| Theos Bernard, the White Lama: Tibet, Yoga, and American Religious Life The life and adventures of an American explorer and iconic figure in the 20th century religious counterculture movement. In 1937, Theos Casimir Bernard, the self-proclaimed "White Lama," became the third American in history to reach Lhasa, the capital city of Tibet. During his stay, he amassed the largest collection of Tibetan texts, art, and artifacts in the Western hemisphere at that time. He also documented, in both still photography and 16mm film, the age-old civilization of Tibet on the eve of its destruction by Chinese Communists. Although hailed as a brilliant pioneer by the media, Bernard also had his flaws. He was an entrepreneur propelled by grandiose schemes, a handsome man who shamelessly used his looks to bounce from rich wife to rich wife in support of his activities, and a master manipulator who concocted his own interpretation of Eastern wisdom to suit his ends. Bernard had a bright future before him but disappeared in India during the communal violence of the 1947 Partition, never to be seen again. "Well-written...A readable intellectual account of the life of an ambitious Tibetological pioneer."-- Asian EthnologyPaul G. Hackett is an editor for the American Institute of Buddhist Studies and teaches Classical Tibetan at Columbia University. He is the author of A Tibetan Verb Lexicon and numerous articles on Tibetan language and Buddhist philosophy. |