These are the memoirs of a Dob-dob', or fighting monk, trained to keep the peace in a monastic community of several thousand monks, during and after the Chinese invasion of Tibet, in 1959. The true story of a young man born in a traditional Tibetan village, ordained a monk in one of the country's great monasteries, and eventually assigned the post of dob-dob, a 'fighting monk' charged with maintaining monastic order. Fleeing Tibet with the Dalai Lama after the Chinese invasion of 1959, never to see his native land again, and suffering the loss of a leg during the'

An inside account of the Chinese invasion of Tibet told through the voices of three persecuted monks • Shares the true story of three monks’ heroic escape from occupied Tibet and the subsequent rebirth of the Bön religion in exile • Introduces Bön, Tibet’s oldest religion, and a traditional way of life extinguished by foreign occupation • Reveals details of the 1950 Chinese invasion of Tibet and the exodus of thousands of Tibetans to neighboring countries Providing an inside view into the Chinese occupation of Tibet and the tenets of Bön, one of the world’s oldest but least known religions, this book chronicles the true story of three Bön monks who heroically escaped occupied Tibet and went on to rebuild their culture through incredible resilience, determination, and passion. After taking his vows to become a Bön monk and completing a pilgrimage around 22,000-foot Mt. Kailash, the holiest mountain in Tibet, Tenzin Namdak envisions a life of quiet contemplation at Menri, Bön’s mother monastery. Instead, he finds himself fleeing for his life across the highest and most difficult terrain on the planet. After being joined by a CIA-backed warlord, Tenzin’s escape party is ambushed and he is severely wounded. Narrowly escaping execution by Chinese soldiers, the dying Tenzin is taken to a concentration camp, where he is afforded special consideration because of his status as a monk. He overcomes his nearly fatal wound and makes an arduous escape from Tibet over the daunting Himalayas. The other monks, life-long friends Samten Karmay and Sangye Tenzin, witness Tibet’s capital explode in a violent insurrection against Chinese rule. Escaping to Nepal, they worry about the survival of the Bön religion and begin collecting scattered works of Bön scripture. A chance meeting with British scholar David Snellgrove brings the three monks together again and dramatically changes their lives. Snellgrove invites Sangye, Samten, and Tenzin to spend three years in London on a Rockefeller Foundation grant. There, they hone their English and forge influential relationships, enabling Tenzin to answer the pleas for help from the Bön community by founding a settlement in exile in India. Sangye is chosen as the 33rd Menri Trizen, Bön’s highest office, and together the three monks help rebuild the nearly extinct Bön religion. Aside from the escape of the Dalai Lama, no other Tibetan escape has been so consequential for so many.

Windhorse Warrior offers an inside look at the struggles and aspirations of the Tibetan people during the 1950s. It is a tale that weaves together the politics of occupation and resistance, an other-worldly romance between a Chinese communist and an educated Tibetan woman, and the soaring vision of the Tibetan spiritual heart. Chuang Wei Ming, a young zealot from Shanghai, arrives in Lithang—on the eastern Tibetan plateau—with a mission to prepare the people for Maoism but soon outgrows its limiting worldview. Chuang falls in love with the beautiful and intelligent Dechen, who introduces him to the richness of Tibetan Buddhism. Palden Rinpoche, Dechen’s spiritual teacher, includes Chuang in their plan for a general spiritual awakening based on the Legend of King Gesar of Ling. Together, they pursue a pure communism infused with Buddhist teachings to create an ‘enlightened society’. This is a story that extends beyond the decade in which it is set. Its message is true today in the global context of oppression and disparity, fake news, and injustice. Those who believe in a just and beautiful world will find themselves longing for an ‘enlightened society’ filled with spiritually awakened women and men, free to pursue their true potential and eager to enrich the lives of others.

