Flight of the Bön Monks: War, Persecution, and the Salvation of Tibet's Oldest Religion

by Harvey Rice, Jackie Cole, Dalai Lama (Foreword by)

Overview

An inside account of the Chinese invasion of Tibet told through the voices of three persecuted monks

• Shares the true story of three monks’ heroic escape from occupied Tibet and the subsequent rebirth of the Bön religion in exile

• Introduces Bön, Tibet’s oldest religion, and a traditional way of life extinguished by foreign occupation

• Reveals details of the 1950 Chinese invasion of Tibet and the exodus of thousands of Tibetans to neighboring countries

Providing an inside view into the Chinese occupation of Tibet and the tenets of Bön, one of the world’s oldest but least known religions, this book chronicles the true story of three Bön monks who heroically escaped occupied Tibet and went on to rebuild their culture through incredible resilience, determination, and passion. After taking his vows to become a Bön monk and completing a pilgrimage around 22,000-foot Mount Kailash, the holiest mountain in Tibet, Tenzin Namdak envisions a life of quiet contemplation at Menri, Bön’s mother monastery. Instead, he finds himself fleeing for his life across the highest and most difficult terrain on the planet.

After Tenzin’s escape party is ambushed and he is severely wounded, Tenzin is taken to a concentration camp, where he overcomes his nearly fatal wound before making an arduous escape from Tibet over the daunting Himalayas.

The other two monks, lifelong friends Samten Karmay and Sangye Tenzin, witness Tibet’s capital explode in a violent insurrection against Chinese rule. Escaping to Nepal, they worry about the survival of the Bön religion and begin collecting scattered works of Bön scripture. A chance meeting with British scholar David Snellgrove brings the three monks together and dramatically changes their lives. Tenzin founds a Bön settlement in exile in India, Sangye is chosen as the thirty-third Menri Trizen, Bön’s highest office, and together the three monks help rebuild the nearly extinct Bön religion. Aside from the escape of the Dalai Lama, no other escape from Tibet has been so consequential for so many.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644118580
Publisher:	Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
Publication date:	02/27/2024
Pages:	296
Sales rank:	139,395
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Harvey Rice is a journalist with more than 40 years of experience, working at both U.S. newspapers and international news agencies. He lives in Galveston, Texas

Jackie Cole has studied Bön for more than two decades and has taken many retreats with the main characters of the book, who have given their blessings and permission to share their story. She lives in Galveston, Texas.

Table of Contents

Foreword by the Dalai Lama

Prologue
A Deadly Encounter at 15,000 Feet

1 Beginnings

2 An Artist Becomes a Monk

3 Four Years in a Cave

4 Invasion

5 Recluse Nation

6 Best Friends

7 Tibet’s Harvard

8 Broken Promises

9 Iron Hell

10 Flight

11 Forsaken Vows

12 Enter the CIA

13 Ambush

14 Prisoners

15 Tenzin’s Escape

16 Refugees in a Foreign Land

17 Snellgrove

18 London

19 Return

20 Promised Land

Epilogue
Where They Are Now

Main Characters and Glossary

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

Flight of the Bön Monks is a magnificent achievement on many levels. Cole and Rice have not only preserved a vital piece of neglected history, but they present this enthralling tale—virtually unknown in the West—in the form of a riveting adventure story as thrilling as any Jack London ever wrote. I fell in love with the heroic Bön monks, the luminous religion they risked their lives to save, and the book that recounts their inspiring story.

Texas Literary Hall of Fame inductee and author of Sarah Bird

With six decades of going on adventures to wild places, I’m often asked if I have a favorite. The answer is easy—it’s the remote, high Changthang Plateau. Flight of the Bön Monks will take you there.

author of The Big Open: On Foot Across Tibet&# Rick Ridgeway

Before Buddhism came to Tibet, the indigenous Bön culture had flourished for millennia, and much of what we know today as Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism has been directly influenced by that culture. So when the Chinese decided that it was in their best interests to eradicate religion from the Tibetan plateau, the Bön suffered every bit as grievously as the Buddhists. Flight of the Bön Monks tells the remarkable story of bravery confronted by darkness; it outlines the escape from Tibet of several of the most senior and important Bön monks and how they have courageously kept their religion alive even though they were so rudely expelled from their native land. A story for our troubled times that needs to be told and needs to be read.

