PW: Your last book was Re-enchantment: Tibetan Buddhism Comes to the West. What sparked your own interest in Tibetan Buddhism?
Jeffery Paine: There wasn't much about Eastern religion when I was growing up in Texas in the '50s and early '60s, but sometimes I used to imagine myself under a tree, like the Buddha, becoming wise. Then about 10 years ago I picked up a book in a bookstore about Tibetan Buddhism and it was so wild, so full of strange ideas—and it all made sense. And I thought, "These are unusual ideas, and interesting people are associated with this, and this has a dramatic story to be told." So it appealed to me both as a human being and as a writer.
What compelled you to put together Adventures with the Buddha?
There are so many wonderful books on Buddhism, but what is difficult to find is a book on Buddhism to be read for pure pleasure, a book that you might want to read on an airplane or as you're falling asleep at night. I wanted to create a book that you can learn from while having as much enjoyment as you do reading a novel or a good biography.
Why have the writers in the first part of the book—who were writing from the '20s through the early '70s—gone largely unnoticed?
There was a very, very tiny audience for Buddhism when they wrote. Of course, that begs the question, "Why was there a tiny audience for Buddhism?"
Why was there a tiny audience for Buddhism?
Europeans looked upon the world of Asia—the colonies—as being inferior. The fact that these were a colonized people must mean that they were inferior goods, and the religions were also painted with said brush of inferiority.
The anthology's earlier writers describe some sensational phenomena: clairvoyance, spontaneous healings, demon exorcisms. What would you say to a reader who is skeptical about the reliability of these reports?
I'd say, "You've won." That was a world of wonders that was well documented—even by people who didn't want to believe any of it. It's undeniable that clairvoyance existed, and Harvard scientists have verified that certain monks [through concentration] can raise their body temperature. But these things are dying out. One writer points to Tibet's pristine environment where there wasn't anything—not even radio—except this high, clear air. And people trained this mental training for 25 or 30 years. But there's not that kind of environment anymore, and almost no one does that kind of training anymore. So all these phenomena are just going to perish.
The anthology's early writers depict exotic locales and esoteric rituals, but the contemporary writers turn toward the intimate and personal. What accounts for this shift in focus?
The world of adventure and the near miraculous has all been contained—either touristed or settled. So the big adventure now is the unexplored country of one's own psyche. The challenges for one living today are much more personal, internal, psychological—it's how to have an expansive life within limited geography and limited movement.
What do you hope people get from this book?
Pleasure and enjoyment. I'm not trying to make anybody a Buddhist, that's their own affair. But I guess another thing is to increase the sense of how amazing life is, and that there are more possibilities and ways of looking at things than we might think.
