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Several years ago, Wendell Berry recommended we read Marco Pallis'
Peaks and Lamas. He had obtained a copy of this out of print and
elusive title, and upon reading it wrote saying, "I have a very
high opinion of it." He praised the writing on travel and
mountaineering, but he was specially drawn to the writing about
Buddhism, the chapters on Tibetan Art, and went on "this is the
best book, in my limited reading, in connecting a form of Buddhism
with its sustaining culture. It would be useful to anybody
interested in what a traditional culture is or might be, and how
such a culture might preserve itself." With Wendell Berry, Gary
Snyder and Robert Aitken offering encouragement, we could hardly
ignore the imperative of putting this remarkable text, out of print
for at least thirty years, back into print for a whole new
generation of readers.
Ren Gunon's Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines can serve
as an introduction to all his later works-especially those which,
like Man and His Becoming according to the Vedanta, The Symbolism
of the Cross, The Multiple States of the Being, and Studies in
Hinduism, expound the more profound aspects of metaphysical
doctrines in greater detail. In Part I Guenon clears away certain
ingrained prejudices inherited from the 'Renaissance', with its
adulation of the Greco-Roman culture and its compensating
depreciation-both deliberate and instinctive-of other
civilizations. In Part II he establishes the fundamental
distinctions between various modes of thought and brings out the
real nature of metaphysical or universal knowledge-an understanding
of which is the first condition for the personal realization of
that 'Knowledge' which partakes of the Absolute. Words like
'religion', 'philosophy', 'symbolism', 'mysticism', and
'superstition', are here given a precise meaning. Part III presents
a more detailed examination of the Hindu doctrine and its
applications at different levels, leading up to the Vedanta, which
constitutes its metaphysical essence. Lastly, Part IV resumes the
task of clearing away current misconceptions, but is this time
concerned not with the West itself, but with distortions of the
Hindu doctrines that have arisen as a result of attempts to read
into them, or to graft onto them, modern Western conceptions. The
concluding chapter lays down the essential conditions for any
genuine understanding between East and West, which can only come
through the work of those who have attained, at least in some
degree, to the realization of 'wisdom uncreate'-that intellective,
suprarational knowledge called in the East jana, and in the West
gnosis.
It is no longer news that the Western world is in a crisis, a
crisis that has spread far beyond its point of origin and become
global in nature. In 1927, Ren Gunon responded to this crisis with
the closest thing he ever wrote to a manifesto and
'call-to-action'. The Crisis of the Modern World was his most
direct and complete application of traditional metaphysical
principles-particularly that of the 'age of darkness' preceding the
end of the present world-to social criticism, surpassed only by The
Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, his magnum opus. In
the present work Gunon ruthlessly exposes the 'Western deviation':
its loss of tradition, its exaltation of action over knowledge, its
rampant individualism and general social chaos. His response to
these conditions was not 'activist', however, but purely
intellectual, envisioning the coming together of Western
intellectual leaders capable under favorable circumstances of
returning the West to its traditional roots, most likely via the
Catholic Church, or, under less favorable ones, of at least
preserving the 'seeds' of Tradition for the time to come.
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