Autumn Reading List Catch-Up, Including Story-Driven Music

One of the perks of blogging about Buddhist fiction is that authors and readers of fiction that intersects with Buddhism regularly send emails to let us know of new or newly discovered works. Unfortunately, there is not enough time to review everything that comes our way, or even read every story. But we can certainly list it here for you to discover, read, and enjoy. With that said, here is a brief catch-up listing of books (and music!), alphabetically by author, that have been brought to our attention over the past few months. Thank-you to everyone who alerts us to the ever-growing assortment of Buddhist fiction.

darshan Pulse. Olive Moksha. 2018   https://darshanpulse.com/

darshan Pulse is a group of musicians who create and produce “Revolutionary Buddhist Rock from the Heart of the Rocky Mountains.” Based out of Missoula, Montana, the group recently produced an instrumental concept album to express “the essence of samsara, the Buddhist doctrine of cyclical existence” entitled Olive Moksha. For this their second album, darshan Pulse “focused on how duality can be transcended. . . The narrative of this second project focuses on the story of three tulkus and their willful reincarnation into the belly of the beast – the same matrix described by the first album – to bring about a new era of peace [sic] the world” (from https://darshanpulse.com/theory).

The music is driven by Buddhist narrative. The full story of these tulkus can be found here on the darshan Pulse website and their track Avalokiteshvara can be enjoyed there as well. Below the track they have written a narrative snippet, which begins thusly:

“Three monks, Daleth, Mem and Teth, practice their meditation every morning beneath the olive trees. One day, each of them separately experience the exact same phenomena during meditation. The vision nearly brings each of them to tears, and they separately spend many hours contemplating the surrounding landscape as if for the very first time; as if reborn.” (from https://darshanpulse.com/avalokiteshvara/ )

Gaber, Mark. Rijicho. Wheatmark Inc, 2011.

From Amazon: “The Sho Hondo Convention is over. Three thousand Buddhist Americans have returned from Japan, exhausted but triumphant. Relentlessly the next campaign begins: six months from now, a “Festival on Ice” will be held at the San Diego Sports Arena. Unknown to all, deadly cancer has invaded the body of George M. Williams, supernova nucleus of NSA. Urgent surgery is required, but this would delay the San Diego Convention. Will he save himself, or defy death to pursue the dream of a destitute priest who vowed seven hundred years ago to save humankind?”

Gaber, Mark. Sho Hondo. Wheatmark Inc, 2011.

From Amazon: “October marks the completion of the multimillion-dollar Sho Hondo Grand Main Temple in Taisekiji, Japan. Three thousand Buddhist Americans prepare to embark on a pilgrimage to meet their mentor and pray to the Dai-Gohonzon, the great mandala inscribed by the Buddha Nichiren in 1279 for the salvation of humankind. What will they find? Travel with them on their adventure, seen through the eyes of a 22-year old clarinet player in the NSA Brass Band.”

Merullo, Roland. The Delight of Being Ordinary: a Road Trip with the Pope and the Dalai Lama. Vintage Contemporaries, 2018.

From Amazon: “Roland Merullo’s playful, eloquent, and life-affirming novel finds the world’s two holiest men teaming up for an unsanctioned road trip through the Italian countryside–where they rediscover the everyday joys and challenges of ordinary life.

During the Dalai Lama’s highly publicized official visit to the Vatican, the Pope suggests an adventure so unexpected and appealing that neither man can resist: they will shed their robes for several days and live as ordinary men. Before dawn, the two beloved religious leaders make a daring escape from Vatican City, slip into a waiting car, and are soon traveling the Italian roads in disguise. Along for the ride is the Pope’s neurotic cousin and personal assistant, Paolo, who–to his terror– has been put in charge of arranging the details of their disappearance. Rounding out the group is Paolo’s estranged wife, Rosa, an eccentric entrepreneur with a lust for life, who orchestrates the sublime disguises of each man. Rosa is a woman who cannot resist the call to adventure–or the fun.

Against a landscape of good humor, intrigue, and spiritual fulfillment, The Delight of Being Ordinary showcases the uniquely charming sensibilities of author Roland Merullo. Part whimsical expedition, part love story, part spiritual search, this uplifting novel brings warmth and laughter to the universal concerns of family life, religious inspiration, and personal identity—all of which combine to transcend cultural and political barriers in the name of a once-in-a-lifetime adventure.”

