[Buddha-l] Sudhir Kakar

[Richard Hayes]

On Wednesday 04 July 2007 14:55, Joanna wrote:

> I so far have avoided reading Masson

One book well worth reading is his (auto)biographical monograph called 
<cite>My Father's Guru</cite>. It is an insightful and deeply saddening 
account of the influence that the Theosophical Society dropout Paul Brunton 
had on a number of extremely wealthy families, including Jeff Masson's. 
Masson can't seem to write any book in which someone's reputation is not 
completely trashed, and this is yet another in that Massonic genre. Most of 
his books are a bit like reading a National Inquirer exposé with copious 
footnotes and a horrendously bloated bibliography. This book on Brunton is 
true to Massonic form, and no doubt should be read with a liberal helping of 
salt. Still, it reinforces my prejudices against gurus in general and 
especially those who cater for the spiritual needs of the very wealthy, so I 
give it a half-hearted recommendation.

Although I normally disdain Wikipedia articles, I quote here a snippet from 
the article on Paul Brunton (1898-1981), who was born Raphael Hurst and later 
changed his named to Brunton Paul and then Paul Brunton.

\begin{snippet}
The American author Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, who was the son of a wealthy 
Jewish American friend of Brunton and of his wife, wrote a book My Father's 
Guru in which he details how he became disillusioned with Brunton. He also 
describes that -while being a boy- Paul Brunton has been a friend to him. 
Masson grew up in the 1940s and 1950s with this guru in his house-the 
celebrated mystic Paul Brunton ("P.B." to those who knew him), who numbered 
Masson's parents among his handful of close disciples and, according to what 
Mr. Masson's supposedly remembers, singled out young Jeff as a potential heir 
to his spiritual kingdom. In 1956, P.B. was thought that a third world war 
was imminent and the the Massons decided to move to Montevideo, a "safe" 
location. From Uruguay, Masson went off at P.B.'s bidding to study Sanskrit 
at Harvard.
\end{snippet}

The story is that P.B. convinced Jeff's parents that little Jeff was an avatar 
and would save the world from spiritual destruction if he remained celibate. 
Alas, a buxom Swedish live-in maid intervened and seduced the 13-year-old 
God-on-earth. The avatar went on to seduce several thousand women (by his own 
modest reckoning), and the world has indeed gone into spiritual decline. And 
it's all the fault of a Swedish maid! I haven't given away too much of the 
gripping plot of My Father's Guru. There are plenty more lurid stories where 
that came from. The avatar, when not busy seducing women, has made a career 
of toppling spiritual charlatans (such as the Buddha, Ramakrishna, Paul 
Brunton and Freud) from their pedestals and writing hagiographic accounts of 
dolphins and elephants (who should have been on those pedestals all along).

Standard disclaimer: I am not and never have been Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson's 
literary agent, but I did ride with him in the elevator several times when we 
were both at University of Toronto, and I did pet his standard poodle, Sasha, 
a few times. (Those who cannot embrace God can at least pet God's dog.)

-- 
Richard