un libro per sognare

 

05/12/2024 12:17:10

Indietro - torna alla pagina precedente
sei sei in  percorso Home » libreria » Buddhismo

Pagina in aggiornamento continuo

La strada aperta
Vita e pensiero del XIV Dalai Lama
Iyer Pico

Editeur - Casa editrice

Neri Pozza

Religione
Buddhismo
Vajrayana

Città - Town - Ville

Vicenza

Anno - Date de Parution

2008

Pagine - Pages

275

Titolo originale

The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama

Lingua - language - langue

italiano

Edizione - Collana

I colibrì

Traduttore

Middioni D.


La strada aperta  

Trascorrere le giornate con il Dalai Lama, seguirlo nei suoi spostamenti, incontrarlo ripetutamente negli anni ed accompagnarlo attraverso il mondo o colloquiare con lui nella semplice dimora di Dharamsala. Questa l'invidiabile possibilità avuta da Pico Iyer e testimoniata ne "The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama", analisi e riflessioni sull'uomo che ha fatto conoscere al mondo la causa tibetana e che in questi giorni deve traghettarla nella bufera fra centinaia di tibetani uccisi ed i cui corpi vengono fatti sparire, cinesi linciati da giovani tibetani inferociti, migliaia di dimostranti arrestati e processati, monaci e seguaci occidentali di Shugden che lo contestano, una diaspora che con fatica cerca di giungere ad una democrazia laica.

"Chi è davvero il XIV Dalai Lama? Chi è questa icona della gioventù, degli artisti e degli intellettuali di tutto il mondo? "Sono un monaco buddhista" replica di solito. E la risposta contiene un'evidente, indiscussa verità. Il Dalai Lama aspira realmente, come ogni monaco, a un'assoluta semplicità. Ha trascorso il tempo a studiare la dottrina del Buddha e sa quanto tutto sia illusorio ed effimero, vive in maniera sobria, e quando viaggia gli unici oggetti che decorano la stanza in cui alloggia sono alcune fotografie dei suoi insegnanti e dei familiari e una radio portatile. Tuttavia, è una risposta che non racchiude appieno la sua figura. È una guida religiosa che raccomanda di non lasciarsi irretire o sviare dalla religione, un buddhista che esorta continuamente gli stranieri a non convertirsi alla sua fede ma a studiarla all'interno delle proprie tradizioni, una figura carismatica che passa in maniera fulminea da un'identità all'altra: monaco, capo di stato, filosofo-scienziato, persona normale. Soggiornando a lungo a Dharamsala e seguendo il Dalai Lama nei suoi numerosi viaggi in Occidente in cui la sua cultura, il suo rigore e il suo pragmatismo si perdono spesso di fronte a un pubblico che agogna visioni mistiche, Fico Iyer illumina l'uomo che si cela dietro l'icona globale. "

 

Consulta anche: Stories: The Ascent Of A Man

Recensione in altra lingua (English):

One of the most acclaimed and perceptive observers of globalism and Buddhism now gives us the first serious consideration—for Buddhist and non-Buddhist alike—of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s work and ideas as a politician, scientist, and philosopher.
Pico Iyer has been engaged in conversation with the Dalai Lama (a friend of his father’s) for the last three decades—an ongoing exploration of his message and its effectiveness. Now, in this insightful, impassioned book, Iyer captures the paradoxes of the Dalai Lama’s position: though he has brought the ideas of Tibet to world attention, Tibet itself is being remade as a Chinese province; though he was born in one of the remotest, least developed places on earth, he has become a champion of globalism and technology. He is a religious leader who warns against being needlessly distracted by religion; a Tibetan head of state who suggests that exile from Tibet can be an opportunity; an incarnation of a Tibetan god who stresses his everyday humanity.
Moving from Dharamsala, India—the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile—to Lhasa, Tibet, to venues in the West, where the Dalai Lama’s pragmatism, rigor, and scholarship are sometimes lost on an audience yearning for mystical visions, The Open Road illuminates the hidden life, the transforming ideas, and the daily challenges of a global icon.

"Last november, travelling across Japan with the 14th Dalai Lama, I soon discovered that even dawn-to-dusk surveillance of the man meant missing one of his important daily activities: by 7.30 each morning he had already completed four hours of meditation, reflecting on the needs of the people around him, on his "Chinese brothers and sisters" occupying Tibet, and on his death.

The days got more fast-paced from there. One morning in Ise, after meetings with Japanese monks and a shy young woman running a youth magazine, we drove down to the nearby train station and set off for Nagoya. Upon arrival, we were greeted by five young Tibetans studying abroad and eager to talk to their exiled leader. After that brief encounter, we boarded another train and met two journalists waiting to question the Dalai Lama on the political complications associated with his freedom struggle and the refusal of Japan's leaders to meet him. We lunched with a Japanese politician and then went upstairs to a suite in a Yokohama hotel to meet a full roster of supplicants: scientists keen to share the results of research they'd done on compassion; the heads of a Buddhist organisation hosting the Dalai Lama at a conference with 5,000 guests the next day; emissaries from Japanese high society, offering him a book from the Empress Michiko; and a young television crew. Finally, he walked along a corridor at the top of the glossy hotel, strode into a conference room and found 60 people waiting for him. As soon as he entered, all of them began sobbing and prostrating themselves before him. Every one of the devout was, remarkably, a Han Chinese from the People's Republic of China.

By the end of the day - by the end of every day of the trip, in fact - I was exhausted. But for the 72-year-old Tibetan leader, this was the life he has known for six decades - and the life, I think, he will be leading on his next visit to Britain a few days from now."



Biografia

Pico Iyer is the author of six works of nonfiction and two novels. He has covered the Tibetan question for Time, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and many other publications for more than twenty years.

Consulta anche: Stories: The Ascent Of A Man