Born in Tibet

by Chögyam Trungpa

Chögyam Trungpa—meditation master, scholar, and artist—was identified at the age of only thirteen months as a major tulku , or reincarnation of an enlightened teacher. As the eleventh in the teaching lineage known as the Trungpa tulkus, he underwent a period of intensive training in meditation, philosophy, and fine arts, receiving full ordination as a monk in 1958 at the age of eighteen. The following year, the Chinese Communists invaded Tibet, and the young Trungpa spent many harrowing months trekking over the Himalayas, narrowly escaping capture.

Trungpa's account of his experiences as a young monk, his duties as the abbot and spiritual head of a great monastery, and his moving relationships with his teachers offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the life of a Tibetan lama. The memoir concludes with his daring escape from Tibet to India. In an epilogue, he describes his emigration to the West, where he encountered many people eager to learn about the ancient wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism.

Genres: Buddhism, Nonfiction, Biography, Religion, Memoir, Spirituality, Biography Memoir

280 pages, Paperback

First published August 30, 1971

About the author

Vidyadhara Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (Tibetan: ཆོས་ རྒྱམ་ དྲུང་པ་ Wylie: Chos rgyam Drung pa; also known as Dorje Dradul of Mukpo, Surmang Trungpa, after his monastery, or Chökyi Gyatso, of which Chögyam is an abbreviation) was a Buddhist meditation master, scholar, teacher, poet, and artist. He was the 11th descendent in the line of Trungpa tulkus of the Kagyü school of Tibetan Buddhism. He was also trained in the Nyingma tradition, the oldest of the four schools, and was an adherent of the rimay or "non-sectarian" movement within Tibetan Buddhism, which aspired to bring together and make available all the valuable teachings of the different schools, free of sectarian rivalry.

Trungpa was a significant figure in the dissemination of Tibetan Buddhism to the West, founding Naropa University and establishing the Shambhala Training method, a presentation of the Buddhadharma largely devoid of ethnic trappings. In 1963, he moved to England to study comparative religion, philosophy, and fine arts at Oxford University. During this time, he also studied Japanese flower arranging and received an instructors degree from the Sogetsu school of ikebana. In 1967, he moved to Scotland, where he founded the Samye Ling meditation centre.

Shortly thereafter, a variety of experiences—including a car accident that left him partially paralyzed on the left side of his body—led him to give up his monastic vows and work as a lay teacher. In 1969, he published Meditation in Action , the first of fourteen books on the spiritual path published during his lifetime. The following year he married Diana Pybus and moved to the United States, where he established his first North American meditation centre, Tail of the Tiger (now known as Karmê-Chöling) in Barnet, Vermont.

In 1986, he moved to Nova Scotia, Canada, where hundreds of his students had settled. That Autumn, after years of heavy alcohol use, he had a cardiac arrest, and he died of heart failure the following Spring. His legacy is carried on by his son, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, under the banner of Shambhala International and the Nalanda Translation Committee.

Reviews

[George Ilsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir is a fascinating glimpse into monastic life in Tibet before the communist Chinese takeover. Trungpa's evocative style is not meant to be always taken literally. In other words, there are hidden teachings here. As well, we can only see life from the point of view of privilege; other more ordinary lives are almost invisible in this text. As things fell apart, the teachings were opened up to a wider community in Tibet, and after teachers fled, to the wider world as well.

One of the ironies of Tibet Buddhism is how secretive and insular it used to be; and then was dispersed and much more freely available.

A classic text from a modern master (and trickster).

[Max Nemtsov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Удивительная, глаза-раскрывающая книга. Скорее бы Дзонгсар и свою автобиографию/воспоминания дописал, там то же самое (и с картинками, хотя и тут они есть), пусть и время другое. Вот этого понимания, как все устроено в той части мироздания, нам, тутошним, очень не хватает.

А удивительное созвучие тут в том, как вели себя мирные тибетцы, когда в конце 1940х к ним только начало приползать китайское коммунистическое чудовище. Все надеялись пересидеть по своим долинам, тем более, что армия деклассированных оборванцев платила за все (пока еще мирные) реквизиции еды серебром (свежеотчеканенным, я полагаю, и потому не имевшим никакой особой ценности). Геноцид еще не начался, ну да. За ними еще не пришли, и они видели возможность жить с соседями "мирно". А потом началось - зверства, грабежи, расстрелы мирного населения, уничтожение библиотек, насильственная "детибетизация", облавы, концлагеря, беженцы, в общем - все, что мы знаем по российскому вторжению в Украину: почерк варваров всегда одинаков.

У Сопротивления Восточного Тибета, о котором тут много говорится, что ценно, логика была такая:

the Tibetans would get the better of the Chinese for, according to the law of karma, we who had never molested other countries must now surely deserve the victory.

Теперь-то мы знаем, что закон той кармы сработал как-то иначе.

