Born in Melbourne in 1943, Adrian Feldmann was one of the first Westerners to become a monk in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. On the eve of a three-year, solitary meditation retreat, he recounts the inner and outer journeys that lead him to Nepal where, in the early 1970's, he met two Tibetan lamas, Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. They were among the first lamas to teach Buddhism to Westerners. In the 1970's, Adrian Feldmann was a young doctor wrapped up in the hippie counter-culture, experimenting with mind-altering drugs and studying Eastern mysticism. Seeking a greater purpose to his life, he began to travel. Following his friends on the hippie trail, he travelled through Afghanistan where he was impressed by the spiritual power of Islam. Inspired by his reading of Taoist philosophy, he and some friends bought a converted rowing boat and sailed down the Indus River, searching for freedom and a more authentic way of living. What he found launched him on the spiritual path to Buddhism. This personal account of one man's search for happiness is often humorous and sometimes shocking. Adrian Feldmann doesn't shirk revealing the mistakes and failings which help to highlight his personal message of hope. He wants us to know that the ego undermines our happiness and fortifies our habitual, destructive emotions. His spiritual path is a quest to "slay the ego," and his life story is a parable for modern times. This title was first published in 2005 by Lothian Books as a paperback book. This updated ebook version is published by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive and includes a postscript from the author recounting the continuing saga of his spiritual path. The Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive is a non-profit organization established to make the Buddhist teachings of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche freely accessible in many ways, including on our website for instant reading, listening or downloading, and as digital and printed books. Our website offers immediate access to thousands of pages of teachings and hundreds of audio recordings by some of the greatest lamas of our time. Our photo gallery and our ever-popular books are also freely accessible. You can find out more about becoming a supporter of the Archive and see all we have to offer by visiting the LYWA website. Thank you!

One of the best ways to understand history is through eye-witness accounts. Ting-Xing Ye’s riveting first book, A Leaf in the Bitter Wind, is a memoir of growing up in Maoist China. It was an astonishing coming of age through the turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution (1966 - 1974). In the wave of revolutionary fervour, peasants neglected their crops, exacerbating the widespread hunger. While Ting-Xing was a young girl in Shanghai, her father’s rubber factory was expropriated by the state, and he was demoted to a labourer. A botched operation left him paralyzed from the waist down, and his health deteriorated rapidly since a capitalist’s well-being was not a priority. He died soon after, and then Ting-Xing watched her mother’s struggle with poverty end in stomach cancer. By the time she was thirteen, Ting-Xing Ye was an orphan, entrusted with her brothers and sisters to her Great-Aunt, and on welfare. Still, the Red Guards punished the children for being born into the capitalist class. Schools were being closed; suicide was rampant; factories were abandoned for ideology; distrust of friends and neighbours flourished. Ting-Xing was sent to work on a distant northern prison farm at sixteen, and survived six years of backbreaking labour and severe conditions. She was mentally tortured for weeks until she agreed to sign a false statement accusing friends of anti-state activities. Somehow finding the time to teach herself English, often by listening to the radio, she finally made it to Beijing University in 1974 as the Revolution was on the wane — though the acquisition of knowledge was still frowned upon as a bourgeois desire and study was discouraged. Readers have been stunned and moved by this simply narrated personal account of a 1984-style ideology-gone-mad, where any behaviour deemed to be bourgeois was persecuted with the ferocity and illogic of a witch trial, and where a change in politics could switch right to wrong in a moment. The story of both a nation and an individual, the book spans a heady 35 years of Ye’s life in China, until her eventual defection to Canada in 1987 — and the wonderful beginning of a romance with Canadian author William Bell. The book was published in 1997. The 1990s saw the publication of several memoirs by Chinese now settled in North America. Ye’s was not the first, yet earned a distinguished place as one of the most powerful, and the only such memoir written from Canada. It is the inspiring story of a woman refusing to “drift with the stream” and fighting her way through an impossible, unjust system. This compelling, heart-wrenching story has been published in Germany, Japan, the US, UK and Australia, where it went straight to #1 on the bestseller list and has been reprinted several times; Dutch, French and Turkish editions will appear in 2001.

Filled with lush illustrations, this counting book reveals both the pleasure and the tranquility of the Japanese garden, while introducing haiku poetry, with eleven poems that are simple and easy to follow. Follow along as the young girl explores the beauty of the garden, and discover the fun of haiku.

Return to the critically-acclaimed world of Joss Whedon’s Firefly and Serenity, in an all new graphic novel spotlighting Hoban “Wash” Washburne, pilot of the spaceship Serenity...who has just realized he’s about to die. As Wash’s life flashes before him, he revisits untold moments in his life, from growing up on a planet ravaged by pollution, to meeting the woman of his dreams in Zoe. And in those final moments, Wash will reach out to connect with a surprising someone he never thought possible to meet...proving that some bonds transcend our mortal coils. With original short stories from superstar creative teams, learn the untold past, present, and maybe even future of the best pilot in the ‘Verse—Hoban “Wash” Washburne."

A Leaf in the Wind combines the creative output of a mother and son. Rose Marie Prins started work on the images for A Leaf in the Wind during a residency at an artists' retreat in India shortly after her son, Jaro Majer, passed away. These paintings, images of Indian leaves in Sumi ink on a watercolor ground, are filled with color as if attempting to dispel her grief. Jaro Majer wrote the majority of the poems in A Leaf in the Wind during the period in the late '90s when he stayed at a spiritual retreat in the Catskill Mountains of New York. These poems express the heartfelt yearning of a young man's search for the Truth.

In this original Outlander novella, Diana Gabaldon reveals what really happened to Roger MacKenzie Wakefield’s parents. Orphaned during World War II, Roger believed that his mother died during the London Blitz, and that his father, an RAF pilot, was killed in combat. But in An Echo in the Bone, Roger discovers that this may not be the whole story. Now, in “A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows,” readers learn the truth. Praise for Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series “All you’ve come to expect from Gabaldon . . . adventure, history, romance, fantasy.”—The Arizona Republic, on An Echo in the Bone “A grand adventure written on a canvas that probes the heart, weighs the soul and measures the human spirit across ten generations.”—CNN, on The Fiery Cross “Escapist historical fiction at its best.”—San Antonio Express-News, on Drums of Autumn “A feast for ravenous readers of eighteenth-century Scottish history, heroism and romance.”—Kirkus Reviews, on Outlander