The Rainbow Road
From Tooting Broadway to Kalimpong - Memoirs of an English Buddhist
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The Rainbow Road
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Narrated by:
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Ratnadhya
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Written by:
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Urgyen Sangharakshita
About this listen
Having realized, as a 16 year old in pre-WWII London, that he was a Buddhist, the early life of Dennis Lingwood and his path to becoming a bhikkhu named Sangharakshita is a most extraordinary personal story. He was serving as a signals officer in India when, at the conclusion of the war, he threw away his official identity cards, took off his uniform, donned yellow robes and set off, barefooted, along the dusty paths of India as a spiritual seeker, begging for his food, as the Buddha did 2,500 years ago.
The determination and vision behind those early steps, combined with single-mindedness and intellectual rigour, transformed the path of Western Buddhism, for after 20 years in India Sangharakshita returned to England to found a Western Buddhist movement, now called the Triratna Buddhist Order.
The Rainbow Road tells of that early time in India, meeting spiritual teachers from Hindu and other religious traditions, encountering the disturbing caste system and overcoming obstacles, disappointments and numerous challenges. A totally absorbing autobiography.
©1997 Sangharakshita (P)2016 Ukemi Productions LtdWhat listeners say about The Rainbow Road
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Matt
- 2019-06-26
Amazing book, highly recommended for any seeker.
Wonderful listen from start to finish. Learned a lot about Indian spiritual traditions and was entertaining the whole way.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Hermes
- 2019-07-08
Tediously detailed and off-topic
OK, so I wanted to read about the life of a Buddhist monk, particularly of a western adopter of this philosphy-religion. Yes, the narrator is acceptable, maybe even very good. And the author has an amazing memory about the intricacies of being an upper-middle class Brit, then a sahib in India. Perhaps he'll eventually become a initiated bhikku. But I am too impatient with so much context. I know all about his childhood, his sweetheart, the fact that as a seeker he met the Sankaracrya of Puri and Ananda Mayi Ma, that he visited the Theosophical Society in Adyar (so what? So did I).
I bought this book to learn about becoming and being a Buddhist monk, yet the build-up is just soooo much context and preliminaries. I doubt a biography has to be organized as a chronacological saga. Half way through the 50 chapters he is just now travelling to Sri Lanka *as a Hindu sadhu* to study Buddhism. His story of twists and turns in Calcutta etc aren't even marginally interesting to me.
This book is such a disappointment I am returning it, having listened to half of it with about 20% skipping ahead with the question, "Is he in a Buddhist country yet? Is he a real Buddhist yet?"
Sangarakshita is a good writer, he paints a visual picture with words. But I clearly haven't meditated enough to enjoy his life story.
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