Jetsunma

A surprisingly sophisticated and creepy analysis of the life and ministry of Alice Zeoli, the first western woman recognized as a Tibetan lama reincarnate, and the Buddhist center she started in rural Maryland. The book begins as a feel-good tome about Tibetan Buddhism in the US, but by the midpoint of the story something feels wrong, and by the end we're fully engaged in investigative journalism leading to metaphysical questions about cults and cult leaders. Martha Sherrill, a Washington Post reporter by trade, appears to have changed radically her opinion of Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo as the book progressed, and the gradual shift in tone from enthusiastic interest to a more detached skepticism is interesting in itself. Fortunately no one drinks spiked Kool-Aid!

This book, combined with Eliot Weinberger's slam of the Naropa Institute, which I believe was in:



makes me want to re-assess my beliefs about what I'd come to regard as a relatively harmless religion.