Breakfast with Buddha by Roland Merullo
Travel Journal, Spiritual Awakening, Some Buddhism
Jun 17, 2009
Roland Merullo has taken the knowledge of Buddhism he gleaned from years of reading, melded it with his amazing ability to create believable characters and published a great read.
Unlike other reviews of this fine story there isn't any plot elements given away here. This is a tale that should be enjoyed without any spoilers. It is a book that highlights people's interconnections with the world around them. It does so with humor and deep compassion for that same world.
In the Author's Words
In his Author's Notes, Merullo writes that the trip was real and the places were real, as best as memory and notes could provide. It is the passenger and all he brings to the story that is fiction. The character of Volya Rinpoche (or Volvo as the principal character Otto first names him) is a conglomeration of “thirty years of reading across the religious, philosophical, and psychological spectrum and meditation retreats at Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, and nondenominational retreat centers, and monasteries.” writes Mr. Merullo.
Not All Buddhism
This is not a book to learn about Buddhism from. Like many Westerners do it builds its view of Buddhism from a myriad of sources. Mr. Merullo lists some of the titles in his Author's Notes.
Volya is Rinpoche in title, but not Tibetan, Mahayana, Soto Zen, Pragmatic Buddhist or any other Buddhist sect. Instead he is an amalgam of Buddhism, Hinduism, Catholicism, Daoism with a sprinkle of Russian Orthodox.
Still this is a book that deserves to be savored on the beach, in the garden, or sitting under a tree in the woods. Otto, an upper-middle class husband and father is already a “Good Man” when his road trip begins. His time spent learning from Volya Rinpoche serves to turn a “Good Man” into a man closer to Awakening.
Breakfast with Buddha is Dharma Bums for the more affluent. Jack Kerouac may not have understood Otto, but he would have accepted the man's journey.
Why Read It?
The value in Breakfast with Buddha above its being a good read is its presentation of the interconnections that develop between people. What may seem like an imposition in the beginning can lead to one finding a new path up the same mountain. Encounters with people may be by chance but the good that can result is a product of the Buddhist ideal of dependent origination.
It is a story that teaches we should accept others, and the world for what they are, not just tolerate them.
Breakfast with Buddha, by Roland Merullo, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2007, 323 pages, ISBN 3233357103.
