Chapter 7 - Life-Changing Travels in the Tibetan Diaspora

Summary

Since the 1950 Chinese invasion, many encounters with Tibetan Buddhism have taken place in the Tibetan diaspora. Andrew Harvey’s A Journey in Ladakh explains how his life and career as a writer were changed by a sojourn in this region of India. Jamie Zeppa describes three years she spent as a teacher in Bhutan, where Buddhist teachings, encounters with local people, and marriage to a Bhutanese man led to life-altering changes. She brings ideas about no-self into tension and dialogue with Western values related to selfhood, including moral integrity, romantic love, and the educational goal of individual expression. In Dreaming Me, Jan Willis raises important questions about how no-self is understood by people who have been denied selfhood, such as African Americans. Stephen Schettini’s The Novice culminates in a deconversion when he decides that belonging to a Buddhist community threatens his independence and integrity. These four writers are more assertive than most other Western Buddhists about the need to define and claim autonomous selfhood. Yet, even as they question the idea of no-self, encounters in the Tibetan diaspora led to significant self-transformations.