I think, from comments that have come up from time to time, that many of the older members (mostly baby boomers? yep.) of DW first encountered Eastern religions and philosophy in general, and Buddhism in particular, through books and authors we can no longer take at all seriously. Can I mention a few names and see how many people cringe? Okay, here goes:alan wrote:Hi meindzai. I also read Alan Watts as a teen and oh boy did I think he had it all figured out. He was my hero for a year or two. Embarrassing to admit it now...but it did inspire me on towards more serious study later. There must be some value in that.
Sorry, no Hesse quotes. Back to you, Hanzze.
Lobsang Rampa (The Third Eye, etc), Alan Watts, I Ching (the version translated from Chinese to German to English), Persig (Zen and the Art of...), Krishnamurti, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Ram Dass (Be Here Now), Gurdjieff, ...
Not so specifically Asian, but of the same period: Carlos Castaneda, Aldous Huxley (The Perennial Philosophy and others) ...
Okay, that's ten. Is anyone (else ) game to admit that they read all of them?
Before someone tells me I'm off-topic: Hesse's Siddhartha and Steppenwolf belong on that list.
And don't think I look down on all of them or regret reading them. They were important in the sixties and seventies, particularly for one very simple reason: they were around at the time, and very little else was readily available. Without them, it's quite possible there would be no DW today, no American Buddhism, no Theravada monasteries in the UK, etc, etc.
Kim