in your favorite Usenet archive. In the postings that I've read, his tendency to rant and his insights into both scholarly and practical Buddhism make a noteworthy mix.)