Ну и металитературное. Книга вышла впервые в 1966м в британском издательстве "Джордж Аллен и Ануин" - как мы помним, это они первыми начали публиковать Толкина. Мало того, в 60х первой скрипкой издательства уже был сын основателя Стэнли Ануина - Райнер. Тот самый, кто в свои 11 лет написал внутреннюю рецензию на "Хоббита", на основании которой повесть собственно и опубликовали. Публикация автобиографии ЧТ как-то укладывается в эту генеральную линию издательства - делать ценностно-создающие книги, воздействующие на расширение и изменение сознания. Сам же Райнер был типичный бритт, член Гэррик-клуба и т.д. Так вот, когда он умер, вдова по завещанию развеяла его прах не где-то, а в Гималаях.

[Kim · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was sorely disappointed in this book – it shifted my perception of Buddhism in a way I wish it hadn’t.

The journey the man did to escape from the Chines invasion of Tibet could have been interesting. It’s a bloody long way to India via all those mountains, and that a group of people managed it is amazing. But the drone of the story-telling made me not really care after a while. I kept hoping they would run out of leather to boil or eat their actual last bit of food and expire. I lost count of how many times they ran out of food only to have more in the next chapter.

But worse than the boring telling of what could and should have been a fabulous tale of survival were the aspects of Buddhism I saw and did not like.

The author is the reincarnation of someone or the other, as it seems is almost everyone in Tibetan Buddhism. As such he is treated close to royalty from when he is a little boy.
Snag 1 – isn’t Buddhism essentially supposed to be non-hierarchical?
He is surrounded by people there only to look after him. Hmmm – that doesn’t sit happily with me.

During the escape the monks have to ditch their monkly attire and wear normal clothing so as to be less conspicuous. The authors talks about how very distressed the monks are at having to do this – they feel lost and discombobulated (my word, not his) out of their robes.
Snag 2 – what happened to the non-attachment lesson of Buddhism?

Then during the escape a horse falls off a ravine and the authors comment is that none of the goods the horse was carrying could be retrieved.
Sang 3 – a being died and the Buddhist was worried abut his belongings – really? Hmmm – nope, doesn’t work for me.

The author was not likeable much – the only time his personality ever showed was when he was laying down the law with all the people following him. And he kept buggering off to do a retreat while those following him were starving and freezing.

Maybe my escaped catholic roots expect a little more from a religious or spiritual leader.

I have since spoken to a Buddhist friend of mine and apparently this kind of things is a little typical of Tibetan Buddhism – and Tibet Buddhism is a very specific strand of the believe system.
Phew – cos I like the idea that I aspire to be a Buddhist – I’d have hated to lose all that cos of one monk.

[Emelia · Rating 5 out of 5]

RTC

[Shaun · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pick Your Spokespersons Carefully

The Tibetan issue is clouded by lies, propaganda and poor spokesmen. I became disillusioned with the Tibetan plight years ago as I slowly began to learn that the violence and injustice that characterized Chinese and Tibetan relations for decades was no more, yet the government in exile kept shouting that it was and the CCP denied that it ever was. I became disillusioned when the Dalai Lama changed his stance, going from claiming that a real genocide was taking place to a cultural one, just because Tibetan children are also taught Mandarin in the schools built by the CCP. I became disillusioned because the CCP won’t stop treating an old monk like a terrorist. That the same monk lived in luxury and dined with easily impressed Hollywood stars while Tibetans lived in poverty didn’t help either. Also, the fact that all the money he collected never went to his poor countrymen, the CCP was doing more for these people, bringing in medicine, education and food. I became disillusioned when the Central Government would whitewash whatever unfair treatment that was visited upon the Tibetans just to save face. I became disillusioned when I learned that the society the CCP altered so drastically was a feudal one that came complete with serfs forced to live under a religious oligarchy that allowed torturous corporal punishments. Because of this disillusion I stopped caring about the issue, I stopped reading the latest books to demonize the Chinese and I stopped reading the latest news brief that defended the party.

Then a friend handed me this book Born In Tibet by Chogyam Trungpa, a man who lived the privileged life of an Abbot when he was forced to leave his homeland due to the Chinese invasion of Tibet. While I was concerned about reading yet another piece of propaganda I was still curious as I have never read an autobiography of these events. I had always read books written by westerners speaking for Tibetans. What I discovered was not propaganda about evil Chinese, though the author was very dismissive of them, but the view of an abbot deeply apart of his feudal religious upbringing, which made him dismissive of almost everyone.

Trungpa starts his tale with the death of the abbot of Surmang, a monastery in eastern Tibet. This mans death is important for Trungpa is this abbot. He recounts the history of his soul and it’s great spiritual conquests until it comes to the abbot of Surmang. The former abbot dies in great mystic style by stating where he will be reborn and who he will be reborn to. He then assumes a mediation pose and dies like this, all mystic and holy like. His students a few years later set out for the area in which their teacher prophesied his return, which just happens to be close by, and find Trungpa. They test the young lad but there are some doubts. After a long explanation from his mother about who his father was they determine that he is their teacher reborn. The young Trungpa is taken from his family to become abbot of Surmang and the ridiculous age of five.

