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The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama | 
 enlarge | Author: Pico Iyer
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
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Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 8470
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.2
ISBN: 0307267601
Dewey Decimal Number: 294.3923092
EAN: 9780307267603
ASIN: 0307267601
Publication Date: March 25, 2008
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Product Description
One of the most acclaimed and perceptive observers of globalism and Buddhism now gives us the first serious consideration—for Buddhist and non-Buddhist alike—of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s work and ideas as a politician, scientist, and philosopher.
Pico Iyer has been engaged in conversation with the Dalai Lama (a friend of his father’s) for the last three decades—an ongoing exploration of his message and its effectiveness. Now, in this insightful, impassioned book, Iyer captures the paradoxes of the Dalai Lama’s position: though he has brought the ideas of Tibet to world attention, Tibet itself is being remade as a Chinese province; though he was born in one of the remotest, least developed places on earth, he has become a champion of globalism and technology. He is a religious leader who warns against being needlessly distracted by religion; a Tibetan head of state who suggests that exile from Tibet can be an opportunity; an incarnation of a Tibetan god who stresses his everyday humanity.
Moving from Dharamsala, India—the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile—to Lhasa, Tibet, to venues in the West, where the Dalai Lama’s pragmatism, rigor, and scholarship are sometimes lost on an audience yearning for mystical visions, The Open Road illuminates the hidden life, the transforming ideas, and the daily challenges of a global icon.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 A commitment to reality in an age of the image March 28, 2008
Kerry Walters (Lewisburg, PA USA)
46 out of 48 found this review helpful
In our media- and soundbite-driven age, every public figure runs the risk of becoming submerged in celebrity status and losing integrity. After all, as author Pico Iyer points out, we live in the Age of the Image (p. 41)--he could just have well said the "Age of Hype"--and media images, unlike the realities they pretend to represent, are one-dimensionally, simplistic. Know this is enough to make any reasonable person a bit suspicious of the buzz surrounding any celebrity, and this is especially true with religious celebrities. How genuinely spiritual can someone who's constantly in the public eye be?
I admit that at times I've asked this about the 14th Dalai Lama. But reading Pico Iyer's intriguing and informative book has set my mind at ease. If Iyer's account is at all accurate (and it should be; Iyer, whose father was a friend of the Dalai Lama's, has known him for many years), the Dalai Lama is a man with such a constant commitment to reality (p. 49) that there's little danger of him buying into the superstar the media insists on giving him. In keeping with his Buddhist tradition, the Dalai Lama has spent a lifetime trying to puncture illusion, deception, interpretive filters, and ideological beliefs--including his own. The Buddha once insisted that he didn't teach "knowledge," because it's too easy for people of knowledge to get trapped inside their beliefs (p. 157). The Dalai Lama lives by these words.
This immediately suggests a tension, which in fact is one of the central themes in Iyer's portrait of the public and personal life of the Dalai Lama. On the one hand, the Dalai Lama insists that the only truths there are must necessarily be universal, cross-cultural ones, and that putative truths which pertain only to specific cultures aren't truths at all (p. 15). This is a reflection in part of his acceptance of the doctrine of shunyata, the interconnectedness of all things, including beliefs (p. 146). Therefore, he looks constantly for the commonality across different cultures and belief systems, and urges others to do so as well.
On the other hand, though, the Dalai Lama is squarely in the Tibetan Buddhist ethos. Iyer points out, for example, that he's actually quite conservative textually. He believes that homosexuality is morally wrong, and he has strong things to say about the use of intoxicants and the permissibility of divorce, and he bases all of these perspectives on a close reading of Tibetan sacred texts. He operates, therefore, within a very specific, culturally-defined belief system.
Far from suggesting an inconsistency, this tension in the Dalai Lama's life is a happy one, and indeed serves as a model for the rest of us, who are after all each come from a specific cultural context. The Dalai Lama is able to bridge the universal and his own religious tradition by not taking himself too seriously. One of his most common expressions, Iyer notes, is "I don't know." He repudiates the title of "Living Buddha," which he claims is a mistranslation of the Tibetan (p. 51), and he tends to think of the institution of the Dalai Lama as a job rather than as prophetic (pp. 73, 131). He insists that his words, and the words of all people, especially those who have a reputation for holiness, should be scrutinized, analyzed, and discussed, and this is exactly the perspective he brings to his own tradition. He remains loyal to it, but he also knows that it doesn't exhaust the realm of possibility. In this regard, he's very much like the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, whose 1968 visit to the Dalai Lama is described by Iyer (pp. 146-50).
Humility, then, is what protects the Dalai Lama from stardom, keeps him focused on his commitment to reality, enables him to seek for universal truths while at the same time celebrating his own particular tradition, and gives him the ability--a rare talent in religious leaders--to laugh at himself. In capturing the contours of this humility, Iyer not only provides us with an insightful portrait of the Dalai Lama. He also gives us some guidelines for living well worth considering.
