Baddha by Elson Quick pdf epub fb2

A middle-aged man from the West finds himself dragged down an unconventional path toward Buddhist enlightenment

The hero of Baddha has a moment of enlightenment while visiting a Burmese monastery with his traveling companion, Frog. Confused by the experience, he wants to recapture and explore the deep feelings he had, so he enrolls on a course held in a Buddhist retreat to learn how to breathe. Finding the retreat to be populated by pseudohippies from the West and taught by monks who seem interested only in money, he abandons any hopes of learning and begins a road trip. His journey takes him around the countries of the region—Laos, Cambodia, Burma, Thailand—where he has wild drug- and alcohol-fueled adventures and muses on his deep relationship with a beautiful and enigmatic Lady-Boy prostitute. During moments of crisis including a near-death experience, a mysterious old man keeps fortuitously appearing. He does not hold back with his opinions and tries to guide the hero through the complexities of Buddhist beliefs and the difference between those and the thoughts expressed in the hero's journal. Eventually finding a kind of peace running a ramshackle store with the old man, his life is once more thrown into turmoil when his old companion dies. Truthful, mysterious, revealing, and brutally honest, Baddha explores the West's concept of Eastern culture and compares it to the reality.