The book drones on about his training as a child abbot which includes a lot of meditation and retreats in caves. What I did find interesting here was his view of the people around him. His mother is reduced to a servant who can’t enter the monastery, and while he has a connection to her he is more concerned with his teachers, as if being told he is the reincarnation of someone makes his mother no longer his mother. He is indifferent to a flogging carried out by a monk, only expressing the tiniest bit of sympathy. Everyone is nameless but his direct teachers, other monks, people he meets, no one means anything to him but his direct teachers.

Things don’t get interesting until the Chinese show up, however, Trungpa never really meets any Chinese, but once or twice, he only hears about them. He hears that they are cleaning streets of filth, because I guess the Tibetans didn’t keep their streets clean. He hears that the PLA pays for everything and helps neighborhoods. He hears about them killing monks and that they destroy monasteries, but all he really has is other people's accounts. Maybe this explains some of his extreme disconnect from common sense. In the face of an invading army Trungpa decides to spend a great deal money on expanding the temple complex while refugees with nothing pass right by his front doors, because it is his spiritual duty.

Though it takes him awhile, Trungpa eventually finds himself on the run from the Chinese. This flight from danger is no ordinary running for your life flight, however. No, there are many stops along the way to perform religious rituals and reflect on the Dharma and give talks and lessons and blessings, take in nature and have cups of tea during picnics. He travels with attendants and a bursar, who is also a monk and is concerned Trungpa will flee to India with all the gold and treasures they are carrying leaving nothing for anyone else. I could only assume that this wealth was what was collected to expand Surmang while homeless Tibetans starved outside the monastery. Meanwhile, Trungpa gives Dharma talks on not giving in to the materialistic world.

Some of these rituals he engages in, which are completed with all the gold tools of trade, are so complicated that he has to explain the significance of them to the monks who just helped him perform it. There is a passage where Trungpa tells the reader how close the Chinese are to finding his group. So close are they that the party dares not light fires, but Trungpa and his monks go for leisurely walks around the campsite to engage in meditation and prayer. He even complains at one point of not having a walking area at one of the campsites. He is not very convincing at running for his life to protect the sacred teachings of the Buddha. He comes off as more of Tibetan Marie Antoinette.

While Trunga will take on any traveler willing to go with him, he makes it clear he is only concerned with the other monks. These monks were all chosen for the their positions in society the same way he was, by divine reincarnation having once been an important monk in another life. They are thus keepers of the Dharma, therefore they are more important then the common refugee and their family, or lower ranking monks, which Trungpa makes very clear with his dismissive attitude towards them. These higher ranking monks essential end up being a divinely chosen ruling class looking out for themselves. The ‘importance’ of these monks to the holy order is also made clear by how many of the monks, including Trungpa began running, they sneak out. Higher ranking monks would sneak away from their students so they wouldn’t draw a crowd, leaving them to face the Chinese. It was these lower ranking monks who were shot by the PLA when they couldn’t reveal where their leaders had run off to. Trungpa is guilty of something similar. He is never willing to abandon monks, but will sneak away from refugees, again to make sure a large crowd doesn’t follow him and his monks. Even though Trungpa disconnects himself to the refugees they follow him all the same as best they can, blindly and religiously loyal.

There is a little bit of worry for Trungpa’s fleeing group when they get lost in the mountains. The monks and the refugees following Trungpa run out of food and face the harrowing conditions of nature. The ultimate wisdom that guides them through these harsh conditions is Trungpa and his divining tools. Yep, divine gambling decides which path they take. Trunga asks the heavens which way they should go and rolls his holy twelve sided die. It is amazing that any of them survived. At the end they reach the Indian border and safety with only losing one old man, who Trungpa can’t be bothered naming, he wasn’t a monk anyway.
Contents aside there are problems with the text as well. Trungpa writes in run on sentences, long ones. He usually starts with a point and after several comas comes back to the same point. He writes paragraphs that take up whole pages and communicate matter of little importance. There are several typos and incorrect information, like in the forward, which states Qing Dynasty fell in 1912, when it was really 1911. Long winded, rambling and repetitive is the style of writing Trunga showcases.

Trungpa became very famous later in his life in the west as teacher of Tibetan Buddhism for the westerners who were apart of the Flower Power Counter Cultural Revolutions, a.k.a. Hippies. During this time he gives up the monkhood and takes to sleeping with his students and marrying a wealthy sixteen year old British girl when he was thirty. He eventually dies due an alcohol related illness, because he was a raging alcoholic, but is still revered as a holy man. While the book does not cover that part of his life and paints a different picture of him then what he became, it is still not very flattering. At the end of the book I am not sure how this title gained any sympathy for the Tibetan cause. I am sure that other monks were not like Trungpa, but having him as a spokesperson for Tibet in general strikes me as a bad idea.

