Questions of Heaven: The Chinese Journeys of an American Buddhist

Rating:
Summary: Recent Hot Review
Review: "An elegantly kaleidoscopic fusion of travelogue, musings on traditional Chinese Buddhism and appreciation of Chinese landscape paintings off mountains. Like one of the landscape paintings of which she writes, Ehrlich's book is at once delicate, deeply considered and moving." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Rating:
Summary: Ehrlich's mountain wandering.
Review: After reading a Gretel Ehrlich essay in the recent BEST SPIRITUAL WRITING, 2000, this book was a disappointment. For me, the best travel writing requires a sense of entrance into the subject. Describing her three-year visit to Bhutan in her 1999 memoir, BEYOND EARTH AND SKY, Jamie Zeppa explains the difference between arrival and entrance: "Arrival is physical and happens all at once. The train pulls in, the plane touches down, you get out of the taxi with all your baggage. You can arrive in a place, and never really enter it; you will get there, look around, take a few pictures, make a few notes, send postcards home. When you travel like this, you think you know where you are, but, in fact, you have never left home. Entering takes longer. You cross over slowly, in bits and pieces. You begin to despair: will you ever get over? It is like awakening slowly" (p. 101). Although Ehrlich's collection of five essays is interesting and informative, it lacks a sense of entrance into China.

In May, 1995, Ehrlich travelled to Western China and Tibet to climb four sacred Buddhist mountains (p. 1). "Mountains," she tells us, "were thought to connect heaven with earth, spirit with body" (p. 8). She explains, "I had come to China to pick up threads of a once flourishing Buddhist culture and thought I could find it in their sacred mountains" (p. 4). During a cab ride to Emei Shan, however, Ehrlich fears she has arrived "a thousand years too late" (p. 3). "Bumping along," she also wonders: "Are mountains really mountains? Are mountains a form of enlightenment? "Are rivers mountains running? Can we walk through them? Why do mountains walk through us?" (p. 9). These questions remain unanswered. Hoping for a spiritual experience, Ehrlich only discovers "tourist sites," "gaudy" (p. 33), "dank and dirty" hotels (p. 35), "blaring karaoke music" (p. 36) and "tourist monks" (p. 24), all of which leaves her with a "sense of defeat" (p. 70).

In addition to climbing Buddhist mountains, Ehrlich also went to China "to see where and how the animals lived, if their culture had survived" (p. 39). Her search for pandas leads Ehrlich to "dirty, cement stalls" (p. 48), leaving her feeling "sick at heart" (p. 49). However, Ehrlich's journey is not without its moments of sanctuary ("Lijiang"), and her narrative is filled with many informative digressions into China's political and religious history.

G. Merritt

Rating:
Summary: Ehrlich's mountain wandering.
Review: After reading a Gretel Ehrlich essay in the recent BEST SPIRITUAL WRITING, 2000, this book was a disappointment. For me, the best travel writing requires a sense of entrance into the subject. Describing her three-year visit to Bhutan in her 1999 memoir, BEYOND EARTH AND SKY, Jamie Zeppa explains the difference between arrival and entrance: "Arrival is physical and happens all at once. The train pulls in, the plane touches down, you get out of the taxi with all your baggage. You can arrive in a place, and never really enter it; you will get there, look around, take a few pictures, make a few notes, send postcards home. When you travel like this, you think you know where you are, but, in fact, you have never left home. Entering takes longer. You cross over slowly, in bits and pieces. You begin to despair: will you ever get over? It is like awakening slowly" (p. 101). Although Ehrlich's collection of five essays is interesting and informative, it lacks a sense of entrance into China.

In May, 1995, Ehrlich travelled to Western China and Tibet to climb four sacred Buddhist mountains (p. 1). "Mountains," she tells us, "were thought to connect heaven with earth, spirit with body" (p. 8). She explains, "I had come to China to pick up threads of a once flourishing Buddhist culture and thought I could find it in their sacred mountains" (p. 4). During a cab ride to Emei Shan, however, Ehrlich fears she has arrived "a thousand years too late" (p. 3). "Bumping along," she also wonders: "Are mountains really mountains? Are mountains a form of enlightenment? "Are rivers mountains running? Can we walk through them? Why do mountains walk through us?" (p. 9). These questions remain unanswered. Hoping for a spiritual experience, Ehrlich only discovers "tourist sites," "gaudy" (p. 33), "dank and dirty" hotels (p. 35), "blaring karaoke music" (p. 36) and "tourist monks" (p. 24), all of which leaves her with a "sense of defeat" (p. 70).

