Heart of Buddha, Heart of China

"He’s a man who, after a fairly ordinary family life, went through a process of religious discovery which led him to become an itinerant monk, establishing Buddhist temples across China. He also lived through many of the most important events of the 20th century. Part of the conceit of the book is to cast familiar events – such as the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s – in a new light, by keeping the focus on an individual’s life, and then telling the story of a nation’s transformations around that. That’s a good point. In the book there’s a lot of juxtaposition between the quiet contemplation of life in a temple and Tanxu’s engagement with what’s going on around him. But what is striking – and we don’t think of these as going hand in hand – is that Tanxu has to be seen as a nationalist as well as a spiritual seeker. Carter argues that what he was doing was one way to strengthen China – to strengthen its soul as part of the effort to strengthen it as a polity."