The Richest Vein: Eastern Tradition and Western Thought

“This book offers an unusually penetrating critique of our modern civilization in terms of both symptoms and causes. By way of illustrating his subject, the author gives us a number of vividly delineated pen-portraits of certain contemporary writers, each of whom had attempted a similar analysis. He has a wide-ranging historical sense, coupled with strong human sympathies unsullied by tendentious undertones, whether of a sentimental or a cynical kind. Behind all this he allows one to recognize a metaphysical flair of uncommon sureness." — Marco Pallis, Studies in Comparative Religion "A remarkably lucid short guide to the Wisdom of the East." — New English Weekly "A book of unusual interest for Western readers. Eaton attempts with considerable success to present a clear summary of what has come to be called the Wisdom of the East, which he finds enshrined in the Upanishads, the Vedanta, Taoism, and Buddhism. His discussion of these various doctrines is a useful corrective of the vague generalizations which usually do duty for the average reader's ideas of Eastern tradition and philosophy." — New English Review "I remember—many years ago now—picking up a copy of Eaton's first book in a Tokyo bookshop. It was called "The Richest Vein," and I was not a little moved and impressed by it. Gai Eaton has trodden a long path since that first essay into what is, for him, the only subject of his writing, and he came to conjoin, to intuition and longing, an inner knowledge and experience that has enabled him to produce subsequently such widely-acclaimed books as King of the Castle, and Islam and the Destiny of Man." — Peter Hobson, Studies in Comparative Religion