Buddhist-Christian Studies

The Tibetan term tendrel describes, among other things, auspicious connections, which benefit those involved. Harold Talbott's autobiography, thus entitled, chronicles the many people who rendered the author's existence a life worth living, indeed a precious human life—in the words of Buddhist teachings, to which the author devoted the largest part of his life. Sadly, Harold Talbott passed away shortly after the publication of this volume. His book may therefore serve as a commemoration of the author's remarkable life, of his contribution to American Buddhism as well as a celebration of the early era of Buddhism's rapid globalization in the twentieth century.

In his modesty, the author does not devote many lines to report on his own achievements, important for the activity and support of his Buddhist mentors and friends. Yet Harold Talbott was an influential scholar and practitioner of Buddhism, supporter and benefactor of Tibetan lamas, prolific book editor, and cofounder of the practice center in Marion, Massachusetts, the site of early encounters between Americans and Tibetan masters.

Following the epiphany paradigm found in narratives of conversion, the memoir is divided into two parts, the "before" and the "after," devoted to, respectively: the time in the author's life before he was able to meet with and appreciate the teachings of the Buddha; and the part of his life since that happened.

The book's first part describes the sophisticated society amid which Harold Talbott was raised and educated. In light of the author's openness about his homosexuality and effeminate boyhood persona, the title "Swanning About" of part 1 appears quite reflective of Talbott's brilliant and self-deprecating humor—a trait that he displays throughout his work. Wit is merely one of the many merits that makes this account so delightful to read. The author impresses us with an erudite knowledge of various faith traditions. The scintillating and thoughtful descriptions of encounters with an imposing amount of cultural and religious luminaries of his day are delivered in the matter-of-fact, yet refined, narrative style we can expect of a man born into the elite and educated in the finest of American schools, but who chose to live a nearmonastic life as a full-time, lay practitioner of Buddhism. [End Page 479]

Beyond the many pleasures that this book undoubtedly offers, Talbott's memoirs also provide significant insights into the emergence of networks of cooperation necessary for the functioning of contemporary Buddhism as a world religion. The operation of these plexuses, initiated by tendrel (auspicious connections), is described in the book's part 2 "In Search of the Nature of Mind." This title is, first of all, an homage to the spiritual path and goal of the Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen tradition, of which Harold Talbott became a devoted practitioner. The author also recognizes the role that intersectarian Buddhist connections played in his spiritual quest—his most notable relationship being with the Dalai Lama himself, who is the most celebrated representative of another Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the Gelukpa. Talbott also pays great respect to the two champions of interfaith dialogues that occurred during the 1960s and the 1970s: the Benedictine Prior and theologian Dom Aelred Graham (1907–1984) and the Trappist friar and poet Thomas Merton (1915–1968). In Harold's youth, the mentorship of these two Catholic monks, both fascinated by Buddhism, had a lasting impact on the formation of the author's religiosity and his later conversion to Buddhism.

At the end of Talbott's book are eight appendices: transcripts of interviews with and about Dom Aelred and Merton, excerpts from teachings by great Dzogchen masters, and a list of books edited by Talbott for one of his Tibetan teachers, Tulku Thondup Rinpoche. The final appendix, and thus the closing section of the book, is an expression of the author's enduring esteem for and gratitude to the Christian faith of his childhood and youth, which takes the form of a reproduction of the emotively beautiful and poetic, classic Marian anthem Salve Regina, cited both in Latin and in English.

The book's first three chapters report on the author's illustrious ancestry, his parentage, and the milieu he was born into. Harold Talbott hailed from families who had built the American dream. Among his many eminent maternal and paternal antecedents, the Talbotts and the Thayers, were signers of the Declaration of Independence, self-made entrepreneurs, congressmen, railroad engineers, aircraft manufacturers, large-scale cultural benefactors, and Titanic survivors. Harold and his twin brother were born in 1939. Their father, Harold E. Talbott was an industrialist, who in the early 1950s worked as Secretary of the Air Force under President Eisenhower. Their mother, Margaret "Peggy" Thayer Talbott was celebrated for her beauty, hospitality, and good taste among the fine societies of New York, London, and Paris. The Talbott children, including the twin boys and their two sisters, grew up surrounded by members of the New York high society, film stars, and overseas aristocracy. With suave humor, but also egalitarian equipoise, the author remembers the polo matches, the shooting parties with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and casual encounters with such celebrities as Greta Garbo (who was the Talbott's New York neighbor), as vividly as he recalls the personalities and lives of the family's servants and employers. At this point of my review, I am especially tempted to retell a highly amusing anecdote involving Gary Cooper, an Italian countess, and an Irish maid (17), but will instead discuss an aspect of this old world and of Talbott's early life that may be anticipated to draw criticism from those who view contemporary Buddhist developments through the lens of feminist and poststructuralist critique. [End Page 480]

Harold Talbott, one of the earliest American-born patrons and avid proponents of Tibetan Buddhism, was indeed born into a wealthy and highly privileged family. I will, however, emphasize that the author retells his memories as the life of a Buddhist Everyman, a man whose fortune and happiness are measured by the number of meditation masters he could learn from and the teachings he received from them. Throughout his book, Harold makes no attempt to present himself as someone special. Quite the opposite, he keenly chronicles his own shortcomings, struggles, and vulnerabilities—for instance, his coming out in the 1950s or his episodes of aggravated mental illness. At the same time, he reports on the extraordinary qualities and stories of his friends and acquaintances, in part 1, and, in part 2, on the compassionate and miraculous deeds of his lamas. As such, this book can be read as a Buddhist parable on how good karma should be invested to multiply merit and generate wisdom for the benefit of all beings. In that respect, Harold's example reminds of the kulaputra figures ("sons of a good family") from the Mahāyāna literature. These recipients of the liberating teachings spoken by the Buddha in the sūtras stemmed from elite backgrounds; the classical texts represent the kulaputra as bodhisattvas in training.

