MD and GEB?

[David Casseres]

Thomas Vieth sez
>Schould anybody be interested: a good and really worthwhile introduction 
>to Buddhism for Western people would be any book by Lama Govinda, 
>especially when one is interested in the Tibetan variant. One great 
>title that comes to mind is "The Way of the White Clouds" by that very 
>author.

Everybody should read "The Way of the White Clouds", but I think of it as 
one of the great travel books of all time, not so much an intro to 
Buddhism.  Govinda's account of Tibetan Buddhism tends to be sketchy in 
this book, and densely scholarly in others.  (Govinda, btw, was a South 
American who came to Buddhism via the Theosophical/spiritualist fads we 
were all talking about a while back.  Interesting guy.)

I don't really think there is a worthwhile "intro to Buddhism," because 
it's so various.  Imagine an "intro to Christianity" that tried to give 
fair representation to the Catholics, the Shakers, the Assemblies of God, 
and the Jehovah's Witnesses....

For an introduction to traditional Tibetan Buddhism, there's nothing like 
the Book of the Dead, in the Evans-Wentz version.  The big difference 
between this and Govinda is that it stays close to the essential 
life-and-death metaphysics, while Govinda is greatly interested in all 
the details of ritual and of the Tibetan pantheon.

For an intro to Japanese Zen, there's no one better than D.T. Suzuki.  
Note that Zen, as we know it in the West, is practiced by only a tiny 
minority of Japanese Buddhists.

And for Western Zen you takes your choice.  I like funny old 
hard-drinking Alan Watts.


Cheers,
David