Review Books: Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction. By Damien Keown. Oxford University Press£6.99. When Things Fall Apart. By Pema Chodron. HarperCollins£8.99

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Published: 14 August 2008

Buddhism - The elusive nature of the beast

IN his book offering us a “very short introduction” to Buddhism, Damien Keown begins by telling the story of the blind men and the elephant. Each group of blind subjects was asked to describe the nature of the beast. The ones that had made contact with the head described the elephant as a water-pot; those familiar with its ears likened it to a winnowing-basket; those who had touched a leg said the elephant was like a post, and those who had felt a tusk insisted the elephant was shaped like a peg.
None of the groups had much idea what it was talking about. Damien concludes that Buddhism, like the elephant in this story, “has a curious assembly of somewhat unlikely parts but also a central bulk to which they are attached”. That doesn’t take us very far.
The questions remain: “Is it a religion? A philosophy? A way of life? A code of ethics?” He spends the next 125 pages gnawing at some of the answers, like Noel Coward’s mad dog out in the midday sun, trying to find a bone with succulent marrow.
Damien strikes a thin vein of gold in chapter four on “The Four Noble Truths”. These assert that (1) “life is suffering”. I could have told him that. (2) “Suffering is craving”. Ditto. (3) “Suffering can have an end”, and (4) “There is a path that leads to the end of suffering.” The last two left me unconvinced.
Damien’s theoretical approach proved too much for me to swallow by the end.
Pema Chodron begins When Things Fall Apart with a deceptively simple approach that digs deeper: “Life is like that. We don’t know anything. We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don’t know”.
By confronting some of the pain, horror and chaos of her life, she helps us to do the same by providing us with a deeply felt lifeline. Her secret is not to run away from life’s bad bits, as most of us do for most of the time. Her book will save lives.

• Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction. By Damien Keown. Oxford University Press £6.99.
When Things Fall Apart.
By Pema Chodron.
HarperCollins £8.99

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