Jeffrey Paine
Encyclopedia
Jeffery Paine is an award-winning writer recognized especially for his work in bringing Eastern culture and spirituality to popular audiences in the West. "Jeffery Paine is an unusual voice in American letters," observed Indian novelist and Underscretary General of the United Nations Shashi Tharoor
, "one steeped in the wisdom of the East and yet infused with a knowing and witty sensibility that is profoundly Western." Paine's books, such as Father India and Re-enchantment, have been named by publications ranging from Publishers’ Weekly to Spirituality & Health as "Best Book of the Year." His writing falls in the category of creative or literary nonfiction, which unites original scholarship with the dramatic narrative and character development associated with a novel.
. He studied history at Rice University
and received his PhD in crosscultural intellectual history
from Princeton University
. When he began writing he supported himself by managing hotels in America and Europe, including the oldest hotel in Amsterdam
, and afterwards by working in advertising
and public relations
. He was later the editor-in-chief of Universal Reference Publishers and literary editor of the magazine the Wilson Quarterly
.
He has received fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation
, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and from the Templeton Foundation to study Tibetan medicine at Cambridge University. During the 1990s he was regularly a visiting fellow at the East–West Center
in Honolulu and subsequently had residencies at Yaddo
, the MacDowell Colony
, and the Rockefeller Foundation
Bellagio Center. Paine has been a guest professor at Princeton University, San Francisco State University
, the New School for Social Research
, the Volksuniversiteit Amsterdam, and the University of Minnesota
.
through a different lens, in a new light. Through a series of dramatic biographies, extending from Lord Curzon
and Gandhi through E. M. Forster
and V. S. Naipaul
, Paine showed that our everyday assumptions, what unquestioningly we take for granted about politics, religion, and psychology, often have entirely unexpected outcomes when they get immersed in a radically different culture. In the San Francisco Chronicle
, the novelist Bharatee Mukerjee called the work "groundbreaking" in how it gave a whole new understanding of modern India vis-à-vis the West.
In Re-enchantment: Tibetan Buddhism
Comes to the West (2004) Paine traced the historical story of how a religion, once dismissed as black magic and seemingly doomed after the Chinese conquest of Tibet
, against all odds resurrected itself as a world religion and renovated itself along the cutting edge of spirituality. Harvey Cox
of Harvard University and author of The Secular City, said, "This is just the book on Buddhism
I had hoped someone would write but was afraid they never would." Scholars such as Robert Thurman
and Huston Smith
appraised it as the best book written on the subject.
Paine followed Re-enchantment with Adventures with the Buddha (2005), which elucidated Buddhism not through teachings or theology but by how it got lived out on a day-to-day basis by Western practitioners from the early Alexandra David-Néel
and Lama Govinda to the contemporary Sharon Salzberg
and Michael Roach
. Publishers’ Weekly called it a work of "genius, one that delights, informs, and fires the imagination."
Paine's other works include the anthology he edited with Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Brodsky
, The Poetry of Our World (2000), and in 2009 he was the writer of Huston Smith's memoirs Tales of Wonder.
and vice president of the National Book Critics Circle
. He appears regularly on C-Span, NPR, and other radio and TV programs as well as speaking at the Smithsonian Institution
, the Library of Congress
, ICA (London), and universities around the country.
Besides print medium, Paine appears with Robert Thurman on the CD Thoughts on Buddhism. In 2009 he co-wrote the documentary about the 17th Karmapa, Bodhisattva, with Mark Elliott, and also appeared in the film Crazy Wisdom. He wrote the one-man show, Oh My God! The History of Religion in One Hour, which premiered in 2006 at the Smithsonian and which he subsequently performed at various venues on the East Coast.
Paine currently lives in Washington, D.C.
Shashi Tharoor
Shashi Tharoor is an Indian politician and a Member of Parliament from the Thiruvananthapuram constituency in Kerala...
, "one steeped in the wisdom of the East and yet infused with a knowing and witty sensibility that is profoundly Western." Paine's books, such as Father India and Re-enchantment, have been named by publications ranging from Publishers’ Weekly to Spirituality & Health as "Best Book of the Year." His writing falls in the category of creative or literary nonfiction, which unites original scholarship with the dramatic narrative and character development associated with a novel.
