“It was an exercise in holding one’s mind steady in the midst of extreme chaos and confusion,” she says, “of overriding the instinct to destroy or be destroyed of outsmarting the pitfalls that had plagued humanity for millennia.” Sacred warriorship We were then taught to model true bravery by making a different choice at that crucial moment to drop our weapons first, recognize our shared humanity, see our similarities over our differences, and bow to one another instead of fighting further.” “We would stop a few feet away,” she writes, “lock eyes with our rivals and recognize that the others are actually us, defending their territory with the same passion and intensity, two sides of the very same coin. She recalls the moment when the opposing youth “armies”, with comrades “captured “or “killed” in the skirmish as they threw flour-bags at each other, came face to face. It’s Olympic year in China and the protest captures the attention of the global media.Īs the military officer she calls “Scary Fat Man” pounds his fist on the table and she starts sweating, she drops “almost unwillinging” into meditation and begins to recall her training in the mountains many years earlier. The book opens with a Chinese interrogator spitting and yelling in her face just after she has been seized for unfurling a “Free Tibet” banner at Mount Everest base camp. Live footage from the Everest Advance Base Camp shown on CBS television news
Now, thirty years on, armed with her unconventional early training and having served on the frontlines of world efforts for peace and human rights, she has written a startling first book: Fortune Favors the Brave: An Extraordinary Memoir. He was training them, not to fight wars, but to wage peace.Īmong his recruits was Kiri Westby, a young woman born into a remarkable family in Boulder, Colorado. Their teacher, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, chose mountain valleys and secluded woodlands for their mock battles, skilfully configuring them to bring a rising generation of teenagers face to face with their own hatred, fear and aggression. They formed armies, flew flags, infiltrated each others’ forces with spies, and laid the legions of their enemies low – all under the watchful gaze of one of the greatest Buddhist masters to flee Tibet and teach meditation in the west.
A daughter of the Buddha on the frontlines of war
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