Mandala Book

I have picked up this book in my phase of reading the very descriptive classics. I think in any other phase I might have found the book tedious, but in this one, I appreciate the bit of detail and the immense repetition.
The book has a leitmotif, which is the difference between the Oriental and the Occidental. It describes this difference in fascination and adoration of each other. Each wants to be the other, adopt the other, without losing anything of itself. And this fascination is repeated in many different relationships. My only complaint is that all those relationships have been wound with the man-woman love, almost giving this adoration a mono-chrome, for so much richness could have been used to bring out a multitude of differences and could perhaps explain this eternal longing for the other-side.
And yet, the building of the lake-palace and all the Victorian furniture of it, does go beyond the man-woman fascination.