After a little bit of research I found that there is a group raising money to rebuild Surmang, the monastery that Trungpa was an abbot of. On their own website they admit that this area of Tibet is steeped in poverty, with an annual average income of fifty dollars. Because Trungpa was so holy, and the Dharma so important, instead of helping to feed and educate these people, a temple that only monks can use will be given instead. This will help these kind Tibetan people with their ‘spiritual and cultural needs’, as the website states. Apparently the dismissive attitude of Trungpa is alive and well in the reincarnated Surmang.

[Chia Wei Sheng · Rating 5 out of 5]

Transports you back in time

Excellent biography of sorts, the details gives one sufficient mental space to imagine oneself in their journey and struggles during their escape from tibet.

[Joanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75

[Harry Rutherford · Rating 3 out of 5]

Born in Tibet is the story of Chögyam Trungpa’s early life in Tibet. He was a year old when some monks turned up and announced he was the eleventh Trungpa Tulku and hence the supreme abbot of the Surmang monasteries in eastern Tibet; at twenty he managed to escape the Chinese occupation and make his way to India.

So the book really has three main subjects: his traditional religious education, the increasing impact of the Chinese on Tibetan life, and the adventure/survival story of escaping cross-country into India. The escape is remarkable, since it involves dozens of people trying to secretly cross some of the most difficult terrain in the world; but the portrayal of traditional life in a Tibetan monastery is what interested me most.

It is slightly ironic that many westerners treat Buddhism as a kind of antidote to organised religion, because this was organised, institutional religion on the grand scale: an elaborate formal hierarchy, large, expensively appointed buildings with hundreds of people, elaborate rituals, explicitly supernatural practices like divination, all supported by large scale land ownership and tributes offered by the local population. It’s rather how I imagine the middle ages in Europe must have been: a basically peasant population loomed over both by the houses of feudal aristocrats and by the abbeys and monasteries of the great religious orders.

The fact that comparison sounds like a criticism says something about the glowing image of Tibetan buddhism — mainly I guess down to the personal qualities of the current Dalai Lama — and the bad image of medieval Catholicism. The reasons for which are more tangled, although the largely Protestant history of the English speaking world is clearly relevant. Personally I have a soft spot for medieval monasticism; and my scepticism about human nature means I bet were a few Tibetan monks over the centuries who were, let’s say, more worldly than they should have been.

Though it has to be said that Chögyam Trungpa was not living the life of a Medici pope. His life in Tibet seems to have been austerely lived and completely devoted to spiritual practice. The childhood in particular sounds tough; being taken away to a monastery at three and spending pretty much all his time from then on in study and devotion.

Anyway, it is fascinating stuff.

Our travelling party was organized with a good deal of pomp. There were thirty monks on horseback and eighty mules to carry the baggage. I was still only twelve and, being so young, I was not expected to preach long sermons; mostly I had to perform rites, read the scriptures aloud, and impart blessings. We started from the highlands and traveled down to the cultivated land; I was able to see how all these different people lived as we passed through many changes of scenery. Of course I did not see the villagers quite as they were in their everyday lives, for wherever we went all was in festival, everyone was excited and looking forward to the special religious services, so that we had little time for rest. I missed the routine of my early life, but found it all very exciting.

When we visited Lhathog, the king had to follow the established tradition by asking us to perform the religious rites according to ancient custom. We were lodged in one of the palaces, from where we could look down on a school that the Chinese had recently established. A Communist flag hung at the gate, and when it was lowered in the evenings the children had to sing the Communist national anthem. Lessons were given in both Chinese and Tibetan, including much indoctrination about the benefits China was bringing to Tibet. Singing and dancing were encouraged and I felt that it was a sign of the times that the monastery drum was used to teach the children to march. Being young myself I was keenly interested, though this distortion worried me; a religious instrument should not have been used for a secular purpose, nor for mere amusement. A detachment of Chinese officials sent from their main headquarters at Chamdo lived in the king’s palace together with a Tibetan interpreter, while various teachers had been brought to Lhathog to organize the school, which was one of many that the Chinese were setting up in all the chief places in Tibet. The local people’s reactions were very unfavourable. In the town the Communists had stuck posters or painted slogans everywhere, even on the walls of the monastery; they consisted of phrases like ‘We come to help you’ and ‘The liberation army is always at the people’s service.’

Born in Tibet is my book from Tibet for the Read The World challenge. Chögyam Trungpa wasn’t actually born in what is now the Tibet Autonomous Region; when the Chinese took over Tibet, large chunks which were culturally Tibetan were assigned to different provinces.

We ourselves always considered that the people who speak Tibetan and ate roasted barley (tsampa) as their staple food are Tibetans.

Which is good enough for me.

[Ann Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've reviewed Born in Tibet in tandem with another book documenting the loss of a people's dream: Black Elk Speaks.

American media is full of warnings that everything might fall apart, and we need to change our expectations. A person of my age was raised in a time when such predictions were unheard and unthought, but I/we must now grapple with a future that could see collapse. What happens when a way of life collapses? Two brilliant men have told us in landmark books: Black Elk Speaks, is the autobiography of Black Elk, an Oglala Lakota visionary and healer, as told to the poet John G. Neihardt; Born in Tibet is an autobiography by Chögyam Trungpa, a holy man from Tibet.

