SPIRITUAL JOURNEYS

In “The Healing of America� (Simon & Schuster, $24, 366 pages), Marianne Williamson uses spiritual principles to prescribe a return to liberty and justice for all. The leaders of her expedition to social wellness, she says, should be the graduates of 12-step recovery programs and consciousness-raising groups, whose ways of navigating the world could help transform society.

“New attitudes based on the awareness of spiritual principles have been embraced now by enough Americans,� Williamson writes, “to turn the tenets of higher consciousness into a major force for social change.�

The road that Williamson envisions may spring from the human potential movement, but its foundations are set in American democracy. She urges every citizen to get more involved in solving social problems--and suggests that every ethnic and economic community could bask in its own fair share of the solutions.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Williamson without New Age jargon and eclectic “isms.� To get the country back on track, she says we need “yin activism�--the “creative listening� component of the Chinese yin-yang energy balance. She also speaks of “holistic politics,� “enlightened economics� and “citizens’ salons� for neighborly brainstorming sessions on how to change things.

The book includes copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, along with names and addresses of social activist groups well worth adding to the Rolodex.

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“Awakening the Buddha Within� (Broadway Books, $26, 414 pages) is the autobiography of Lama Surya Das, who was born Jeffrey Miller, grew up Jewish on Long Island, and declared himself a Buddhist 25 years ago at 22. By then, he had wandered from synagogues to Hindu chanting groups and yoga classes.

“For me,� he writes, “the juice was not flowing in synagogues.�

An established teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, he does not ignore his spiritual roots. He introduces us to his mother, Joyce, who calls him “my son, the lama.� And he’s not above a little Borscht Belt humor. (Did you hear the one about the Buddhist vacuum cleaner? It comes with no attachments.)

The humor helps make Surya Das a comfortable guide for Westerners curious about the basics of Buddhism. He leads the way through the essential values--wisdom, ethics and meditation--spicing the lessons with details from his own spiritual road trip.

Among the 800,000 or so converts to Buddhism in the United States, a growing number of prominent voices now are from those born Jewish. Surya Das believes that recent history explains it: “The great rabbis and mystics were destroyed in the Holocaust. The Jews are a wandering, seeking people. They found their rabbis elsewhere.�

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Michael Wolfe made his first hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, seven years ago. He then began collecting travel diaries, from as far back as AD 1050 and from as late as 1970.

“One Thousand Roads to Mecca� (Grove Press, $32.50, 620 pages) is his anthology of first-hand pilgrimage accounts.

The best known is by Ibn Battuta, who set out from Morocco in AD 1325. His round-trip adventure took 20 years--not so unusual in his day.

The hajj is supposed to be a spiritual education; a wise pilgrim leaves time to study with sages along the way.

Six-hundred years later, Malcolm X, the most prominent African American convert to Islam, was mesmerized by the array of skin tones he saw among pilgrims from Africa, Indonesia, China, Persia. Among Islam’s pilgrims, he found an unfamiliar empathy.

Maps of new and ancient travel routes, a glossary and a bibliography make Wolfe’s book a first-rate addition to a spiritual library.

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Mary Rourke will review books on faith and spirituality every four weeks. Next week: Cathy Curtis on art books.