Book Club Original Saved 2022 Mar – 2023 May

 

[distance1]Join the Lhagsam Book Club! We are a relaxed and easy-going group, we love to read and discuss.

[line] The book club membership is open to anyone who is interested to meet and discuss the books we read. Please see below for the dates and the book for each gathering. We selected these books collectively for 2022 and the first half of 2023. The list includes a wide array of genres mainly in Buddhism, spirituality and mind science. The meeting place is currently online, conducted via zoom.  When our physical centre is reopened, the meeting will be of a hybrid format.  The Zürcher locals can meet at the centre, while international members can join via a zoom session. You are welcome to join as many times as you like or also just once. Register here by selecting one or more multiple meetings.  We will send you the zoom link before the meeting. *Although we try to keep those dates, dates might change after you submit your registration. In the event of date changes, we will update the individual event page and communicate it by emails. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

Date	Book	Short Summery
March 25th, 2022 19:00 (CET)	‘Cave in the Snow’ by Vicki Mackenzie	This is the incredible story of Tenzin Palmo, a remarkable woman who spent 12 years alone in a cave 13,000 feet up in the Himalayas. At the age of 20, Diane Perry, looking to fill a void in her life, entered a monastery in India, the only woman amongst hundreds of monks, and began her battle against the prejudice that had excluded women from enlightenment for thousands of years. Thirteen years later, Diane Perry a.k.a. Tenzin Palmo secluded herself in a remote cave 13,000 feet up in the Himalayas, where she stayed for twelve years. In her mountain retreat, she face unimaginable cold, wild animals, floods, snow and rockfalls, grew her own food and slept in a traditional wooden meditation box, three feet square. She never lay down. Tenzin emerged from the cave with a determination to build a nunnery in northern India to revive the Togdenma lineage, a long–forgotten female spiritual elite. She has traveled around the world to find support for her cause, meeting with spiritual leaders from the Pope to Desmond Tutu.
May 27th, 2022 19:00 (CET)	‘The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World’ by Dalai Lama XIV, Desmond Tutu, Douglas Carlton Abrams	The occasion was a big birthday. And it inspired two close friends to get together in Dharamsala for a talk about something very important to them. The friends were His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The subject was joy. Both winners of the Nobel Prize, both great spiritual masters and moral leaders of our time, they are also known for being among the most infectiously happy people on the planet. From the beginning the book was envisioned as a three-layer birthday cake: their own stories and teachings about joy, the most recent findings in the science of deep happiness, and the daily practices that anchor their own emotional and spiritual lives. Both the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu have been tested by great personal and national adversity, and here they share their personal stories of struggle and renewal.
July 22nd, 2022 19:00 (CET)	‘The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying’ by Sogyal Rinpoche	The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, written by Sogyal Rinpoche in 1992, is a presentation of the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead or Bardo Thodol. The author wrote, “I have written the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying as the quintessence of the heart-advice of all my masters, to be a new Tibetan Book of the Dead and a Tibetan Book of Life”. The book explores the messages of impermanence, evolution, karma and rebirth, the nature of the mind, and the spiritual practices for the moment of death.
September 23rd, 2022 19:00 (CET)	‘Step Away from Paradise: The True Story of a Tibetan Lama’s Journey to a Land of Immortality’ by Thomas K. Shor	A Step Away From Paradise tells the story of Lama Tulshuk Lingpa’s life and his unlikely expedition to a land beyond cares while reflecting on what this means for the rest of us. It draws on both research and extensive interviews with the surviving members of this extraordinary expedition. The book is richly illustrated with portraits of those who went with Tulshuk Lingpa and the places he traveled to. The book also delves into the tradition within Tibetan Buddhism of Shambhala and the hidden valleys, which mirror legends around the world of utopias and lands of milk and honey, thus showing that the quest for the hidden land is a universal urge of humanity.
November 26th, 2022 19:00 (CET)	‘Enlightened Vagabond: The Life and Teachings of Patrul Rinpoche’ by Matthieu Ricard	Colorful stories about and profound teachings of Patrul Rinpoche, one of the most impactful teachers and thinkers in the Tibetan tradition from the nineteenth century. The life and teachings of the wandering yogi Patrul Rinpoche – a revered Buddhist master and scholar of nineteenth-century Tibet – come alive in true stories gathered and translated by the French Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard over more than thirty years, based on the oral accounts of great contemporary teachers as well as written sources. Patrul’s life story reveals the nature of a highly realized being as he transmits the Dharma in everything he does, teaching both simple nomads and great lamas in ways that are often unconventional and even humorous, but always with uncompromising authenticity
January 27th, 2023 19:00 (CET)	‘Becoming Bodhisattvas: A Guidebook for Compassionate Action’ by Pema Chödrön	Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön presents a friendly and encouraging guide to spiritual practice for all those who want to take up the path of the bodhisattva, one who aspires to live life with courage, generosity, patience, fearlessness, and compassion. The Way of the Bodhisattva, composed by Buddhist scholar Shantideva in the eighth century, has long been treasured as an indispensable guide to enlightened living, offering a window into the greatest potential within us all. It presents a comprehensive view of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition’s highest ideal—to commit oneself to the life of a bodhisattva warrior, a person who is wholeheartedly dedicated to the freedom and common good of all beings. Pema Chödrön here invites you to journey more deeply into this liberating way of life, presenting Shantideva’s text verse-by-verse and offering both illuminating stories and practical exercises to enrich the text and bring its timeless teachings to life in our world today.
March 24th, 2023 19:00 (CET)	‘My Journey To Lhasa: The Classic Story of the Only Western Woman Who Succeeded in Entering the Forbidden City’ by Alexandra David-Neel	An exemplary travelogue of danger and achievement by the Frenchwoman Madame Alexandra David-Neel of her 1923 expedition to Tibet. In order to penetrate Tibet and reach Lhasa, she used her fluency of Tibetan dialects and culture, disguised herself as a beggar with yak hair extensions and inked skin and tackled some of the roughest terrain and climate in the World. With the help of her young companion, Yongden, she willingly suffered the primitive travel conditions, frequent outbreaks of disease, the ever–present danger of border control and the military to reach her goal. The determination and sheer physical fortitude it took for this woman, delicately reared in Paris and Brussels, is inspiration for men and women alike. David–Neel is famous for being the first Western woman to have been received by any Dalai Lama and as a passionate scholar and explorer of Asia, hers is one of the most remarkable of all travellers tales.
May 26th, 2023 19:00 (CET)	‘As It Is, Vol.1: Essential Teachings from the Dzogchen Perspective’ By Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche	The teachings presented in this book are primarily selected from talks given by the Dzogchen master, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, in 1994 and 1995, during the last two years of his life. The unambiguous Buddhist perception of reality is transmitted in profound, simple language by one of the foremost masters in the Tibetan tradition. Dzogchen is to take the final result, the state of enlightenment itself, as path. This book offers the direct oral instructions of a master who inspired admiration, delight in practice, and deep trust and confidence in the Buddhist way.

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