In part 1, the author-protagonist tells the tale of his life as set on the foundation of humanist values espoused by his family. Many of Harold Talbott's ancestors and family believed that privilege entails responsibility. Guided by traditional, upper-middleclass principles of civic duty, charity and community engagement, classical education, religious piety, and decorum, the Talbotts and the Thayers felt obliged to support the less fortunate and those who were normally excluded from society. The author's grandparents befriended their employees and servants, and his parents openly opposed anti-Semitism (16–17). Thus, toward the end of part 1 and in part 2, the course of the narrative flows seamlessly from this idealistic environment toward young Harold's philosophical and religious search. From an early childhood, the author experienced moments of powerful and uncanny fascination with Tibetan Buddhism he caught glimpses of in glossy traveler's magazines. Harold's spiritual journey started with his conversion to the Roman Catholic Church soon after his father's passing. As Harold was studying Catholic doctrine and dogma, he also explored his, at first academic, interest in Buddhism and Hinduism. When he later came under the mentorship of Dom Aelred and the two men traveled together to Jerusalem, the Prior wondered why, in the midst of the Christian Holy Land and during Easter, his young protégé would study Bhikku Sangharakshita's A Survey of Buddhism and practice meditation in his hotel room. But Dom Aelred's "breadth of mind was a great blessing" (232) to young Harold, who in 1967 had become a personal disciple to none other but the Dalai Lama himself.

A notable feature of this memoir is that the precise moment of the author's conversion to Buddhism in the narrative cannot be located. It is not explicitly described, nor is it identifiable in another way. Perhaps this is why it comes as no surprise when in the last chapter, the author identifies himself as a Buddhist with Christian roots and reveals his lasting admiration of Catholicism. After all, the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa, the head of the Tibetan Karma Kagyu tradition, teased Harold by affectionately calling him "a Jesus lama" (231). In vernacular Tibetan, this term is [End Page 481] conventionally used to describe members of the Catholic clergy. However, Karmapa's pun is also a thoughtful reminder of Harold's extended pilgrimages, first to the Cistercian abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, then to the hills of Dharamsala where the Dalai Lama resides, and finally, to the Himalayan town of Darjeeling, where Harold's Dzogchen gurus lived. The author's descriptions of his voyage to the foothills of the Himalayas, found in chapter 15, are worth mentioning here not only as an appreciation of his transformative journey. Harold's accounts of "his" monasteries (198) as well as his studies of the Tibetan other allow us to visualize his inner pilgrimage, whose map shows an intimate image of Tibetan Buddhism in the process of becoming a world religion.

Harold Talbott's life and spirituality are also the locus of a Buddhist-Christian dialogue and constructive interfaith continuities. Harold first became "interested in Buddhism as a Catholic" (67)—this is how he connected with both Dom Aelred, who espoused a vivid interest in ecumenic dialogue, and Merton, who searched for a universalistic spirituality. As Harold travelled to Asia with Aelred and then with Merton, he bore witness to the interfaith exchanges. Much in the same spirit of brotherhood of seeker minds, it was Merton who later inspired Talbott to seek a teacher for Dzogchen, one of the most advanced teachings in Tibetan Buddhism. Harold saw himself as enormously fortunate to have received individual instructions from the highest Dzogchen masters of his day, such as Dudjom Rinpoche (1904–1987), Kyabje Chatral Rinpoche (1913–2015), and Dodrupchen Rinpoche (b. 1927). Dodrupchen Rinpoche, together with the yogi Lama Gyurda-la (d. 1975), came to be Harold's principal teachers. In the encounters with these lamas, a Tibetan scholar and Buddhist master in his own right, Tulku Thondup Rinpoche (b. 1939) became Harold's invaluable companion as translator, teacher, and friend. Together with Harold Talbott as an editor, Tulku Thondup penned no less than eleven volumes, some of which, like Masters of Meditation and Miracles (1999), have become classics in transnational meditation centers around the world.

In his deep appreciation and respect for his Tibetan teachers and their lineages of spiritual transmission, Harold never tried to reinvent Buddhist practices or to reinterpret them to fit the political trends of the day. Neither did he attempt to style himself as a guru. It is a plain, yet sometimes neglected truth: he who wishes to learn must first allow himself to be an apprentice. He must know how to draw pride from the wisdom of his gurus. That was another one of Harold's contributions to American Buddhism. It is a nontrivial matter, and the life story of Harold Talbott offers a reassuring confirmation that the traditional Indo-Tibetan system of authority based on wisdom and on the guru–disciple relationship can be successfully transposed into the context of the transnational West, allowing lives to flourish. [End Page 482]