author of Breathing through the Whole Body and The Will Johnson

Flight of the Bön Monks is a riveting tale, skillfully layered with despair, adventure, terror, and hope, but ultimately a story of human triumph. This emotionally powerful book isn’t just a chronicle of courage, it is a poignant reminder of why Tibet needs to stay in our collective conscience.

author of the Inspector Shan series and the Bone R Eliot Pattison

This book presents the fascinating life stories of three Bön monks, Yongdzin Tenzin Namdak Rinpoche, Samten Karmay, and Sangye Tenzin, who later became the thirty-third abbot of Menri Monstery, the seat of the Bön religion, the oldest religion of Tibet. The book, however, is much more than stories about their courage and resilience while escaping from war-ravaged Tibet. It is also a highly valuable historical record of the survival and development of Bön in exile. Being an old religion with a small number of followers, Bön has been shrouded in mystery, legends, and misunderstanding. In China, Bön was traditionally referred to as the ‘black religion’ due to the popular belief that its followers covered their heads with black cloth. Fortunately, through careful and meticulous research, the two authors recorded a new chapter of the ancient Bön religion and present it to general readers in a smooth and catching writing style. Reading this book helped me to better understand Bön religion and enriched my knowledge of the Tibetan diaspora. I am grateful to the authors and congratulate them for a book well written and work well done.

author of Tibet in Agony and When the Iron Bird Fl Jianglin Li

2024-01-26
Rice and Cole present a riveting history of the Chinese invasion of Tibet that highlights the plight of adherents of the ancient Bön religion.

Relatively few have heard of the Bön religion despite the fact that it was long the dominant spiritual practice in Tibet. Ultimately, it was supplanted by Buddhism, though the two religions share many similarities. Central to both are a monastic renouncement of worldly affairs, a commitment to enlightenment through meditative practice, and a belief in the availability of wisdom to all, principles lucidly discussed by the authors. At the heart of the Bön religion is the unflinching recognition of the pain of life, with spiritual emancipation the only antidote: “To avoid the suffering that causes unhappiness and realize enlightenment, true peace must be discovered within each practitioner. Such a discovery is done through meditation and purifying negative thoughts caused by the five poisons: anger, desire, ignorance, jealousy, and pride.” When the communists rose to power under Chairman Mao Zedong, they promised to leave Bön adherents to their own devices and undertake a policy of non-interference, a position they continued to assert as late as 1956. China eventually invaded Tibet, however, compelling the Dalai Lama to flee and Bön monks to either follow suit or violate their vows of peace and take up arms against their oppressors. Rice and Cole grippingly chronicle the perilous flight of three monks—Yongdzin Tenzin Namdak Rinpoche, Samten Karmay, and Sangye Tenzin—from Chinese aggression and their valiant attempts to preserve a religion the communists inarguably intended to eliminate. Tenzin Namdak was entrusted with the protection of the Nyame Kundung, a 600-year-old reliquary that contained the remains of Nyame Sherab Gyaltsen, the founder and first abbot of Menri, the most revered of the Bön monasteries. Samten Karmay and Sangye Tenzin devoted themselves to the preservation of the religion’s sacred texts by establishing a printing press to reproduce them, a task they undertook with the help of David Snellgrove, a famous British scholar.

The authors demonstrate a magisterial command of the historical material, rigorously documenting both the beleaguered history of the Bön religion and the self-interested involvement of the United States. A program run by the CIA was, at least officially, designed to arm and train Tibetan rebels, but, per the authors, it seems clear now that the American government was only interested in dealing a blow to communist interests, not defending the sovereignty of Tibet. For all its impressive scholarly scrupulousness, the book reads like a dramatic novel, filled with suspense and captivating tales of astonishing heroism. Many times, Tenzin Namdak nearly died carrying the reliquary to safety—he was shot and imprisoned and still refused to surrender his mission. It is heartbreaking to consider the moral predicament of the many monks who were spiritually committed to non-violence but were compelled to betrayed their vows to defend themselves, their religion, and the people they loved most. Rice and Cole should be credited for their own efforts to keep the Bön religion alive, and to do so in a way that is as dramatically consuming as it is intellectually edifying.

A remarkable work of historical insight and dramatic power.

Kirkus Reviews