In addition to climbing Buddhist mountains, Ehrlich also went to China "to see where and how the animals lived, if their culture had survived" (p. 39). Her search for pandas leads Ehrlich to "dirty, cement stalls" (p. 48), leaving her feeling "sick at heart" (p. 49). However, Ehrlich's journey is not without its moments of sanctuary ("Lijiang"), and her narrative is filled with many informative digressions into China's political and religious history.

G. Merritt

Rating:
Summary: Well written, but take it only as a PERSPECTIVE of a foreign
Review: If you are looking for a book about the current state of buddhism in China, this is not for you. The four stars are given to its enjoyable prose, not to the information it conveys.

Well intentioned as she might be, Ms. Ehrlich apparently did not have a chance to understand the current revival of buddhism in China, being a tourist whose knowlege and DREAM about China was only from books and a few exemplary persons she knew. Recent accounts from oversea Chinese pilgrims painted a different picture. I suppose that with the brisk pace in which everything is carried out in China these days, many things can change in four years. Moreover, it would be surprising if the communists do not learn that in order to make these pilgrimage sites attractive to oversea devotees, at least a semblance of religious atmosphere has to be fostered. It wasn't surprising to read of the accounts of monks whose only practice in the evening was to watch TV. Those are the vestige of the turmoil and destruction of the Cultural Revolution. I only feel sorry that Ms. Ehrlich did not have a chance to read the corpus of works, in Chinese, that aptly and vividly delineate the deplorable state of buddhism in China in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. These deplorable sacrileges no doubt still exist but now there are many young and well-educated monastics who enter the order for authentic and admirable purposes. It is them that carry the standard of the revival of buddhim silently, unknown to the westerners--which is good, in the current political atmosphere.

Ms. Ehrlich also did not (or does she) know that there is now a Buddhist college in Emei and that the abbot of one of its monasteries was a highly revered monk who had just passed away in his 90s (if I remember correctly) last year.

To the contrary of the first reviewer, I do not find Ms. Ehrlich's accounts condescending, I only find some of the accounts inaccurate. There are major and serious problems in China and Ms. Ehrlich's insight of the materialistic obsession of the Chinese and the huge toll it levies on the environment is quite correct, although I am much more optimistic then she was. As I told my friends who complained about the filth and disorder of the Chinatown in Manhattan, what touches me more is the dynamic undercurrent of lives there. As a student, I have toiled for a few months in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant (although not in Manhattan) and have learnt that an outsider who carries too much delusion and expectation lacks the capacity to appreciate life as it is without being too judgemental. Afterall, what is the meaning of pilgrimage? Isn't it simply an amplification of the point of contact between our own minds and the great minds of the bodhisattvas embodied in these mountains? The mountains are in the mind and in essense has nothing to do with how the itinerary is run. A pilgrim with such a "mindset" will always possess the capacity to be touched even in the most arduous and grotesque circumstances.

But then again, I am an oversea Chinese who is yet to set foot on China myself. In that regard, take my words only as a biased perspective and go see for yourselves, although if you are a westerner, that experience might always be one from the outside, sadly...

Rating:
Summary: Well written, but take it only as a PERSPECTIVE of a foreign
Review: If you are looking for a book about the current state of buddhism in China, this is not for you. The four stars are given to its enjoyable prose, not to the information it conveys.

Well intentioned as she might be, Ms. Ehrlich apparently did not have a chance to understand the current revival of buddhism in China, being a tourist whose knowlege and DREAM about China was only from books and a few exemplary persons she knew. Recent accounts from oversea Chinese pilgrims painted a different picture. I suppose that with the brisk pace in which everything is carried out in China these days, many things can change in four years. Moreover, it would be surprising if the communists do not learn that in order to make these pilgrimage sites attractive to oversea devotees, at least a semblance of religious atmosphere has to be fostered. It wasn't surprising to read of the accounts of monks whose only practice in the evening was to watch TV. Those are the vestige of the turmoil and destruction of the Cultural Revolution. I only feel sorry that Ms. Ehrlich did not have a chance to read the corpus of works, in Chinese, that aptly and vividly delineate the deplorable state of buddhism in China in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. These deplorable sacrileges no doubt still exist but now there are many young and well-educated monastics who enter the order for authentic and admirable purposes. It is them that carry the standard of the revival of buddhim silently, unknown to the westerners--which is good, in the current political atmosphere.

Ms. Ehrlich also did not (or does she) know that there is now a Buddhist college in Emei and that the abbot of one of its monasteries was a highly revered monk who had just passed away in his 90s (if I remember correctly) last year.

