"Fifty years ago, Tibetan Buddhism was the religion of an isolated mountain people, known to outsiders only as a kind of fairy-tale faith involving flying monks, reincarnated spirits, demons, and superhuman feats of physical endurance and extrasensory perception. Then, the Chinese invaded Tibet, targeting Buddhist monks and monasteries for elimination. The Dalai Lama and other monks and lamas made their way into exile in India, where they began to attract Western disciples among the throngs of hippies and other seekers who migrated to India in the 1960s and 1970s wanting to study meditation techniques to reach enlightenment. Some of these lamas made it all the way to America, and Tibetan Buddhism became, in terms of percentages, the most rapidly growing religion in the West." "This is the story Jeffery Paine tells in his narrative. The book is as full of fantastic characters as the most colorful novel: Alexandra David-Neel, the indomitable French woman who made a suicidal journey through the mountains, disguised as a Tibetan, to become the first westerner ever to enter the holy city of Lhasa; Lama Yeshe and Chogyam Trungpa, who proved to be charismatic and gifted ambassadors for their ancient religion."--BOOK JACKET.