Black Elk was born in 1863 when the Lakota nation ranged across the central plains, centered on ancestral lands around the Black Hills of what is now South Dakota. His life well into adulthood was spent hunting buffalo, living in teepees, performing religious ceremonies, finding the Divine in Nature, caring for family and friends.

At the age of nine, he had an expansive vision, the first of several recounted in the book.  His spiritual gift caused him confusion and isolation from others, but as he became an adult, his gift became known, and he was revered and turned to for healing and advice.

The photo on the cover of the book shows a strikingly beautiful young man with a carefully crafted necklace made out of animal teeth, a string of beads hanging from his fur hat, long black hair falling below his shoulders, and white earrings. In a photo of him as an old man, he is carrying a cane and dressed in ill-fitting western clothing. This old man is gratified at the opportunity to share his story with Neihardt and thus with the rest of us.

“My friend, I am going to tell you the story of my life, as you wish; and if it were only the story of my life I think I would not tell it; for what is one man that he should make much of his winters, even when they bend him like a heavy snow? So many other men have lived and shall live that story, to be grass upon the hills.

It is the story of all life that is holy and is good to tell, and of us two-leggeds sharing in it with the four-leggeds and the wings of the air and all green things; for these are the children of one mother and their father is one Spirit.

When Black Elk was a beautiful young man, the incursion of what the Lakota called the Wasichus (White people) had already begun with the laying of the “iron road,” the Union Pacific Railroad, cutting the great bison herds in two but not yet causing deprivation to the Lakota, who depended on bison for meat, hides, housing, warmth, and spiritual inspiration.

Little by little, the annoying but harmless incursion became an invasion and finally a murderous domination of everything Black Elk held dear. To see this history through Black Elk’s eyes is mesmerizing. He was, of course, illiterate, but has a storehouse of wisdom and knowledge that would be a match for a classically trained academic. He is schooled by experience in history, biology, botany, medicine, psychology, and the means (now lost to us) of living on the land.

The biggest revelation was how keenly aware he was of the impending demise of his culture, his religion, his way of life, and his future. The Wasichus (White people) at first trickled in and the Lakota went about their business, but as the “yellow metal” (which didn’t interest the Lakota at all) under the Black Hills incited the worst instincts of discrimination and greed, the trickle became a torrent, treaties were signed and promises made, all of which were broken without shame or regret. Black Elk is enraged at several points, grief-stricken and lost, but he retains perspective. His remembrance of a man they called Black Robe, a Catholic priest who helped care for the Lakota, suggests curiosity trumping fury regarding Washichus, an ability to see them as individuals that was not shared by the Washichus themselves, who viewed all Native Americans as one.

Black Elk rushed to Wounded Knee as soon as news of the ongoing massacre reached him. He saw a Lakota baby lying alive but alone on the ground. He couldn’t stop for it but wrapped it in a blanket, and came back for it later. Pair his experience with the classic, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown.

Black Elk is nearby when Crazy Horse is bayoneted in cold blood by a Wasichu soldier and relates the words of people who were in the room where it happened. He also knew Red Cloud, and fled the violence by going to Canada to spend time with Sitting Bull.

After the Lakota were stripped of their land, their horses, their culture, their future, and deported down river, Black Elk performed in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West extravaganzas, when he saw his first big cities, took a transatlantic ocean liner, and met Queen Victoria. After seeing all that, he wasn’t impressed and couldn’t wait to get back home.

He lived to be 87, and at the end of the book, he reflected:

“I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered along the crooked gulch [at Wounded Knee] as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream.

And I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth—you see me now a pitiful old man who has done nothing, for the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.”

What struck me most about Black Elk was his lack of debilitating bitterness. He maintained his close relationship to the land and to his Lakota brethren, and treated the Wasichu John Neihardt as a brother. His ability to assess and wonder at the world never left him.




Born in Tibet, tells the story of Chögyam Trungpa, a Tibetan born on the high plateau of eastern Tibet, “bare, treeless country without even bushes, but grass covered, and in the summer months the ground is bright with small flowers and sweet-smelling herbs.” For most of the year, “the land is under snow and it is so cold the ice must be broken to get water.”

From birth, the child was special, and was declared, at the age of one-and-a-half, the reincarnation of the tenth “Trungpa Tulku,” a high-ranking Buddhist monk; that is, he was the eleventh Trungpa Tulku.  He was revered, and his childhood was spent under the tutelage of Buddhist sages who taught him well. By the time he was twenty, he had been given stewardship of a large monastic community.

Most of the texts and rituals referenced in the book are unknown to westerners. As a western Buddhist, I’d heard of some terms, but not of most. Any reader will get the point though—his education and his skill are profound and wide-ranging, the result of years of study, sometimes under grueling conditions.

