All Is Change: The Two-Thousand-Year Journey of Buddhism to the West

This hefty history of Buddhism in the West starts at the very beginning: combing through the works of ancient Greeks and proceeding from that time to find references to Western encounters with, or knowledge of, Buddhism in the East. Sutin, a teacher and author of biographies and memoirs, has set himself an ambitious and sometimes dusty task, querying Gnosticism, the missionary history of the Society of Jesus, Enlightenment thought and other currents of Western intellectual history, in his quest for the Buddha. Some of what he finds is fascinating, including the Jesus Messiah sutra, a 7th-century document that explains Christianity in Buddhist and Confucian terms. Other times what he considers Buddhist-influenced is a stretch that blurs distinctions: the mathematician Leibniz, for example, is roped into his analysis, but what Sutin cites shows the German philosopher to be an admirer of China, not necessarily of Buddhism. General readers may find this book ponderous, with lengthy quotes from source materials and occasional small side disquisitions about such matters as the racism behind the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. However, its comprehensiveness and depth will interest those in the field of Buddhist studies and others with patience to slog through it. (Aug.)