Tibetan Buddhism teaches compassion toward all beings, a category that explicitly includes animals. Slaughtering animals is morally problematic at best and, at worst, completely incompatible with a religious lifestyle. Yet historically most Tibetans—both monastic and lay—have made meat a regular part of their diet. In this study of the place of vegetarianism within Tibetan religiosity, Geoffrey Barstow explores the tension between Buddhist ethics and Tibetan cultural norms to offer a novel perspective on the spiritual and social dimensions of meat eating. Food of Sinful Demons shows the centrality of vegetarianism to the cultural history of Tibet through specific ways in which nonreligious norms and ideals shaped religious beliefs and practices. Barstow offers a detailed analysis of the debates over meat eating and vegetarianism, from the first references to such a diet in the tenth century through the Chinese invasion in the 1950s. He discusses elements of Tibetan Buddhist thought—including monastic vows, the Buddhist call to compassion, and tantric antinomianism—that see meat eating as morally problematic. He then looks beyond religious attitudes to examine the cultural, economic, and environmental factors that oppose the Buddhist critique of meat, including Tibetan concepts of medicine and health, food scarcity, the display of wealth, and idealized male gender roles. Barstow argues that the issue of meat eating was influenced by a complex interplay of factors, with religious perspectives largely supporting vegetarianism while practical concerns and secular ideals pulled in the other direction. He concludes by addressing the surge in vegetarianism in contemporary Tibet in light of evolving notions of Tibetan identity and resistance against the central Chinese state. The first book to discuss this complex issue, Food of Sinful Demons is essential reading for scholars interested in Tibetan religion, history, and culture as well as global food history.

Tibetan Transitions uses the dual lenses of anthropology and demography to analyze population regulating mechanisms in traditional Tibetan societies, and to document recent transitions from high to low fertility throughout the Tibetan world. Using the author’s case studies on historical Tibet, the Tibet Autonomous Region, the highlands of Nepal, and Tibetan exile communities in South Asia, this book provides a theoretical perspective on demographic processes by linking fertility transitions with family systems, economic strategies, gender equity, and family planning ideologies. Special attention is devoted to how institutions (governmental and religious) and the agency of individuals shape reproductive outcomes in both historical and contemporary Tibetan societies, and how demographic data has been interpreted and deployed in recent political debates.

Leadership and Wisdom: Narrating the Future Responsibly gives business students and practitioners the opportunity to re-read tales, poems, myths and fables that have been interpreted by leading management scholars in order to translate the world’s folk wisdom into insightful and actionable lessons for a more responsible leadership practice. Most, if not all, cultures generate narratives that teach people how to make sense of the world and how to respond to challenges with wisdom. These sources provide a medium for character, as well as a guide for decision-making in ambiguous and uncertain circumstances. Management and organization scholars increasingly focus on what narrative wisdom traditions can teach us about leadership and organizational practices, and this book is designed to bring it to students and practitioners. Statler and Küpers have assembled a world-class team of contributors, who reflect on narratives near and dear to them, and draw out the lessons for leaders. With consistency throughout and end-of-chapter questions, this book enables all readers – including undergraduate and postgraduate students of leadership, management and organization studies, as well as interested researchers and practitioners – to reflect on the contents and implications of folk wisdom.

Prior to his thirty-year career in the first-ever academic Buddhist studies program in the United States, Geshe Sopa was the son of peasant farmers, a novice monk in a rural monastery, a virtuoso scholar monk at one of the prestigious central monasteries in Lhasa, and a survivor of the Tibetan uprising and perilous flight into exile in 1959. In "Like a Waking Dream," Geshe Sopa frankly and observantly reflects on how his life in Tibet, a monastic life of yogic simplicity, shaped and prepared him for the unexpected. The account of his years in Tibet preserves, as well, valuable insight and details about a now-vanished era of Tibetan religious culture. His is a tale of an exemplary life dedicated to learning, spiritual cultivation, and the service of others from one of the greatest living masters of Tibetan Buddhism.