TWIB II-11
Jan. 20th, 2008 08:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanFrom the week of 12/10-12-16:
1) Comes The Peace – Daja Wangchuk Meston
This short but gritty book is the autobiography of Daja Wangchuk Meston, who came to prominence after his arrest, detention and interrogation by Chinese officials while he was conducting human impact research into an international development project with the potential to adversely affect Tibetan cultural autonomy. It is with this incident that Meston chooses to open Comes The Peace, and it’s equal parts gripping and harrowing. Meston then goes back in time to tell the histories of several generations of his mother’s family, leading up to her marriage to his father, their peripatetic hippy existence in Europe, and most portentous, his mother’s decision to take her family to Nepal, where she became a Buddhist nun, and abandoned her son to the life of a racial outcast first with a Tibetan foster family, and then as a novice monk in another monastery. It is this culmination to a series of dysfunctional relationships that drives most of the book, and indeed Meston’s own life course. He spends much time reflecting on the emotional love his mother never gave him, how this is the result of her own unfortunate family history (and that of his father’s family as well), and how its fallout has influenced his own difficult relationships. Meston’s Buddhist training has paid off; these reminiscences are refreshingly free of the whining and angsting one might expect, making them all the more heartbreaking. Meston also focuses his attention on these relationships to good effect--far from aggrandizing his own role in the momentous events of his adult life (which I won’t spoil here), he shows how they were the result of his difficult past, and not any misguided sense of heroics. In short, Comes The Peace is a well written and engaging reflection on how interrelationships affect ourselves and those around us.
That will be all.
1) Comes The Peace – Daja Wangchuk Meston
This short but gritty book is the autobiography of Daja Wangchuk Meston, who came to prominence after his arrest, detention and interrogation by Chinese officials while he was conducting human impact research into an international development project with the potential to adversely affect Tibetan cultural autonomy. It is with this incident that Meston chooses to open Comes The Peace, and it’s equal parts gripping and harrowing. Meston then goes back in time to tell the histories of several generations of his mother’s family, leading up to her marriage to his father, their peripatetic hippy existence in Europe, and most portentous, his mother’s decision to take her family to Nepal, where she became a Buddhist nun, and abandoned her son to the life of a racial outcast first with a Tibetan foster family, and then as a novice monk in another monastery. It is this culmination to a series of dysfunctional relationships that drives most of the book, and indeed Meston’s own life course. He spends much time reflecting on the emotional love his mother never gave him, how this is the result of her own unfortunate family history (and that of his father’s family as well), and how its fallout has influenced his own difficult relationships. Meston’s Buddhist training has paid off; these reminiscences are refreshingly free of the whining and angsting one might expect, making them all the more heartbreaking. Meston also focuses his attention on these relationships to good effect--far from aggrandizing his own role in the momentous events of his adult life (which I won’t spoil here), he shows how they were the result of his difficult past, and not any misguided sense of heroics. In short, Comes The Peace is a well written and engaging reflection on how interrelationships affect ourselves and those around us.
That will be all.