The first part of the book is the sumptuous recounting of the atmosphere in which Trungpa was raised. Tibet was governed and administered by members of the monastic community, so the book is a fascinating peek at a quasi-feudal but well-functioning society.  The reader is brought into the artistic life that created the objects, textiles, poetry, texts, incense, even the medicinal practices, that flourished under that system.

Here, in part, is the description of the Karma-geru monastery that Trungpa visited:

Inside the great hall the walls were painted with wonderful scenes from the life of the Lord Buddha… Between the entrances to the shrine sanctuaries there were shelves along the walls on which gold and silver lamps burned perpetually. The lion throne placed in the centre of the hall was made of sandal-wood brought from a holy place in India; its back was of dark sandal-wood painted with a gold design and with a piece of gold brocade in the centre hung round with a white scarf. The throne was carved with lion designs and the brocade on its cushions had been given by the [14th century] Emperor Tohan Timur when the third Karmapa was invited to China. At the end of the hall, behind the throne, three entrances led into a tremendously lofty chamber, divided in three to hold the images of the past, present, and future Buddhas; these were so gigantic that the measurement across the eyes was five feet. [One Buddha was] made of moulded brass heavily gilt; all the limbs and various parts of the body had been cast separately and put together, but the head was cast in one piece with a large diamond in the centre of the forehead.”

One after another, he describes the art work and the enormous libraries in the monasteries, holding scrolls and texts that were calligraphed on special handmade paper, collected over many centuries and studied closely by thousands of monks.

It is important that the reader appreciate the storehouse of knowledge and beauty that resided in these monasteries in order to comprehend their desecration when the Chinese invaded. In the name of anti-elite Communism they fed the beautifully decorated scrolls on handmade Tibetan paper to their horses, removed the embalmed body of the tenth Trungpa Tulku (this book was written by the eleventh) from its coffin and threw it on the floor. The gold and silver were melted down and sent to China, the books in the libraries burned. There was nothing, nothing, left. Or, to put it differently, the only thing left was the encyclopedic skill and learning in the minds of the monastics.

Trungpa didn’t want to leave behind the hundreds of people dependent on the monastery he headed and waited until the last minute to escape to India. By then, the Chinese invasion had already encompassed most of the country. The last part of the book is the tale of his harrowing journey over the peaks of the Himalayas into India. I learned, for example, how to handle leather so that it can become dinner.

Trungpa was responsible for a group of refugees of fluctuating size, from ten to 300, making their way through the hinterlands of Tibet, often at night so as to evade the Chinese soldiers, who would kill or imprison them. He refused to allow killing of any kind, including of animals that could provide nourishment for the starving refugees, provided support for even the weakest members of the group, and went up and down snow-bound, precipitous peaks and over raging rivers one after another, until they reached India.  He was guided by Tibetan prophecy, an iron will, profound compassion, and almost no knowledge of the territory he must lead them through. They gained sporadic information about the activities of the Chinese soldiers from villagers, but in the end they had to avoid even villagers because the Chinese soldiers were requiring loyalty oaths to the Communist government, and there could have been spies among them.

The Chinese invasion began as an annoying trickle that did not disrupt their way of life. The Tibetans described by Trungpa shrugged off the bullying as just another example of Chinese egotism. The history of Tibet’s relationship with China, sometimes warm, sometimes deadly, was known to Tibetans—this was viewed as just another phase. The Chinese began with the carrot—building roads, railroads, schools, etc. When that did not charm the Tibetans to Communism, they exploded into a suffocating, blanket invasion of the country under the guise of “saving” it. They trumped up accusations of weapons possession against the monks of monasteries where there were no weapons, killed the leaders, conscripted the young to build roads and do other construction work which was then touted as being for the benefit of Tibetans. Those Tibetans who were useless to them were transported to concentration camps where they died. Information about the developing situation was conveyed to Trungpa's band of refugees through messengers on foot or horseback. Messengers brought the news through hell, high water, and snow up to their horse’s knees.

The first electric lights Trungpa had ever seen were the headlights of the Chinese Army trucks; his first airplane was a Chinese reconnaissance plane.

The Tibetans established a surprisingly effective resistance, despite their lack of resources. They delayed the invaders by driving cows along the roads used for transporting troops, sabotaged bridges, and guarded mountain passes with ancient muskets. Their knowledge of the daunting topography gave them another sort of advantage.

Trungpa’s tone when discussing the dismantling of everything he has ever held dear is even. He and the other monastic notables concluded that trying to save the country against  overwhelming force would only serve to increase the death and destruction. The monastic leaders were being imprisoned and killed, so they each had to decide whether to try to escape to India. They stepped back from their roles as advisors and leaders and told their people to look into their own hearts and minds. They told their monks and the lay community that there would be no monasteries from now on, so the future of their spiritual and temporal lives rested within each one of them.

At the end of the book, Trungpa and his band arrive in India. It is the land where the Buddha practiced and Buddhism was founded, but its ways were utterly foreign. In his epilogue, Trungpa tells of the further disorientation of going to England, Scotland, and America.  Outside of his own small circle, Trungpa is no longer a revered holy man; he’s more or less one of the guys.




