The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 22 May 2007
by Daja Wangchuk Meston
with Clare Ansberry
Westerners who look upon Tibetan culture with a kind of reverence are given to cooing over sensitive photographs of groups of boy monks, gathered in the shadow of a handsome monastery, smiling from behind their red robes. It is a romantic image, and its appeal stems from a Western longing for simpler times and places, and the search for a meaning of life. It also feeds an image of Tibet that has a childlike innocence and beauty. The true story, is, of course, far more complicated than that. Still, continuing hundreds of years of tradition, Tibetan Buddhism carries on the practice of ordaining young boys (and some girls) into a monastic tradition. It is left as an exercise to the reader to consider what it is like to be a small boy raised in such an environment, away from his natural parents, and subjected to a highly regimented routine.
That reader may turn to this book, an arresting memoir by a young man whose mother turned him over, at the age of six, to a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Nepal in 1976. That he was born in Corfu to American hippie expatriates complicates the story a great deal, and gives this complex tale a rich multi-layered psychological texture. The facts are amazing in themselves. Meston comes from a complex and often troubled family history, with mental illness, spirituality, bullfighting, TV stars, and varying types of brilliance. His mother is the key figure in his life, but mainly because of her absence and her dismissal of his needs when he was so unhappy and alone in a monastery. Monastic life certainly doesn't seem to suit him, though we get less insight into the cultural world he was thrust into than we do of his confusion and loneliness at being left there. After many years, he returns to the United States to try to find his own life, to find a place in the world in which he doesn't feel like an outsider. The search is ongoing. On the way, he marries a strong-willed Tibetan woman and helps her survive a painful experience of her own. By the end of the book, Meston is leaping out of a third-story window in a remote city in Tibet, trying to escape the Chinese authorities who have accused him of spying. The story is an adventure, told in a direct and unflinching manner. Meston is struggling with the legacy of an unrooted childhood, the utter emotional absence of his parents, and with his new place in the world. This is his focus, and there are, often, parts of the story that go untold, especially any details of his climactic journeys to Tibet. His personal story touches on a cultural divide, that very romantic image of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism that rises from those pictures of little boy monks in Shangri-La.
(Tragically, the complex story of his life compounded Meston's tendency toward depression, and he committed suicide in 2010.)