What a timely article! After your interview of Vicki McKenzie, I promptly read Cave in the Snow and the Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi and went on to Tenzin Palmo's The Heroic Heart and am now starting Reincarnation: the Boy Lama. After you study these people's lives, you do wonder how you can possibly progress toward enlightenment w…
What a timely article! After your interview of Vicki McKenzie, I promptly read Cave in the Snow and the Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi and went on to Tenzin Palmo's The Heroic Heart and am now starting Reincarnation: the Boy Lama. After you study these people's lives, you do wonder how you can possibly progress toward enlightenment without giving everything away and moving to Dharamshala or at least somewhere in the Indian Himalayas! But Tenzin Palmo's book The Heroic Heart is also helpful in that respect because she explains how we can take the challenges of our mundane lives as precious ways to become more mindful and overcome our uncontrolled reactions. Keep up the great work. You always bring a welcome bright spark of dharma teaching to your emails and blogs.
Thank you so very much for your very kind message, Donna - I am delighted that you've found the same kind of inspiration in Vicki's and Tenzin Palmo's writings that I do! I't 's true that we often feel a tug Dharamshala-wards when reading these books. But as my kind lama, Geshe Loden used to say, touching his heart, "You don't need to go to Bodhgaya to find enlightenment. You find it here!"
What a timely article! After your interview of Vicki McKenzie, I promptly read Cave in the Snow and the Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi and went on to Tenzin Palmo's The Heroic Heart and am now starting Reincarnation: the Boy Lama. After you study these people's lives, you do wonder how you can possibly progress toward enlightenment without giving everything away and moving to Dharamshala or at least somewhere in the Indian Himalayas! But Tenzin Palmo's book The Heroic Heart is also helpful in that respect because she explains how we can take the challenges of our mundane lives as precious ways to become more mindful and overcome our uncontrolled reactions. Keep up the great work. You always bring a welcome bright spark of dharma teaching to your emails and blogs.
Thank you so very much for your very kind message, Donna - I am delighted that you've found the same kind of inspiration in Vicki's and Tenzin Palmo's writings that I do! I't 's true that we often feel a tug Dharamshala-wards when reading these books. But as my kind lama, Geshe Loden used to say, touching his heart, "You don't need to go to Bodhgaya to find enlightenment. You find it here!"