Editeur - Casa editrice

  Asia
India
Tibet
Ladakh
Himalaya

Anno - Date de Parution

Pagine - Pages

Titolo originale

Lingua originale

Lingua - language - langue

Edizione - Collana

Ristampa - Réédition - Reprint

Foreward
1. The Way and the Mountain
2. The Active Life
3. On Crossing Religious Frontiers
4. On Soliciting and Imparting Spiritual Counsel
5. The Place of Compassion in Tibetan Spirituality
6. Sikkim Buddhism Today and Tomorrow
7. Do Clothes Make the Man?
8. The Dalai Lama
9. The Tibetan Tradition:—Its Presiding Idea
AFTERWORD "The Everlasting Message"
APPENDIX

Di prossima ristampa in Wisdom World Books

Marco Pallis was born of Greek parents in Liverpool in 1895, educated at Harrow and Liverpool University, and served in the British army during the Great War. Later he studied music with Arnold Dolmetsch, and was much influenced by the writings of two great perennialists, Ananda Coomaraswamy and René Guénon, whom he visited in Cairo and two of whose books he translated with his friend Richard Nicholson.
In 1923 Pallis visited southern Tibet on a mountaineering trip. He returned to the area in 1933 and 1936, consumed by an interest in its traditional culture, and stayed in monasteries in Sikkim and Ladakh. He returned for a more extended visit after World War II. After visiting Ceylon and South India, and receiving the darshan of Ramana Maharshi at Tiravunnamalai, he studied under Tibetan lamas near Shigatse and was initiated, with the Tibetan name of Thubden Tendzin, into one of the lineages.
Pallis returned to England in 1950 and with Richard Nicholson and some other musicians formed the English Consort of Viols, a group dedicated to the preservation of early English music. Pallis made several concert tours with this group. On one such tour to the U.S.A. he visited the Abbey of Gethsemani (Kentucky) where he met Thomas Merton, with whom he had already opened a correspondence .

Marco Pallis wrote two books deriving from his experiences in Tibet: Peaks and Lamas (1939) which was reprinted several times and became something of a bestseller, and The Way and the Mountain (1960). They are a unique blend of travelogue, botanical lore, discursive essays on Tibetan civilization, and metaphysical expositions. In the former Pallis allows the reader to become familiar with the landscape,with its inhabitants and with the values which govern their lives without obtruding Western "interpretations" on his subjects. The second of his books, written in the light of a fully matured understanding of the Vajyarana, includes several peerless essays on such subjects as the "presiding idea" of Tibetan Buddhism, the institution of the Dalai Lama (on which any amount of nonsense had hitherto appeared), and Buddhism in Sikkism.

Pallis's oeuvre is unhampered by any assumptions about the superiority ofthe West; indeed, his books derive much of their insight from his adamantine opposition to the modern spirit and his receptivity to the lessons of tradition in one of its last strongholds. During his trips he enhanced his fluency in the Tibetan language, wore Tibetan clothes and mixed freely not only with learned lamas and geshes but with ordinary folk. He achieved momentary public attention for his role in the exposure of Lobsang Rampa. Pallis wrote many articles for the journal Studies in Comparative Religion, some of which are included in his last publication, A Buddhist Spectrum (1980). Marco Pallis died in 1990. Huston Smith wrote of his work,"For insight, and the beauty insight requires if it is to be effective, I find no writer on Buddhism surpassing him" .

His article, "Do Clothes Make the Man," can be found in, Every Branch in Me: Essays on the Meaning of Man.