The flavor, the savor, and the sense of Buddhism as revealed through personal stories.

Many books on Buddhism will edify you, but will they entertain you? Here, finally, is a book that yields an understanding of Buddhism--not by its metaphysics or rituals but through real characters and true stories as dramatic as those in the most imaginative novel.

Jeffery Paine has assembled the breathtaking adventures of nine Westerners who traveled in China, Tibet, and Japan, in Nepal and India, and in that new Buddhist frontier, America, chanced across Buddhism, and made it an integral part of their lives. Through vivid travel writing and gripping human tales, the reader is exposed not just to the theory of Buddhist philosophy and practice but also to what it looks like from the inside. From enchanting, now-lost kingdoms in Asia to the American workplace where a practitioner is profitably applying the dharma, Adventures with the Buddha is a tour de force across nations, generations, and, ultimately, spirituality.
Adventures with the Buddha, Jeffrey Paine, Norton, Hardcover, 2005, 410 pages, $27.95

JEFFERY PAINE is a former editor of the "Wilson Quarterly, the author of "Father India, and the editor of "The Poetry of Our World. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Introduction: Buddhism as Life Adventure	15
The Era of the Heroic and Almost Magical
Introduction	29
Tibet as It Once Was	35
A Himalayan Guru of the Old Style	77
The Lost World of Chinese Buddhism	123
Taoism and/or Buddhism?	201
Reality in a Zen Monastery	233
The Era of You and Me
Introduction	265
An African-American Woman's Journey into Buddhism	267
In Search of Women's Wisdom	317
Suffering and Its Partial Cure	343
The Diamond Sutra. The Diamond Business	367
Permissions	395
Index	397