Last week I finished a book called
Re-enchantment: Tibetan Buddhism Comes to the West by Jeffrey Paine.
He can write entertaining journalistic prose, which I appreciate. But he leaves a lot of stuff out (How can he not mention Pema Chodron?) and gets some things wrong (A google search will reveal that Zina Rachevsky is not a member of the Russian nobility). He has no bibliography, and I can see why. It would have revealed his failure to do enough research.
Still, it is totally worth reading. It is a series of profiles of people who were significant in bringing Tibetan Buddhism to the west. There's not much about the organizations they founded or the obstacles faced or anything other than personality.
I hated reading the sections on the lamas who tried but screwed up badly (IMO) -- Chogyam Trungpa (slept with a lot of followers) and Jetsunma (completely crazy -- sorry, if you are a follower). I was surprised at how difficult those chapters were for me to read even though I knew about these people. I also cringed through the entire chapter on Hollywood Buddhists.
On to the good stuff. I had already read a book about Tenzin Palmo's life. She is a British woman who spent 12 years in a Himalayan cave meditating. But I still enjoyed his chapter on her, probably just because it was better written than the book I read --
Cave in the Snow. It's an amazing story.
I also loved reading about Lama Yeshe, who died in 1984. It made him come alive. And Jan Willis, one of the first western followers of Tibetan Buddhism, now a Professor of Religion at Wesleyan. Here's a picture of them.
The section on Harold Talbott, a person from a privileged background, who very early on went to India and studied with now storied Lamas, was wonderful. He is the person who introduced Thomas Merton to the Dalai Lama. What is cool about him is that, while he has accomplished some things -- edited books, translated, run Buddhist centers -- basically he has spent his life practicing. He always felt like a failure in some ways. He's from a
very accomplished family, and by our standards, he kind of wandered through life. But his equanimity is so well described. It makes you see the difference between one of us and someone -- a relatively ordinary someone (no great lama or teacher) -- who has spent his entire life in practice. And there are real differences.
The chapter on the Dalai Lama is full of the magical stories you read elsewhere, but it is still lovely. In fact the book is written by a believer in the magical side of Tibetan Buddhism, so it can be alienating if you are put off by that. I am listening to a book on Audible right now called
The Naked Buddhist by Adrienne Howley, an Australian nun. I do not enjoy how she teaches Buddhism (too simple and preachy), but I appreciate that she teaches from the position of an absolute atheist. She does not believe in any of the magic or superstition. I believe in some of it. But I think that an emphasis on the magic -- and certainly on lama worship -- obfuscates the dharma.
Anyway, the book was a pleasure to read and filled in a lot of the gaps I have re lamas and others who are often mentioned in this tradition (Western Tibetan Buddhism).
I am now reading one of the Jason Bourne books written by Eric Van Lustbader. Cliched but good. I hate it when someone comes and interrupts a conversation JUST when our hero is about to learn a key piece of information. Grrr.