I took a lesson from these books. Yes, your society can crumble into a nothingness that you heretofore had never imagined.  The people you admire can be made slaves—in Tibet the Chinese forced the landlords to wear their servants’ clothes and the servants to wear their landlords’ clothes—your way of life washed away in a flood of oppression too strong to oppose, your families separated, your property confiscated, your future plans nullified. Yes, it can happen.

I feel a trickle in America.  For example, I was walking down the main street in Hoboken, New Jersey one day, when I heard a man behind me repeating, “Build the wall. Build the wall,” referring of course to his support of Donald Trump. When I didn’t respond, he escalated, “I’m following you. I’m right behind you.”  At a red light, I turned around to face the troll, a young, blond man, “Are you talking to me?” He scrambled to deny it, but he was threatening me. He was. This was a trickle that could turn into a flood overnight, and in my own town.

The threat from climate change swells every year, with most people shrugging it off over a beer.

The lesson I took from these two stories is that when efforts to stem the swelling tide of destruction fail, it is necessary to look within. Even after a civilization is destroyed, the people survive in a different form., though they may be “bent with heavy snow” as Black Elk put it.

In Trungpa’s case, he was undone as a person, though not as a teacher.

In a village in India, after months of starvation and superhuman struggle, he tasted beer for the first time. Monastics do not drink  alcohol so they at first refused, but there was no water in the village and they had to drink beer. This was Trungpa's introduction to alcohol, the poison that killed him before he turned 50. Despite this and other failings, he was and is beloved by his students, among them Pema Chödrön and my late husband. Naropa University in Boulder Colorado, founded by Trungpa, is still thriving, and the Shambhala organization, which he established, still publishes and teaches, though not without its share of disruptions. I live near Karma Chöling in Vermont, one of the monasteries founded by Trungpa.

Black Elk was transplanted with the rest of his people to a reservation far from his beloved homeland, but returned to live in an undistinguished “square house” (an unpropitious form from the Lakota point of view) that still stands near Manderson, South Dakota. It has become a place of pilgrimage, hosted by Black Elk’s granddaughter. And there is this book.

These are cautionary tales in that they suggest that we should “awake, awake, take heed,” as the Buddhist evening mantra goes, and confront the destruction before it swells to flood stage. Failing that, these stories are also an affirmation that all is never lost. There is gold to be woven from the dross of persecution; we’ve seen it over and over again. Look inward to find it.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating story. I study Shambhala Buddhism which is the lineage started by Chogyam Trungpa. This book is his biography from birth until about age 20 when he escaped with other monks from Tibet to India. It is a harrowing and heartbreaking story. It was very interesting to read about life in Tibet pre-China. They sound like a very simple, spiritual people. The escape sounded intense. Glad to have read this story.

[Joseph Joyce]

I have always found Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche such an interesting figure. I first came across him at an exhibition about Buddhism in 2019, and was drawn in by the photograph of him smiling and holding a revolver up to his head. Something about him definitely cut through my idea of how a tibet buddhist teacher might present themselves, and I ended up buying The Pocket Chogyam Trungpa and finding the words inside really spoke to me in a way I could understand them, and even kind of transformative. I think that book might have really opened the doors to an interest in buddhism.

I later started reading this book, then read about all the complications around Chogyam Trungpa and how he was abusive to his followers (in many ways that you can read about online). I then stopped reading and since then I have found his teachings complicated, and no longer see him as a reliable narrator. That said, I felt drawn to finishing this book, which tells you all about his life in Tibet before having to flee Tibet in extreme conditions after the invasion of communist China.

It's super interesting to read all about Tulkus and how reincarnations of buddhist Lama's are found through visions and dreams - and how the religious structure of life in Tibet functioned. There are areas that I still felt unclear on, but Trungpa's account of everything is vivid and also somehow relatable. Learning about the traumatic escape from Tibet was also very interesting, and something I knew nothing about.

In the last chapter of the book you can feel a slight shift in tone. This was written after Trungpa had moved to Scotland, then America and set up the shambala school. There are a lot of vague accounts of disagreements that feel quite confusing and possibly indicate some of the more troubling aspects of Chogyam Trungpa.

I guess it's kind of an art-from the artist type of situation but feels extra complicated here. I find it interesting and I'm glad I read this. I feel that approaching Trungpa through the lens of rightousness would probably defeat the point here.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is obviously Chogyam Trungpa before he came to the West (in 1963 to attend Oxford), had his brain damaging auto accident (in 1969), and subsequent rise to popularity, and it’s quite different than the material he produced later (in other words before he "turned on, tuned in and dropped out" like everyone else in the 60's counter culture). It’s actually a fascinating story of old Tibet and the harrowing (difficult and dangerous) nine month over-land escape from the Chinese military occupation he led as a young man, full of detail, factually and engagingly told (it is an edited transcript of the oral account he gave after getting to India).

