Lama Yeshe did not see a car until he was fifteen. In the quiet Tibetan village where he grew up, children ran among yaks. The pace of life was slow, governed by the changing of the seasons.
The arrival of the Chinese army in 1959 disrupted everything. He and his brother were forced to flee on foot through Tibet and the Himalayas for ten months, until they found refuge in India. Of the three hundred members who left, only thirteen survived.
He would eventually move to the US, where he experienced the excesses of the hippie generation, before reforming and embarking on the spiritual journey that would make him one of the most notable Tibetan monks in the West.
Now, from the position of abbot of the Scottish monastery of Samye Ling, the first Tibetan Buddhist centre in Europe, Lama Yeshe reflects on his extraordinary life and on the wellspring of compassion and resi...read more