Okita, Dwight. The Hope Store. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017.

From Amazon: “Two Asian American men, Luke and Kazu, discover a bold new procedure to import hope into the hopeless. They vow to open the world’s first Hope Store. Their slogan: “We don’t just instill hope. We install it.” The media descend. Customer Jada Upshaw arrives at the store with a hidden agenda, but what happens next no one could have predicted. Meanwhile an activist group called The Natural Hopers emerges warning that hope installations are a risky, Frankenstein-like procedure and vow to shut down the store. Luke comes to care about Jada, and marvels at her Super-Responder status. But in dreams begin responsibilities, and unimaginable nightmares follow. If science can’t save Jada, can she save herself — or will she wind up as collateral damage?”

Padwa, David. Incident at Lukla: A Novel of the Himalayas. Hapax Press, 2013.

From Amazon: “Little Nepal, poor and beautiful, lies sandwiched between China and India and is ravaged by an armed revolution. Brutal Maoist guerrillas are attempting to overthrow a corrupt and half-deranged monarchy. Two middle-aged love-starved American intelligence agents, Elsie and Ripp, are running operations in the Himalayas. They uncover a bizarre weapons trade across the Tibetan frontier which is under the control of a ranking Chinese military officer. As intelligence operatives attempt to outflank each other two young lovers, Annie and Pemba, experienced and adventurous mountaineers, are unwittingly drawn into a gyre of conflicting espionage operations. A dramatic incident at a Sherpa village creates a chain of unforeseen consequences and comes, literally, to a breath-taking climax amidst the world’s highest mountains. A nearby Lama sees a wheel of time turning, fueled by erotic attraction leading to birth and consciousness.”

**All of these novels can be purchased on Amazon.com. **

 

 

 

 

Interview with Roland Merullo by Chris Beal

Roland Merullo (Rolandmerullo.com) is the author of sixteen books, two of which are particularly of interest to readers of Buddhist Fiction. BREAKFAST WITH BUDDHA (Algonquin, 2008)), previously reviewed here (https://buddhistfictionblog.wordpress.com/tag/spiritual-travelogue/), is currently in its fifteenth printing and has been translated into Korean and Croatian. Merullo’s latest, LUNCH WITH BUDDHA (AJAR Contemporaries, 2012), is a sequel to BREAKFAST, and picks up on middle-aged, upper-middle-class food book editor Otto Ringling’s sometimes reluctant journey into spirituality and his relationship with the Buddhist teacher Volya Rinpoche, who has now become his brother-in-law. (Note that it is not necessary to read BREAKFAST in order to enjoy LUNCH although doing so may result in a richer experience.)

Chris Beal:  For those who haven’t read it, could you describe LUNCH WITH BUDDHA in a nutshell?

Roland Merullo: It is, like BREAKFAST, another road-trip book, a look at America, at spirituality, at food and landscape and the interior life.  It begins with the whole family together in Seattle, and then, after an event I don’t want to describe here, Otto and Rinpoche head east in an old pickup truck and make their way across Washington State, Idaho, Montana and a bit of Wyoming, having various adventures along the way, talking, eating, meeting characters.

For those who haven’t read BREAKFAST, that book is a New Jersey-to-North Dakota road trip taken by the same characters. LUNCH is the next stage on that evolution, with Rinpoche bringing Otto deeper into the interior life, and Otto showing Rinpoche more and more of the American landscape and culture.

CB:  I find Rinpoche, with his eccentric mix of human foibles and profundity, to be an extremely engaging character.  He’s also the source of most of the humor in this tale as well as in its predecessor.  How did you come up with the idea for him?  Did you know someone like this or is he purely a work of imagination?

RM:  He’s a mixture of spiritual teachers I have seen, taken retreats with, and imagined.  There’s a little of the Dalai Lama in him, a little of the Tibetan master, Sogyal Rinpoche, a bit of the late Zen master Soehn Sahn.  I went on brief retreats with the latter two, and found them to be very funny, engaging, impressive men.  But in Rinpoche I take that to another level, and have him do things that those teachers might not do.  In part, the book grew out of a magazine piece I read probably thirty years ago, the account of the Dalai Lama’s first trip to America.  One of his hosts was aghast that people had arranged for him to go to Disneyland, but the Dalai Lama enjoyed himself, went with the flow, with good humor, kindness, without judgment.  I wasn’t even interested in Buddhism then, but it impressed me so much to have a great spiritual leader with that kind of sense of humor about things.