Despite what you may think of Trungpa and what he later became as an infamous Vajrayana teacher, this is a very worthwhile account, and so is perhaps, while his first and simplest, also his most enduring book (reminding me a lot of the Dalai Lama's first book 'Opening of the Wisdom Eye' - published in the same year - in that it was an innocent and rare glimpse of the vibe of the lamas of the sheltered old Tibet before it became polished and somewhat warped by its Western reception and expectation, the difference being that the Dalai Lama's book was a rather dry overview of Buddhist doctrine, while Trungpa's was a real adventure tale).

(ps. the 1995 edition has the same hand-drawn map of his escape route, selection of B&W portrait and landscape photos and scenic line-drawings from the original publication, plus 4 pages of newer photos and a 14 page epilogue entitle "Planting the Dharma in the West" written by Trungpa in 1976. It provides an overview of what his 17 years of life in exile had been like to that point, and a glimpse of the hugely successful teacher he would become in America before his untimely (self-destructive) death at just 47 years.)

[Annasaurus Rex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. It gave me a context for how Buddhism was first brought to the United snakes that I didn't understand, and am only beginning to understand. Great read. It didn't get a 5 because I only give 5s to a book that I would read twice.

[Ivan Bercholz · Rating 5 out of 5]

An all time classic. I just reread this after 25 years and it was even better the second time when I knew all the names and places more intimately. Highly recommend!

[a · Rating 5 out of 5]

enjoyed it!

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 3/4 stars

[Richa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found the book quite uninteresting. It is filled with unnecessary details and lacks the in-depth and insight I was expecting the book to offer the reader.

[Thomas Thornborough · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a somewhat long and quite difficult read but also a very interesting look at pre-Chinese occupation of Tibet from the inside out. It is also written from the perspective of a privileged class and because of that there are certain difficulties faced as a reader. It is hard a lot of the time to be sympathetic to the narrator and there are certain events which are hard to swallow. A silly example that got to me: about four times he quotes accounts where the Chinese force the servants and masters of 'liberated' villages to swap clothes as a show of humiliation. I don't know why this irritated me so much, perhaps because he sandwiches this in between actual atrocities so often as though they were of equal standing. It's as though the power relations between monks and laypeople and masters and serfs are seen almost as holy as the dharma itself.

That said I am glad it is told in the way it is and although it is difficult I believe it is also important that the author basically does not sugar coat anything. It makes the whole thing very authentic and I love the fact that I can read this thing and see a real human being in front of me complete with foibles and ego and attachments and needs. We are not presented here with a monk free of stain, we are presented with something much more valuable. As alien as that society may have been to Western readers it is presented here bare; laid out and broken apart and brilliant.

To those who read this book and feel somehow that their ideas of Buddhism or Chogyam Trungpa have been attacked, it may be worth examining that feeling. This is a living, breathing doctrine which changes according to the culture it is placed in and which is carried into life by people, not gods. I can understand a certain level of distaste arising, it did in me too, and the only way I can think to work with that in myself is to use it as a mirror and examine exactly why I feel that way. In the end I think I was hoping for a hero to light the way and instead I am faced with an arrogant, self righteous youth stumbling through insanely dangerous mountains with a whole host under his direct supervision... But in seeing that, it's kinda beautiful.

[Mara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a very unique autobiography focused on the author's life from birth in Tibet through his escape across the Himalayan mountains and into India during China's invasion of Tibet. In addition to being eye-opening in regards to that region of the world during that period in history, it was similarly eye-opening regarding Tibetan buddhism and a way of life non-existent anywhere else in the world.

The destruction that communism wraught on a peaceful country was disheartening while the Tibetan response, largely viewing it as a real-life opportunity to embrace Buddhist belief in impermanence, provided hope. While being very interesting, it was also very dense and somewhat dry reading. Yet having read other books by Chogyam Trungpa I found learning more about his past to be a good supplement to his subsequent development of Shambhala in the U.S. Although he died relatively young, he led a very full life well beyond his years.

[Deb W · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an astounding work that informs the reader of the the Tibetan peoples before the Chinese occupation and of the upbringing of a Tibetan tulka (incarnation of a previous-lived Tibetan holy man). From his birth to his coronation to his flee from Chinese Communists capture and possible death, I read in rapt wonder that all this happened in so short a time.

After reading this book, I am compelled to read more by the author and recommend it to those interested in a greater understanding of Buddhism.

[Janne Asmala · Rating 3 out of 5]

This unique book gave me an insider view of the achievements of Tibetan culture and of its downfall amidst the Chinese occupation. It is also a fascinating glimpse inside the head of one of the great spiritual masters of our times.

[Mariana · Rating 3 out of 5]

He practices non-violence during Chinese persecution at a young age.

[Jade Kranz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A vivid depiction of monastic life in Tibet, and of the hardship brought by the Communist invasion.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy the read. I thought I would, but didn't.

[Tapalleaf]

it is the book which i really wanted to read

[María · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books I've read in the last two years. A great journey!

[Scott Rennie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read, I did find it a bit dry at times but also some great insights.