The Solitary Journey [antikvár]

INTRODUCTIONAmong the Eastern religions, Buddhism has achieved the greatest acceptance and popularity in the West. It has even been enshrined on film, with the 1973 motion picture Sid-dhartha, based on Hermann Hesse's novel, in which, as the promotion pieces put it, a "young Brahmin journeys through life in search of truth."But Buddhism's appeal goes beyond cult or fashion, beyond any attempt to exploit it. Although it suggests that there is not an individual ego, self, or soulin the Western senseonly a constantly changing "aggregate of energies," it possesses numerous points of contact with Western religion and thought, which undoubtedly have made it more accessible, less obscure, to Westerners than, for instance, Sufism, the mysticism of Islam, or even Taoism, which, primarily because of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching ("The Way"), has acquired an increasing number of adherents in the West.There are, however, major differences, and it would not be altogether desirous to