The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk - Tapa dura

"My story is not a glamorous one of high lamas and exotic ritual, but of how a simple monk succeeded in surviving the destructive forces of a totalitarian ideology". Thus begins Palden Gyatso's fascinating and horrifying tale of his life as a Buddhist monk. Born in a Tibetan village in 1933, Gyatso was educated at a prestigious fourteenth-century monastery, Deprung. When Tibet was invaded in 1950 by the Chinese, however, Deprung was razed and Gyatso was forced along with thousands of other monks into hard-labor camps, where he spent the next twenty-five years. Using his own torture and trials as a metaphor, Gyatso presents a vivid examination of Chinese oppression and the indomitable importance of Tibetan culture.