Ceaseless striving providing hope April 1, 2008
GENE GERUE (Zanoni, MO USA)
28 out of 28 found this review helpful
I heard an interview on NPR with Pico Iyer about this book. Iyer mentioned that the Dalai Lama was 72, which is my age as I write this. I was suddenly struck by the overwhelming thought that I had become this old with my spiritual values still unsettled.
By all measures, Pico Iyer is your basic everyday genius, world traveler and visionary writer. He has written eight books plus hundreds of essays, columns, articles and book reviews for Time, New York Times, National Geographic, Harpers, The Financial Times and more. He also happens to have known the Dalai Lama for over thirty years. I had held Pico Iyer on my "authors-to-read" list for too long to miss this opportunity.
Illustrated with many meetings and occasions over a period of decades, the author shows the enormous range of a seemingly simple man. The three sections of the book are titled: In Public, In Private, In Practice. Chapters are titled: The Conundrum, The Fairy Tale, The Icon, The Philosopher, The Mystery, The Monk, The Globalist, The Politician, The Future.
The fourteenth Dalai Lama is "built like a middle linebacker" but is nonviolent. He is deeply religious--he rises at 3:30am and meditates and prays for four hours--but advises others to find their own way. "A religious teacher who is telling people not to get confused or distracted by religion." He is considered a living god but insists over and over that he is "just a man."
He often says, "I don't know." At the end of a talk in Canada he says, "I will remain, to serve." He is famous for his laughter; he has a solid sense of humor but one suspects also he sees much silliness in the antics of those who ask him their profound questions or give him their worldly viewpoints.
The author succeeds in illuminating "one of the most visible figures on the planet," a man of wide talents and considerations, whose people revere him and hope to learn through his actions. Young Tibetans are impatient with his policies but are dumbstruck in his presence. He is a doctor of metaphysics but appears childlike to many. A living contradiction of superlatives.
I wholeheartedly recommend this book.
 Not for me... April 6, 2008
kstme (Las Vegas)
13 out of 35 found this review helpful
I have never read anything else by Pico Iyer and, doubt very much, that I will again. I found this book to be quite self-serving, repetitious and boring. I never knew 'where' Pico Iyer was heading with his story. I couldn't find a story...he seemed to wander all over the place with fillers. My personal opinion...this book lacked direction and my time would have been better spent reading something else. I am an admirer of the Dalai Lama and I came away feeling Pico Iyer could have written this book without including him. Most of Iyer's wanderings had nothing to do with the Dalai Lama.
14th and Possibly Last Dalai Lama April 12, 2008
Inez (Cape Cod, MA)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
The colors of Tibet come alive, and Dharamsala rocks (quite hilariously) into clarity. Iyer brings us into the orbit and inner sanctum of the 14th Dalai Lama -- possibly the last in a long line of Dalai Lamas -- and creates a profoundly thoughtful, intelligent, skeptical, provocative and moving portrait of the most beloved spiritual leader of our time and also a breathtaking bird's eye view of what has become of Tibet and its people in the last 50 years.
The thing that's rare here is the perspective and intellectual honesty: Although he has known the Dalai Lama for thirty years, Iyer isn't a student, a follower, or even a Buddhist pracitioner. There are no overwrought feelings or needless demonstrations of somber respect, or attempts to please a big daddy figure. Iyer asks the hard questions -- has the Dalai Lama done enough for his people? -- and guides us perceptively through a rich assortment of encounters with the spiritual leader, both public and private, while skillfully revealing to us the wild projections we cast upon the smiley icon of Tibet.
I can't imagine a more deliciously highbrow yet gentle-hearted portrait of anybody, much less a human being who has come to play such a huge role in our imaginations but of whom we know (and expect) so little.
Pico Iyer's books are all so good -- I hope you've read The Lady and The Monk -- that I am reluctant to say this is his best work yet, but I feel it is.
A sympathetic portrait of a religious adept and his circumstances April 11, 2008
thaosky
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I enjoyed reading this book immensely. I think it is Iyer's best book thus far.
Of the Dalai Lama's optimism and the fate of Tibet, Iyer writes:
"A monk, in any case, is one who sees things in the largest light possible, who sees, that is, how much we can't see, with our limited, partial view, our perspective from our spot in the middle of the flux and chaos. His job, in some respects, is to mix agnosticism with faith: to recall that he knows nothing of what will come tomorrow, and yet to remain confident that it will have meaning and will fit into a larger logic. Hope, as Vaclav Havel has said, is not the belief that everything will end happily ever after; it probably won't. It is simply the belief that something makes sense, regardless of how things turn out, and even if that sense is not apprehensible to us."
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