Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)First, let me say that I'm encouraged that Buddhism has a magazine dedicated to its study, and that the magazine is low in ads. I greatly appreciate the effort involved in creating this.
My concern with the issue of Buddhism Today I read through (Fall-Winter 2009) came right away on page 5. I had in my hands "part 2" of the 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas. I am generally bothered by magazines that provide multi-part content. Imagine the scene. I am sitting down with a nice cup of tea, preparing to relax with wonderful content, and I start reading "We have now completed the preliminaries, the seven mind trainings." Wait - we did? What preliminaries? Right from the start I get the sense that I've missed out, that it would be fruitless to even try reading this article and "catch up". It's not a good feeling to get at the very beginning of a magazine you were looking forward to reading.
Still, I begin reading the article. The "first" entry in here is the Eighth Verse. I am told that "The teaching of this verse is for practitioners of the lowest category" - but I have no idea what the lowest category means. Is that me? Is it practitioners who have been "acting inappropriately" until now? Subsequent verses also refer to things I am unsure of. Maybe it was explained in the previous issue, which I do not have.
Well, OK. On to the next article. This one is "What Happened in Kalimpong?" The intro to the article says "Here I offer a new awareness, beyond the reflections published earlier (1)." The (1) apparently refers to a journal he published in 2008 that has the base story. So now not only do I need to get the previous issue of this magazine, but I also have to get this book as well in order to understand the current issue.
We do then get to self contained articles with interesting content and lovely photos. I like that the image on page 28 is of a dark skinned woman, showing that all people of all backgrounds can enjoy Buddhism. I enjoy the writing style, and the layout is lovely. But the magazine is only 45 pages long and if you take out the table of contents and other similar pages, there isn't that much left which was able to be read as is.
If they really couldn't afford to put the entire Bodhisattva article in one issue for some reason, I would at least have done a substantial effort at summarizing the entire first article so that newcomers didn't feel quite as lost.
It makes me hesitant to pick up any future issues. Which is a shame, because the other articles were enjoyable.
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Buddhism Today aims to be a living document of authentic Buddhist transmission for the lay person and yogi practitioner in the West. It is meant for people leading normal, active lives, who wish to understand and experience mind's vast potential.
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