Tworkov Helen - In love with the world: a monks journey through the bardos of living and dying

With this book, we enter into the interior life of a remarkable young Buddhist teacher. After setting off by himself on a wandering retreat, he immediately encounters fear, aversion, sickness, and near death. Yet the same emotional and physical difficulties that would throw the average person for a loop become opportunities for Mingyur Rinpoche to work with his mind, and to deepen his commitment to transforming adversity into awakening. His willingness to describe this process in such intimate detail has been an immense help to my own path and makes this one of the most inspiring books I have ever read.

P EMA C HDRN , author of When Things Fall Apart

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoches life-changing adventure carries us with him and teaches us how to find the unshakable heart amid it all.

J ACK K ORNFIELD , author of A Path with Heart

In this vivid, compelling account, Mingyur Rinpoche reveals his own struggle and awakening as he faces the loss of worldly identity and the threat of dying itself.

T ARA B RACH , author of Radical Acceptance and True Refuge

On the path to enlightenment, Mingyur Rinpoche had to escape from the sanctity of a Buddhist monastery, where he lived a privileged cossetted life, to find himself in the down-and-out railway stations, malodorous toilets, and flophouses of India. His misadventures along the way make for a rollicking travelogue. And yet this slim book also moved me and left me with a better appreciation of Tibetan Buddhism than so many weightier tomes that Ive struggled to understand.

B ARBARA D EMICK , author of Nothing to Envy

Through the unfolding wisdom of his personal story, Mingyur Rinpoche shows us the true value of investigating and freeing our minds. A courageous trailblazer, he illuminates a clear path, making it more accessible for others.

T ARA B ENNETT- G OLEMAN , author of Emotional Alchemy

Part thriller, part deeply personal autobiography, and part Buddhist teachings on how to live a meaningful life, this is an extraordinary book. It is a cliffhanger that recounts the journey of a modern wandering yogi who courageously gave up everything to challenge his mind and heart and live in the most difficult of circumstances. A gripping narrative of how the process of dying, letting go of our fixed selves and constraining habits, can liberate the human spirit and promote flourishing, this book has something profoundly important to teach each of us.

R ICHARD J . D AVIDSON , bestselling author of The Emotional Life of Your Brain, co-author of Altered Traits, and founder and director, Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Im in love with In Love with the World. This artfully told spiritual adventure casts a spellyou cant put it down, and you dont want it to end.

D ANIEL G OLEMAN , author of Emotional Intelligence

J UNE 11, 2011

I FINISHED WRITING THE letter. It was past ten oclock on a hot night in Bodh Gaya in north-central India, and right now no one else knew. I placed the letter on a low wooden table in front of the chair that I often sat on. It would be discovered sometime the following afternoon. There was nothing left to do. I turned off the lights and pushed back the curtain. Outside, it was pitch black, with no sign of activity, just as I had anticipated. By ten thirty, I began pacing in the dark and checking my watch.

Twenty minutes later I picked up my backpack and left the room, locking the door behind me. In the dark, I tiptoed downstairs to the foyer. At night, a heavy metal bolt secures two thick wooden doors from the inside. Narrow rectangular push-out windows parallel each door, and are almost as long. I waited for the watchman to pass. Once I calculated that he was the farthest from the front door, I opened a window and stepped out onto the small marble porch. I closed the window, flew down the six steps to the brick walkway, and quickly moved behind the bushes to the left.

A high metal fence surrounds the compound. The side gate on the alley stays open during the day, but at night its locked and a guard sits nearby. The front gate is rarely used. High and wide, it opens onto a bypass that connects the main roads that run parallel to each other. The two metal panels of the gate are secured by a heavy chain and a large padlock. To leave without being noticed, I would have to stay out of the watchmans sight for his next round. I waited in the bushes for him to pass, once again calculated his distance, and ran the hundred feet to the main gate.

I threw my backpack over the gate, aiming for the grassy area to the side of the blacktop so that it would land quietly. Besides, my father had always told me: When youre on a journey and you come to a wall, always throw your pack over first, because then you will be sure to follow. I unlocked the padlock, pushed back the gate, and slipped through.

My heart burst with fear and exhilaration. The darkness of night seemed to light up and absorb all my thoughts, leaving just the shocking sensation of being on the other side of the fence, in the dead of night, alone outside in the world for the first time in my adult life. I had to force myself to move. I reached around through the bars to close the padlock, then I picked up my pack and hid on the side of the road. Two minutes before eleven, and I was in-between one life and the next. My breath thundered in my ears; my stomach tightened. I could hardly believe that so far the scheme had worked perfectly. My senses intensified and seemed to extend far beyond my conceptual mind. The world suddenly became luminous, and I felt as if I could see for milesbut I could not see the taxi.