From the Heart of Tibet

Book excerpt: "The story of Drikung Chetsang Rinpoche’s life," notes the Dalai Lama, "encompasses a remarkably broad range of Tibetan experience over the past fifty years." This is the story of a young boy, born in 1946 to inherit the role of high-ranking lama. When the Chinese army invaded, his family escaped the country, but he and the other monks in his monastery were rounded up by soldiers and sent to an indoctrination school. After surviving almost two decades of the Cultural Revolution in Tibet, during which time lamas and aristocrats were persecuted and jailed, Chetsang Rinpoche walked out of Tibet alone and found his way to Kathmandu, Nepal. Eventually, after living as a refugee and an immigrant, he fully took on leadership of the Drikung lineage by founding the Drikung Kagyu Institute in India. Since then the teachings of this lineage have spread around the world after nearly being lost.