Biographical
Paine was born midcentury in Houston and grew up in Goose Creek and Baytown, TexasBaytown, Texas
Baytown is a city within Harris County and partially in Chambers County in the Gulf Coast region of the U.S. state of Texas. Located within the Houston–Sugar Land–Baytown metropolitan area, it lies along both State Highway 146 and Interstate 10. As of 2010, Baytown had an population of 71,802...
. He studied history at Rice University
Rice University
William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University or Rice, is a private research university located on a heavily wooded campus in Houston, Texas, United States...
and received his PhD in crosscultural intellectual history
Intellectual history
Note: this article concerns the discipline of intellectual history, and not its object, the whole span of human thought since the invention of writing. For clarifications about the latter topic, please consult the writings of the intellectual historians listed here and entries on individual...
from Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
. When he began writing he supported himself by managing hotels in America and Europe, including the oldest hotel in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
, and afterwards by working in advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
and public relations
Public relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
. He was later the editor-in-chief of Universal Reference Publishers and literary editor of the magazine the Wilson Quarterly
Wilson Quarterly
The Wilson Quarterly is a magazine published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. The magazine was founded in 1976 by Peter Braestrup and James H. Billington. The Quarterly is noted for its nonpartisan, nonideological approach to current issues, with articles...
.
He has received fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation
Woodrow Wilson Foundation
The Woodrow Wilson Foundation was an educational non-profit created in 1922, organized under the laws of New York, for the "perpetuation of Wilson's ideals" through publications and support of research. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the national chairman, and there were local chairmen in each of the 48...
, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and from the Templeton Foundation to study Tibetan medicine at Cambridge University. During the 1990s he was regularly a visiting fellow at the East–West Center
East–West Center
The East–West Center , headquartered in Honolulu, Hawaii, is an education and research organization established by the U.S. Congress in 1960 to strengthen relations and understanding among the peoples and nations of Asia, the Pacific and the United States....
in Honolulu and subsequently had residencies at Yaddo
Yaddo
Yaddo is an artists' community located on a 400 acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment."...
, the MacDowell Colony
MacDowell Colony
The MacDowell Colony is an art colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, U.S.A., founded in 1907 by Marian MacDowell, pianist and wife of composer Edward MacDowell. She established the institution and its endowment chiefly with donated funds...
, and the Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
Bellagio Center. Paine has been a guest professor at Princeton University, San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...
, the New School for Social Research
The New School
The New School is a university in New York City, located mostly in Greenwich Village. From its founding in 1919 by progressive New York academics, and for most of its history, the university was known as the New School for Social Research. Between 1997 and 2005 it was known as New School University...
, the Volksuniversiteit Amsterdam, and the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
.
Major works
In Father India (1998) Paine revealed the 20th Century Euro-American encounter with IndiaIndia
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
through a different lens, in a new light. Through a series of dramatic biographies, extending from Lord Curzon
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston
George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, KG, GCSI, GCIE, PC , known as The Lord Curzon of Kedleston between 1898 and 1911 and as The Earl Curzon of Kedleston between 1911 and 1921, was a British Conservative statesman who was Viceroy of India and Foreign Secretary...
and Gandhi through E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...
and V. S. Naipaul
V. S. Naipaul
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad "V. S." Naipaul, TC is a Nobel prize-winning Indo-Trinidadian-British writer who is known for his novels focusing on the legacy of the British Empire's colonialism...
, Paine showed that our everyday assumptions, what unquestioningly we take for granted about politics, religion, and psychology, often have entirely unexpected outcomes when they get immersed in a radically different culture. In the San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
, the novelist Bharatee Mukerjee called the work "groundbreaking" in how it gave a whole new understanding of modern India vis-à-vis the West.
In Re-enchantment: Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism is the body of Buddhist religious doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet and certain regions of the Himalayas, including northern Nepal, Bhutan, and India . It is the state religion of Bhutan...
