![]() ![]() ![]() Two years later I graduated from college and found my way overland through Europe, Istanbul, Iran, and Afghanistan to fabled India, where I met my first lamas: Thubten Yeshe on a hilltop overlooking Nepal’s Katmandu Valley and Kalu Rinpoche in Darjeeling, near where Lama Govinda had met his own root guru, Tomo Geshe. Guenther-the young seeker was off and running. The White Clouds led me to Evans-Wentz’s Tibetan Book of the Dead, Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, and René Daumal’s Mount Analogue, as well as to the significant works of Alan Watts, Joseph Campbell, Huston Smith, and Herbert V. I struggled with my Brooklyn-bred mouth to pronounce the Sanskrit and Tibetanized mantras I first read in that early book and asked my calculus teacher from India for help. On winter nights in my college dorm in snowy Buffalo, New York, I read his marvelous tales of Tibet and dreamed of likewise meditating at the feet of the enlightened old Tibetan masters, saints, and sages while imbibing their secret teachings.ĭevouring with my eyes the strikingly beautiful and mysterious images of Buddha and the sacred temple architecture in the Govindas’ photos, as well as some of their colorful paintings and sketches, I too wanted to become a Buddhist and an eventual Buddha, in order to help edify and enlighten and make peace in this volatile world. ![]() I was amazed to find out that the learned and accomplished Lama Anagarika Govinda-whom I mentally put in a class with the famously reclusive Trappist monk Thomas Merton, author of the classic autobiography The Seven Story Mountain-was actually a German guy who had fought in Italy during World War I, had been a monk in Ceylon, and was now married to a flamboyant, upper-class Indian artist named Li Gotami. I immediately bought his autobiographical The Way of the White Clouds, a spiritual account of his trailblazing 1930s and ’40s Tibetan pilgrimages, which helped set me upon a similar journey toward what Govinda lovingly called The Land of the Thousand Buddhas. Lama Govinda’s was a name I first heard when I was in college in the late 1960s from either Baba Ram Dass, Allen Ginsberg, or Gary Snyder, all of whom had already met him in India. Questions and Answers: Human Dimensions Seminar, June 1975įoreword Ground Breaking, Bridge Building by Lama Surya Das Drugs and Meditation: Consciousness Expansion and Disintegration versus Concentration and Spiritual Regenerationħ. Teilhard de Chardin in the Mirror of Eastern ThoughtĤ. The Act of Will and Its Role in the Practice of Meditationģ. Introduction: Within the White Cloud: Life and Work of Lama Govinda, by Richard PowerĢ. The lost teachings of Lama Govinda: living wisdom from a modern Tibetan master /ġ. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Photo on page ii courtesy of the Human Dimensions Institute. ![]() Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.Ĭover design, book design, and typesetting by Kirsten Hansen Pott While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book. Learn more about Richard Power and his work at Find more books like this at Copyright © 2007 by Richard Power ![]()
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