CB:  How did you learn about the obscure branch of Siberian Tibetan Buddhism to which the Rinpoche belongs?  Did you choose it because it attracted you in some way or just because its obscurity gave you some freedom to play with the doctrine a bit?

RM:  It’s made up.  I know a bit about Tibetan Buddhism, Dzogchen especially, but I’m the last thing from a scholar.  I used my intuitive understanding of those teachings, but I chose this made up lineage because I did not want to be limited to the factual teachings of any one group.  One thing I love about Buddhist teachers is how they incorporate and respect the teachings of other faiths.  They will mention Christ, for example, though very few Christian teachers mention Buddha with the same respect.

CB:  But I researched whether there was a branch of Tibetan Buddhism in Siberia, and it turned out to exist. This is an amazing coincidence.  But if you didn’t know about it, of course it was made up for purposes of the novel.

RM:  I should have been more clear about that.  I did work in the USSR for almost three years between 1977 and 1990, and did once take the Trans-Siberian railroad, which passes through a place called Skovorodino.  And I did know that there were some Buddhist enclaves.  So that was in my thoughts when I was writing and having Rinpoche come from Russia.  But [the lineage] Ortyk is made up….unless by some weird coincidence it is also real.  

CB:  One purpose of the book seems to be to encourage people ask themselves questions about what is really important in their lives. Could you say something about the role of humor in accomplishing this purpose?

RM:  Religion is a tricky subject.  It’s especially tricky for someone like me, who has zero credentials.  I’m not a preachy type, in real life, and do not want to go anywhere near preaching to or trying to convert my readers. Humor helps with that.  The big questions are so big, and they can be so serious, literally matters of life and death and afterlife, that, I think, if you don’t approach them with humor the results can be awful.  I am trying to “provoke” people to consider things, but I’m not pushing anyone anywhere beyond that, and if the characters and story don’t work, then the ideas will fall flat.

CB:  The book suggests that communicating with the dead is possible. Have you yourself had any experiences in contacting the dead?  Can you talk a little about how you see this kind of communication?

RM:  No, I haven’t, but I do have friends who feel they have had some communication with lost loved ones.  And it is just very hard for me to believe that we form these deep attachments to certain people in this life, and then they end forever when one or both die.  Part of what I am trying to do in Breakfast and LUNCH (and now DINNER, which I am writing), is to counter what I see as the excessively materialistic views held by most of us in American/Western society.  I don’t mean materialistic in the usual sense–wanting things–but in the sense of believing only in the material, the measurable, the tangible.  It seems obvious to me that there is more going on, and while that other dimension of things can be the territory of the flaky and false, I think there is truth to it.  I think there is some connection that death doesn’t sever, and I wanted Otto to feel that in this book.

CB:  Certain plot elements are never developed in LUNCH:  the possibility of harm coming to Shelsa, the possibility that she is an incarnate Buddha, the menace posed by the hate groups.  Did you intend to set up these plot elements for further development in DINNER?

RM:  I don’t plan much, don’t outline, just write by the seat of my pants, by intuition, trying to have fun as I go.  But in DINNER, I am wrestling with some of those elements, how much to pursue or abandon them. It’s tricky business because the heart of these books is the spiritual evolution of Otto, and I don’t want to turn them into thrillers.  At the same time, I like to introduce something new in each book so I am not just playing the same song over and over again.

CB:  To what extent are Rinpoche’s views on spirituality your own?  Are there any ways in which they are not your own? If the answer is yes to the latter question, why did you decide to give him views that differ from yours?