Comes to the West (2004) Paine traced the historical story of how a religion, once dismissed as black magic and seemingly doomed after the Chinese conquest of Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
, against all odds resurrected itself as a world religion and renovated itself along the cutting edge of spirituality. Harvey Cox
Harvey Cox
Harvey Gallagher Cox, Jr. is one of the preeminent theologians in the United States and served as Hollis Research Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School, until his retirement in October 2009...
of Harvard University and author of The Secular City, said, "This is just the book on Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
I had hoped someone would write but was afraid they never would." Scholars such as Robert Thurman
Robert Thurman
Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman is an influential and prolific American Buddhist writer and academic who has authored, edited or translated several books on Tibetan Buddhism. He is the Je Tsongkhapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, holding the first endowed chair...
and Huston Smith
Huston Smith
Huston Cummings Smith is a religious studies scholar in the United States. His book The World's Religions remains a popular introduction to comparative religion.-Education:...
appraised it as the best book written on the subject.
Paine followed Re-enchantment with Adventures with the Buddha (2005), which elucidated Buddhism not through teachings or theology but by how it got lived out on a day-to-day basis by Western practitioners from the early Alexandra David-Néel
Alexandra David-Néel
Alexandra David-Néel born Louise Eugénie Alexandrine Marie David was a Belgian-French explorer, spiritualist, Buddhist and writer, most known for her visit to Lhasa, Tibet, in 1924, when it was forbidden to foreigners...
and Lama Govinda to the contemporary Sharon Salzberg
Sharon Salzberg
Sharon Salzberg is a New York Times Best selling author and influential teacher of Buddhist meditation practices in West. She co-founded the Insight Meditation Society at Barre, Massachusetts with Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein, in 1974...
and Michael Roach
Michael Roach
Michael Roach is an American teacher of Tibetan Buddhism of the Gelugpa school, and was the first Westerner to qualify for the Geshe degree at Sera Monastery in India. He received the degree after twenty-two years of training in both India and abroad...
. Publishers’ Weekly called it a work of "genius, one that delights, informs, and fires the imagination."
Paine's other works include the anthology he edited with Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky , was a Russian poet and essayist.In 1964, 23-year-old Brodsky was arrested and charged with the crime of "social parasitism" He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 and settled in America with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters...
, The Poetry of Our World (2000), and in 2009 he was the writer of Huston Smith's memoirs Tales of Wonder.
Other writing, other media
In addition to his books, Paine has written for most major national publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, The New Republic, The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Wall Street Journal, and U.S. News and World Report. He has been judge of the Pulitzer PrizePulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
and vice president of the National Book Critics Circle
National Book Critics Circle
The National Book Critics Circle is an American tax-exempt organization for active book reviewers. Its flagship is the National Book Critics Circle Award....
. He appears regularly on C-Span, NPR, and other radio and TV programs as well as speaking at the Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
, the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
, ICA (London), and universities around the country.
Besides print medium, Paine appears with Robert Thurman on the CD Thoughts on Buddhism. In 2009 he co-wrote the documentary about the 17th Karmapa, Bodhisattva, with Mark Elliott, and also appeared in the film Crazy Wisdom. He wrote the one-man show, Oh My God! The History of Religion in One Hour, which premiered in 2006 at the Smithsonian and which he subsequently performed at various venues on the East Coast.
Paine currently lives in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
Further reading
- Jeffery Paine, Father India: Westerners Under the Spell of an Ancient Culture, Harper Collins, December, 1999, trade paperback, 324 pages, ISBN 978-0060931018
- Edited by Jeffery Paine with Kwame Anthony Appiah, Sven Birkerts, Joseph Brodsky, Carolyn Forché, and Helen Vendler, The Poetry of our World: An International Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, HarperCollins, April, 2001, trade paperback, 511 pages,, ISBN 978-0060951931
- Jeffery Paine, Re-Enchantment: Tibetan Buddhism Comes to the West, W.W.Norton, 2004, hardcover, 288 pages, ISBN 978-0393326260
- Jeffery Paine, Adventures with the Buddha, W.W. Norton, 2005, hardcover, 416 pages, ISBN 978-0393327465