From a Mountain In Tibet

From a Mountain In Tibet is Yeshe Losal Rinpoche’s memoir of a life shaped by his childhood in Tibet, escape into exile and eventual path to becoming a Buddhist monk and abbot. Through his experiences of upheaval, loss, excess and personal transformation, he offers a first-person perspective on Buddhist teachings about compassion, discipline, impermanence and finding greater peace.

• Topics: Tibetan Buddhism; exile; loss; self-compassion; discipline; identity; happiness and purpose
• Places: Tibet; the Himalayas; India; America
• Perspective: Personal memoir combining lived experience with accessible Buddhist teachings

About the book
Growing up in a quiet Tibetan village, Yeshe Losal Rinpoche spent his early life among yaks and mastiffs, in a world where the passing seasons marked the passage of time. That life changed in 1959 with the arrival of the Chinese army and the Tibetan Uprising. He fled across the Himalayas with 300 others; only 13 survived the journey to safety in India.

The years that followed took him far from the life he had known. In America, he immersed himself in the excesses of the Woodstock generation, resisting his brother’s influence and struggling with sex and alcohol. After his brother’s death, he resolved to change the direction of his life.

Now in his seventies and abbot of Samye Ling Monastery, the largest Buddhist centre in the West, Lama Yeshe looks back candidly on his mistakes and the lessons they taught him. His story is also a practical reflection on calming the mind, letting go and staying present, explaining Buddhist ideas in clear terms for readers with or without an existing knowledge of Buddhism.

Comparable books
If you’re looking for books similar to From a Mountain In Tibet, these books also combine Tibetan history, Buddhist faith and personal experience, with approaches ranging from testimony of persecution and exile to spiritual autobiography.

• The Rainbow Palace by Tenzin Choedrak: Like From a Mountain In Tibet, this memoir connects an individual Tibetan life with Chinese rule, exile and Buddhist faith. Choedrak’s story centres more specifically on his work as the Dalai Lama’s physician and the more than twenty years he spent as a political prisoner, including his refusal to abandon his Buddhist beliefs despite imprisonment and torture.
• Fire Under The Snow by Palden Gyatso: Another first-person account by a Tibetan Buddhist monk whose life was transformed by Chinese rule. Gyatso’s memoir focuses on his 33 years of imprisonment before his escape across the Himalayas to India, making it particularly closely connected through its themes of persecution, exile, endurance and faith.
• My Spiritual Autobiography by the Dalai Lama: This spiritual autobiography similarly brings together a Tibetan life, Buddhist practice and exile, but places greater emphasis on the Dalai Lama’s formation as a monk, his development as a leader and his approach to transforming oneself in order to have a positive effect on the wider world.