RM:  They are mostly my own.  He is wiser and deeper than I am, and he lacks some of my flaws and troubles.  I have tried to put some of me into Otto for that reason, though Otto is very different than I am in many respects.  When Rinpoche says something in his teachings, those are things I have thought and wondered about myself, or read or heard from great masters. I try to be careful with that material, try not to simply mimic what I’ve heard, but also try not to have him say something that will be misleading to true spiritual seekers.  It’s a fine line sometimes.  I feel a responsibility to the truth, as I perceive it, especially in spiritual matters.  And while I joke about it in the book, at the same time, I take seriously what I have him say.  If it doesn’t work in my own life, or if it feels “off” somehow, then I won’t have him say it.

CB:  I believe I read that you meditate.  Is it a particular type of practice?  Are you affiliated with any particular spiritual group?

RM:  No.  No specific group.  It’s a hybrid meditation that grew out of a Catholic upbringing, some Buddhist reading and retreats.  It’s been an almost daily practice for 30 some years.  I start with a Hail Mary and an Our Father, sometimes do a little tonglen, the Tibetan giving-and-taking meditation, then try just to rest as quietly as I can.  I like Dzogchen because it seems simple, without a lot of visualizations and tricks.  I just watch the thoughts and try to return to some word, idea, or image, and occasionally have moments of calm.  In general, it has helped me tremendously.  Not that I have any great visions–I don’t–but it has helped me with anger and depression and other tough parts of life that I experienced more when I was younger.  Still a long long ways to go to get free of all the negative emotions, but it has helped me so much.

I’ve had a lot of physical challenges in my life–broken back, back surgery, back spasms, psoriatic arthritis, shingles, etc. etc. etc.  And meditation is so helpful with those kinds of things.  My wife and I were married 18 years without having children and I made retreats then.  Since the children have come into our lives, I try to stay home, but when they are grown I will certainly do more retreats. I’ve done Catholic, Christian, Buddhist (Tibetan, Zen), Protestant, non-denominational. It all feels about the same to me–an unplugging from the usual run of worries and thoughts.

CB:  Do you feel you have developed spiritually in the years since you wrote BREAKFAST?  If so, how was that development reflected in LUNCH?

RM:  I think we always develop.  Bringing up children, being married for a long time, suffering, traveling, meditating, writing, dealing with the ups and downs of life–all those things have contributed to my own spiritual evolution.  I think that happens for every single soul on this planet.  But I think if you pay attention to that, if you meditate, for example, or have some other practice, then the effect, the benefit of those experiences, spiritually, is heightened.  In LUNCH I wanted to touch upon what happens to a person who loses a loved one.  I have friends in that situation.  What happens spiritually?  What are the challenges?  How does one experience and deal with grief?   The trick was to have all that in a book with humor in it.  But I do see, even in friends who have lost spouses, that humor eventually resurfaces.  One never forgets, the pain is not erased, but I do think humor and hope resurface after a time.

CB:  Is there anything else that you’d like readers or potential readers to know about LUNCH WITH BUDDHA or about the way you work as a writer?

RM:  I think it is an upbeat and hopeful book, despite a strain of real sadness. The way I work is to write about what I care about, what I’m thinking about.  I try to put something good into the world, to entertain, yes, but also to provoke–not in the sense of upsetting people, but in the sense of encouraging readers to think about something they might not have thought about, or to pursue something they have thought about from a different angle.  In a sense, my writing is extremely personal. I don’t write at arm’s length, in a scholarly or particularly cerebral way.  I want my books to be engaging, entertaining, thought-provoking, fun, carefully written, the kind of book you might read a second or third time.  I feel like I just tap into some source–I don’t mean this in any mystical or special way–and take that and put it on the page.

CB:  Well, you have certainly succeeded in doing this. Thank you so much for writing such thought-provoking and at the same time entertaining books.

Announcing New Buddhist Fiction x 3

It’s been a busy, busy holiday season and I thought before the year ends I should write a post about three new works of Buddhist fiction that have been published recently. I extend my deepest appreciation to all those Buddhist Fiction Blog readers who brought these books to my attention. In chronological order, the novels are:

1. The Dalai Lama’s Cat by David Michie. Hay House Visions, October 1, 2012. http://www.hayhouse.com/ This link leads to Hay House publishing. Search for The Dalai Lama’s Cat once you are there.

