Buddha's Warriors
Mikel Dunham
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2004 Jeremy P. Tarcher
ISBN: 1585423483

The Story of the CIA-Backed Tibetan Freedom Fighters, the Chinese Invasion, & the Ultimate Fall of Tibet.

With a Foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, maps & black & photos, & chapters entitled Leopard Cubs; Rahula Draws His Bow; Shotgun Wedding; Treacherous Waters; Bloodbath and the Bodhi Tree; Gompo Tashi and the CIA; Tibetans from the Sky; Poinson Eaters; New Hopes and New Devastations, & Last Stand, Mikel Dunham, chronicles not only the rise of the Tibetan culture, steeped these many centuries in an austere form of Buddhism, he lays out, through the memories of those warriors who were there & fought the good fight, the duplicity & destruction of that culture.

Buddha's Warriors is the first book that brings to life Tibet as it was before the Chinese communist invasions & depicts the transition of peaceful monks to warriors, with the help of the CIA.

Tibet, in the last 60 years, has been so much mystified & politicized that the world at large is confused about what really happened to the “Rooftop of the World” when Mao Tse-tung invaded its borders in 1950. Buddha's Warriors dramatically juxtapositions the conflicting accounts from Beijing & Dharamsala (home of the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile). Adding to the confusion is the romanticized spin that Western writers & filmmakers have adopted in an effort to appease the popular myth of Shangri-La.

Buddha's Warriors is no fairy tale, & no movie with a happy ending, nor a free ticket out. It is still going on. Set in a narrative framework & relying heavily on the oral transcripts of the Tibetan men who actually fought the Chinese, it tells the inside story of this historic modern fight against conquest which, for many “reasons” the world has largely ignored, while drawing a vivid picture of Tibetan life before, during, & after Mao's takeover.

The firsthand accounts, gathered over a period of years, bring faces & deeply personal emotions to the forefront of this ongoing tragedy. It's a saga of brave soldiers & cowardly traitors. It's about hope against desolation, courage against repression, atheism against Buddhism. Above all, it's about what happens to an ancient civilization when it's thrust “overnight” into the modern horrors of 20th-century warfare.

Buddha's Warriors is a gripping tale of inexorable sorrow, & with the story it has to tell, there's no need for exaggeration nor drama: that is all too apparent in the dour yet often wry recountings by the men Mikel Dunham interviewed.

Outstanding!

More from Mikel Dunham:
Samye: A Prilgrimage to the Birthplace of Tibetan Buddhism
Casting for Murder
Stilled Life
(06/05/05)

Rebecca