Shopping for Buddhas

Rating:
Summary: A Perfect Buddha Does Not Make a Perfect Book
Review: The book is a poorly crafted story about a man so self indulgent and arrogant that he equates a pot induced stupor to enlightenment. The author's irreverence to Buddhism might be excused if there was even some small acnowledgement of the validity of others' beliefs. Greenwald was determined to write a book no matter what it took. It is not surprising that he wrote a book about himself. This isn't a book about a man searching for the perfect Buddha. It is a book about a self obsessed man searching for something to write about.

Rating:
Summary: Travel and adventure in Nepal
Review: The first stories written bu Jeff Greenwald I had chance to read in the wonderful book Traveler's Tales - Hong Kong, where he happened to be one of the contributors. So when I saw the book written by Greenwald himself, I could not resist but test his writing again. If you are looking for the enlightments or truly literary achievement, do not waste your time. This book will not give you that. However, if you are looking into exploring in 200 pages or less adventures of California man in search of perfect Buddha statue in Nepal, then go for it. The book will give you another perspective of expatriates abroad who are trying to make ends meet, but at the same time are genuinely drawn to the mysticism of the Far East. Mr. Greenwald is not pretending to be the one who will bring Buddhism closer to Western world's. Rather, in his own way he brings us to HIS story of the way(s) of finding perfect Buddha statue. Light read, lots of fun. And you can always give this book to a friend for fun read after you are finished yourself...

Rating:
Summary: Insensitive to Buddhists
Review: While Shopping for Buddhas is mildly entertaining as a travelogue, I found myself increasingly offended by Greenwald's commercial exploitation of the West's recycled interest in Eastern thought. Greenwald makes his own religious ambivalence abundantly clear, even as he opens each chapter with a buddhist lesson which, one presumes, has somehow affected him. Careful to always capitalize God to the point of sanctimony, I was distracted by his ego-centric sidebar willingness to poke fun at all the other gods he encountered on his travels. Finally, in the end, I concluded Mr. Greenwald, apparently an anxious, scorekeeping traveler, elected to commercially trade on his knowledge of this part of the world in a way which left this reader feeling trespassed.