Buddhism’s lessons on transience have had incredible staying power.
Prayer flags by the Bodhi tree in Lumbini, Nepal. Credit... Keerthana Kunnath
Some 15 years ago, while an editor at a travel magazine, I proposed to my boss and editor in chief, Klara Glowczewska, that I undertake what I pitched as a Grand Tour of Asia. My argument was that while the traditional 17th-to-19th-century Grand Tour — typically a monthslong trip taken by young, often aristocratic, usually British men, meant to enhance their artistic education — once focused on Italy, the center of the religious-cultural world, surely a 21st-century iteration of such a trip would compel one to go east, to Asia.
Klara approved the pitch, an act of generosity that spoke to her own intellectual curiosity, and off I went. Over two months, I traveled through Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, China and Japan. Every night, I filed a 2,000-word report of the day’s activities and learnings to my editor, Deborah Dunn.
To say the trip was transformational is an understatement, and the subject of another letter. But while on it, I became obsessed with a different but related journey: the path that the Buddha’s teachings took through Asia, beginning in the sixth century B.C., which radically changed the continent, providing it with a highly elastic doctrine that could easily adapt to different cultures’ native beliefs and systems of faith. To travel through Asia as I did, from Sri Lanka, once one of the most powerful Buddhist kingdoms in the world, through Sarnath in northern India, where the Hindu prince then known as Siddhartha Gautama gave his first sermon, and then east was to get to chart how a belief does — and must — change in order to first survive and then flourish.
For a period, I thought I might write this story myself. But I quickly realized I was incapable. And so I’m grateful that, in my final issue as editor in chief of this magazine, I get to fulfill two long-held wishes: to publish this story, and to have it be written by one of the mightiest thinkers on religion, culture and syncretism today. In his three-part story , the T writer at large Aatish Taseer visits three key countries — Nepal , where the Buddha was born; Thailand , where Buddhism is invested with the power of the state; and Taiwan , where Buddhism exists as a shadow of how it once did in mainland China before Maoism.
In the three-part cover story for T’s Travel issue, Aatish Taseer follows Buddhism’s journey through Nepal , Thailand and Taiwan .
Plus: we share a map and timeline of the religion’s transmission across the East, a glossary of Buddhist terms , a snapshot of the great diversity of Buddhist monuments and an essential reading list . Click here to read Hanya Yanagihara’s editor’s letter.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Loading comments…