This is my winter holiday read! I am half way through this light-hearted novel that is, as the title makes clear, about the Dalai Lama’s cat. She is a Himalayan, as one would expect, and she has many names to match her multi-faceted personality. The book is written from the cat’s perspective and is a thin veil for some rudimentary lessons from Tibetan Buddhism. The most interesting aspect of the novel, to me, is the extended characterization of the Dalai Lama. How did Michie research and write the fictional Dalai Lama in this book?

David Michie is the bestselling author of Buddhism for Busy People, Hurry Up and Meditate and Enlightenment to Go. He has also written four thrillers, most recently including The Magician of Lhasa, which, as the publisher’s web site remarks, “brings the profoundly life-enhancing perspectives of Tibetan Buddhism to a wider audience of fiction readers.”

2. Lunch with Buddha by Roland Merullo. AJAR Contemporaries, November 13, 2012. http://www.lunchwithbuddha.com/

The web site provides the following on Merullo’s sequel: “Lunch With Buddha has the same main characters as Breakfast with Buddha (Rinpoche, Otto, Cecelia, Otto’s family) and is, like its predecessor, a road trip book. This time, though, the trip is from Seattle, Washington to Dickenson, North Dakota, a route that takes the travelers through Washington State, across the Idaho Panhandle, across the breadth of Montana, and into parts of North Dakota not visited in Breakfast.” Merullo’s Breakfast with Buddha was so popular that I can foresee nothing but success for this novel.

3. Mandarin Gate by Eliot Pattison. Minotaur Books, First Edition November 27, 2012. http://www.eliotpattison.com/

This is Pattison’s seventh novel in a series featuring the compassionate, intrepid Shan Tao Yun, an ex-Inspector from Beijing who shares the plight of imprisoned Tibetan Buddhists of post-revolutionary China when he is thrown into a prison camp in Tibet for unnamed crimes against the regime. Pattison writes with a power of insight and depth of compassion that are heart wrenching. A wonderful review of the novel and an insightful interview with the author, Eliot Pattison, can be found here on Sumeru. Many thanks go out to Karma Yönten Gyatso for this review and interview.

BREAKFAST WITH BUDDHA by Roland Merullo, Reviewed by Chris Beal

BREAKFAST WITH BUDDHA has been labeled Buddhist fiction by Kimberly French (uuworld.org “Guide to Buddhist Fiction” by Kimberly French, 15 Feb 2010) and Danny Fisher (Rev.DannyFisher “FROM THE MAILBAG: Buddhism in Popular Fiction” by Reverend Danny Fisher, 6 Sep 2008).

This novel takes us on a journey like no other. Otto Ringling is an affable, middle-aged New York food book editor who lives a good life and loves his wife and two children. His sister Cecelia, by contrast, is, in Otto’s view, a New Age flake who lives in a dumpy New Jersey neighborhood and can’t get her life together. When their parents die in a car accident, the siblings must go back to the North Dakota farm where they were raised and take care of the estate. But things get complicated when Cecelia pulls a fast one and Otto finds himself in a car headed west not with his sister but with her guru, Volvo Rinpoche.

Cooped up with this guru for several days, Otto has to find a way to keep him off his back. And the guru is anything but reasonable. He knows just how to probe Otto, causing him to consider aspects of life he never thought – or wanted to think – much about before. Otto has always seen himself as reasonable, but the guru pricks him here and there, and Otto finds himself irritated, or even angry, despite himself.

Rinpoche keeps saying Otto is lucky to have been born to fortunate circumstances. “Don’t waste,” he says repeatedly – meaning, don’t blow your chance to discover the true meaning of life. After several skirmishes, the two make a pact: Otto will show Rinpoche what he knows about the United States and Rinpoche will show Otto what he knows about spirituality. There are many surprises on this journey to Otto’s new understanding of himself, and they kept this reader laughing all along the way.

Some questions to ponder:

1. Rinpoche is from an obscure branch of Tibetan Buddhism in Siberia. While this branch does exist, most people have never heard of and know nothing about it. Does this fact make it easier for Merullo to put whatever words he likes into Rinpoche’s mouth without having to worry about whether the reader would object that a Tibetan master wouldn’t say that?

2. Does Otto’s gradual transformation seem realistic to you?

3. Does the travelogue aspect of the book work for you? Did you learn something from the way Rinpoche saw America?

4. How does Otto’s food fetish serve to advance the plot?

What did you think of this book?  Please share your views.