Just Finished Reading: Hard Travel to Sacred Places by Rudolph Wurlitzer (FP: 1994) [161pp] 

The trip was, partially at least, planned. His wife had been contracted to photograph various sacred sites across Asia, and the author had some meetings planned with film makers to rough out some movie scripts. But a big part of the reason for the trip was to help ‘come to terms’ with the recent death of his wife’s son who, at age 21, had died in a car crash. 

The couple travelled to Thailand, Burma and Cambodia by plane, train and a variety of automobiles (and boats). During the several weeks of the journey they suffered through intense heat, power cuts, the threat of gunfire, illness, lack of running water or phone service, and of course waves of crushing grief. Needless to say, this was not a vacation full of rainbows and unicorns. But it did have its compensations – the scenery was often amazing, and the sacred sites themselves seemed otherworldly (which, in a way, they were). Plus, the people they met, both arranged and otherwise, added an extra dimension as local experts and Buddhist monks discussed the history of temple complexes and the varying philosophies behind their builders.  

I picked up this slim volume decades ago in (I think) a local Book Barn simply because it caught my eye in passing. I was probably routing around in the Religion/Eastern Philosophy section I was interested in at that time and thought it would be worth a read. It was. Rather sombre at times, as you might imagine, it is often beautifully written (he was the scriptwriter for Little Buddha directed by Bernardo Bertolucci in 1993) and filled with imagery which will stay with you for quite a while. The author has been doing his level best to practice (and investigate) various shades of Buddhism over the decades so has some interesting insights into life (and, naturally given the circumstances, death) which are thought provoking. A sometimes strange read, but an interesting one. Reasonable.