To the contrary of the first reviewer, I do not find Ms. Ehrlich's accounts condescending, I only find some of the accounts inaccurate. There are major and serious problems in China and Ms. Ehrlich's insight of the materialistic obsession of the Chinese and the huge toll it levies on the environment is quite correct, although I am much more optimistic then she was. As I told my friends who complained about the filth and disorder of the Chinatown in Manhattan, what touches me more is the dynamic undercurrent of lives there. As a student, I have toiled for a few months in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant (although not in Manhattan) and have learnt that an outsider who carries too much delusion and expectation lacks the capacity to appreciate life as it is without being too judgemental. Afterall, what is the meaning of pilgrimage? Isn't it simply an amplification of the point of contact between our own minds and the great minds of the bodhisattvas embodied in these mountains? The mountains are in the mind and in essense has nothing to do with how the itinerary is run. A pilgrim with such a "mindset" will always possess the capacity to be touched even in the most arduous and grotesque circumstances.

But then again, I am an oversea Chinese who is yet to set foot on China myself. In that regard, take my words only as a biased perspective and go see for yourselves, although if you are a westerner, that experience might always be one from the outside, sadly...

Rating:
Summary: Pretentious
Review: Questions of Heaven is a book filled with hope and faith: there's hope that any one of us who spends more than 24 hours in China, and has enough faith to shop their manuscript around to publishers will get published, regardless of how pretentious we or our work is or how little knowledge we have of the subject we're covering.

The first shocker about this book is that it's about US$20 for a 120-page hardcover. While certain classic titles lend themselves to this format as possible gifts of keepsakes, this is not one of them. Greater disappointment lies within when the purchaser then actually begins to read the book.

Subtitled "The Chinese Journeys of an American Buddhist," Ms. Ehrlich feels compelled to use the title over and over again. She came to China in 1995 on a pilgrimage to China's four holy Buddhist mountains, although the book concentrates on her travels in southwest China (where only one of the mountains, Emei Shan, lies, in Sichuan province).

Unfortunately for the reader, Questions of Heaven is Lonely Planet brought to life: it offers the same critical, condescending tone towards local people, their customs, and way of life; it is written from the perspective that travel writer Joe Cummings refers to as "my own private Asia," where everyone else is a tourist, but the author is a traveler, the latest incarnation of Marco Polo. Ms. Ehrlich defines basic Buddhist terms such as samsara (human suffering), but doesn't bother to enlighten us with meanings for more obscure phrases. It's okay for Ms. Ehrlich to sit in judgment of the state of Buddhism in China, because she herself hails from that nexus of Nirvana, the United States.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this book is that it's written like the myriad volumes that appeared in the early 1980s; anyone from actor Charlton Heston to economist John Kenneth Galbraith could spend a few weeks in China and then write a book about it. However, after 20 years and millions of tourists, Ms. Ehrlich still has the audacity to write about Lijiang as if every backpacking foreign student hasn't traipsed through there during their Chinese New Year holiday.

The only redeeming part of this book is the occasional pithy line that Ms. Ehrlich records, delivered dead-pan by someone she encounters. While climbing Emei Shan, she meets a Catholic couple selling Buddhist statues and prayer beads. "We can make money here," they tell her. Then there are the monks who spend their evenings entranced-by television. "We chant twice a day, then we watch television." If it were that easy, then millions of American kids would have already reached Enlightenment.

Maybe in her next life, Ms. Ehrlich will come back as travel writer.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: Questions of Heaven offers some insight and education to what China is " like." I found the book very interesting and thoughtful as to what some of the culture is like in China. It offered me a much greater understanding of what it is like to be a Buddhist an a spiritual journey in search of some sort of enlightenment AND it also offered a grat deal of hope - that you may find what you are "looking for" (i.e. answers from heaven as in Ehrlich's case) but the journey may be difficult, thoght-provoking, and quite lonley on the way. I am embarrased to admit that I knew nothing about China before I read this book. So I must call this book THOUGHT PROVOKING AND EDUCATIONAL!!

Rating:
Summary: I should have read the other reviews first!!!!
Review: The title offers promise of a thoughtful, insightful journey. Instead, I got a shallow American's distaste for all things not Santa Barbara. On the positive side, I and a few friends were able to laugh hysterically at such passages as "Though I had come to China to climb Buddhist mountains, I also wanted to see where and how the animals lived, if their culture had survived."

May I suggest that Gretel Ehrlich, "an American Buddhist," go back to school on the teachings of Buddhism.

And may I suggest that anyone wanting to know about the state of Chinese Buddhism and Chinese culture [not to mention the animals' culture :-) ] travel to that wonderful, beautiful country. You'll find some of the most beautiful places and friendliest people on Earth. (And yes, I've traveled extensively in China, as well as places ranging from New Guinea to Europe, so I can validly compare and contrast.)