The Flame and the Light: Meanings in Vedanta and Buddhism - hardcover

Author of many distinguished works of fiction and critical biography, Hugh L'Anson Fausset's approach to the very recondite problems of Vedanta and Buddhism is blessedly free from that total obscurity which engulfs many of the more technical works on these subjects. Comparing Vedanta and Buddhism to Western theologies, it is stressed that at the essence of the two former approaches lies the insistence of "oneness", a denial of Western dualities which juxtapose good and evil, dark and light, creativity and destruction. Only, Mr. Fausset insists, by acknowledging the unbreakable affinity between these apparent opposites, can man be truly reconciled to the cosmos and to himself. Only by undergoing the disciplines of detached contemplation can man understand that the "I" is in reality "thou" and thus achieve love, purified of grasping and self interest. Son of a clerical family, Fausset anticipates the obstacles that the reader, reared in Western theological traditions, will encounter, and, in so far as he is able, answers the questions that such a reader inevitably will ask. Although by no means a simple text - Fausset manages to explore many of the most fundamental concepts of Vedanta and Buddhism - Basically, The Flame and the Light is less forbidding than most of the literature on the subjects, a literature which without instruction would certainly baffle the Western reader. Within the circle of initiated and informed, questions might conceivably arise regarding some of Fausset's interpretations, but in general this exposition offers a fascinating and substantial introduction which would greatly help the serious neophyte. (Kirkus Reviews)