White Lama

by VEENHOF, DOUGLAS

• ISBN13: 9780385514323
• ISBN10: 0385514328
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-05-10
• Publisher: Harmony

Summary

An amazing, often overlooked story of the man who brought Yoga and Tibetan culture to America. Theos Bernard's colorful, enigmatic, and sometimes contradictory life captures an intersection of East and West that changed our world. After years of forcibly stopping foreigners at the borders, the leaders of Tibet opened the doors to their kingdom in 1937 for Theos Bernard. He was the third American to set foot in Tibet and the first American ever initiated into Tantric practices by the highest lama in Tibet. When Bernard left that sacred land, he was sent home with fifty mule loads of priceless, essential Buddhist scriptures from government and monastery vaults. Bernard brought these writings to America, where he achieved celebrity as a spiritual master. Appearing four times on the cover of the largest-circulation magazine of the day, befriending some of the most famous figures of his era, including Charles Lindbergh, Lowell Thomas, Ganna Walska, and W. Y. Evans-Wentz, and working with legendary editor Maxwell Perkins, the charismatic and controversial ;White Lama ; introduced a new vision of life and spiritual path to American culture before mysteriously disappearing in the Himalayas in 1947. Biography, travel and adventure, a history of Tibet's opening to the West, and the story of Buddhism and Yoga's arrival in America, White Lama: The Life of Tantric Yogi Theos Bernard, Tibet's Lost Emissary to the West is the first work to tell his groundbreaking story in full and is a narrative that thrills from beginning to end.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Out of a Clear Sky	p. 7
The Philosopher's Dance	p. 28
The Pageant of India	p. 56
Kalimpong	p. 71
Gyantse	p. 106
Gates of the Forbidden City	p. 138
The Pilgrim's Welcome	p. 152
Living Ritual	p. 178
The Hermit's Blessing	p. 196
The Treasure of Padmasambhava	p. 228
Ambassador of Shangri-La	p. 260
Tibetland	p. 301
Gone to the Other Side	p. 334
Epilogue	p. 382
Notes	p. 399
Acknowledgments	p. 453
Index	p. 457
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