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  Journey to Heavenly Mountain    
    An American's Pilgrimage to the Heart of Buddhism in China    
   
  by Jay Martin, Ph.D.
       

 

     

Jay Martin is an eminent literary figure in America, author of numerous biographies and a college professor. Questioning whether he had gotten too comfortable, in a sort of rut, Martin set out on his own to explore the hidden trails of Buddhism in China.

This book is his memoir of the journey from America to China, from the golden streets of success to forest trails to forgotten monasteries. Martin is an extraordinary literary talent and readers will not be disappointed with a travel memoir that is by turns meditative, adventurous (he is stranded on an island by an opportunistic fisherman) and enlightening.

 

     
     
 
$16.95
264 pages
ISBN:1-890772-17-8
paperback
5.5 x 8.5 inches
 
   

Jay Martin, Ph.D., is a professor of Government and Humanities at Claremont College, Claremont, California. He is the author of numerous biographies, including Always Merry and Bright: A Life of Henry Miller; and The Education of John Dewey: A Biography.

 
 
 
         

Jay Martin has served us a layered feast . . . a vivid picture of the imperfect blend of tradition and modernity that constitute today’s China. . . . This rich content is packaged in a narrative so beautifully and clearly written as to evoke sighs of admiration and pleasure.  – Burton Levin, former U.S. Consul-General to Hong Kong and Ambassador to Burma.

 

Jay Martin takes us on a spiritual sojourn in which he comes to experience China in a way and to a degree lost on perhaps most of our China experts . . . A quality of unrestrained childlike wonder transforms his prose into a reverie. Guiding us gently through the business of the monastic day . . . Martin teaches us that real religious feeling is, in fact, the spontaneous flowering of sensitive living in the here and now.  – Roger T. Ames, author of Thinking Through Confucius: Thinking from the Han, and translator and editor of Confucius’ Analects.

 

 In spite of the repressive efforts of Chairman Mao and his successors, religion still lives and flourishes in China. The author of numerous literary biographies (Always Merry and Bright: The Life of Henry Miller) and other books, Martin, who teaches government at Claremont McKenna College, takes us with him to the sixth-century monastery of Guo Qing in east central China. He spends more than a month at the monastery, not as a casual visitor but as a monk, following all the monastic rituals and rules although he is not Chinese but American, not a celibate monk but a married layman, and not even Buddhist but Catholic. Monastic life has universal appeal, and Martin's account is full of interesting observations about Chinese people and places while also being attentive to Buddhist monastic spirituality. The book suffers a bit from the author's self-focus, but this is a minor complaint. Well written and intelligent, it will appeal both to casual readers and to specialists. –  Library Journal,  James F. DeRoche, Alexandria, VA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

 

 

 
                                    
     
       
 

 

 
 

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