Remarkably candid; a deeply fascinating account of Thailand and Buddhism.
An intimate look into the unique experience of entering the Buddhist monkhood in Thailand.
Phansa is a common tradition in Thailand: Young Buddhist men are ordained for a monthslong retreat in a monastery during the country’s rainy season, only to disrobe at the end and return to their lives as laymen. A successful, married writer with two young children and a steady job in Bangkok at the Metropolitan Waterworks Authority, Limpichart undertook this task in 1974, later in life than some, spurred by his own intense sense of duty and pragmatic spirit. Titled Khon Nai Phaa Leuang in the original Thai, Limpichart’s memoir documents his early preparation and ordination, along with his time spent at the temple of Wat Prathat Doi Kong Mu, located not far from the country now widely called Myanmar. His account here is not strictly of the lessons gleaned from Dhamma or the teachings of the Buddha but rather his experiences while studying it, as he learned to adapt to a more contemplative existence, free from distractions. Landau’s translation is approachable, never sacrificing the author’s subdued wit or thoughtful knack for descriptions. English readers unfamiliar with Thailand will find the fogs over Mae Hong Son, along with many other settings, vividly described. And while many of Limpichart’s own ruminations focus on the physical—stiff toes from meditating, the wet air of the monsoon season, chafed thighs and cut feet from taking alms—there are also explorations of surprisingly familiar emotional struggles not unique to the monkhood, such as loneliness and the importance of humility, whether concerning faith or just completing day-to-day tasks. The lone flaw in the book’s presentation is a lack of context; those unfamiliar with Thai or Buddhist culture will no doubt find some attitudes and social mores jarring, even alien, and a more comprehensive primer about customs in this part of the world could have easily remedied this, much in the same way the remarkable photos of Limpichart’s ordination help illustrate a ceremony few have experienced firsthand.
Remarkably candid; a deeply fascinating account of Thailand and Buddhism.Pub Date: April 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-1481863094
Page Count: 312
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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