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/lp/university-of-hawai-i-press/divine-grace-and-the-play-of-opposites-FX5PyBSzPw
- Publisher
- University of Hawai'I Press
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2006 The University of Hawai'i Press.
- ISSN
- 1527-9472
- Publisher site
- See Article on Publisher Site
Abstract
ESSAYS Trent Pomplun Loyola College in Maryland In Prisoners of Shangri-la: Tibetan Buddhism and the West, Donald Lopez treats his readers to a provocative but entertaining history of Western fantasies about Tibet. Lopez discovers at the root of these fantasies a "play of opposites" between "the pristine and the polluted, the authentic and the derivative, the holy and the demonic, the good and the bad." 1 Not surprisingly, Catholic missionaries to Tibet play an important role in Lopez's history, and he depicts them as prisoners to the play of opposites par excellence. Truth be told, it is difficult to deny his charges; in a passage quoted by Lopez, the seventeenth-century Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher describes Tibetans' veneration of the Dalai Lama in these words: Strangers at their approach fall prostrate with their heads to the ground, and kiss him with incredible Veneration, which is no other than that which is performed upon the Pope of Rome; so that hence the fraud and deceit of the Devil may easily and plainly appear, who by his innate malignity and hatred, in way of abuse hath transferred, as he hath done all the other Mysteries of the Christian Religion, the Veneration
Journal
Buddhist-Christian Studies – University of Hawai'I Press
Published: Nov 6, 2006