By Erik D. Curren

$19.95 Paper ISBN: 0-9772253-0-5

The Day the Last Monastery in Shangri-La Fell—

Buddha's Not Smiling is the anatomy of a crisis. On August 2, 1993, Rumtek monastery was attacked. Its monks were expelled and the cloister was given to a lama appointed by the Chinese government. But Rumtek was not in China, and its attackers were not Communist troops. Rumtek was in India, the refuge for most exiled Tibetans. And it was Tibetan lamas themselves who led the siege. Evidence shows that the Chinese Communists directly supported Tibetan lamas and monks who attacked Rumtek monastery.

"The greatest challenge to Tibetan Buddhism in the West may not come from outside the sangha, but from within, from our well-meant but unthinking adulation of our own specific lineages and enthusiastic partisanship in sectarian disagreements and disputes, thus reproducing and perpetuating flaws that marred our tradition in its home land.  Buddha's Not Smiling is a thoughtful, well-documented, and courageous attempt to open up and render more intelligent the ongoing discussion of the Karmapa succession in a way that can only benefit everyone, no matter what their point of view or affiliation."

Reginald A. Ray, author of Indestructible Truth, Secret of the Vajra World, Buddhist Saints in India, and other books

Buddha's Not Smiling was one of two titles honored by the Writer's Marketing Association in its Fresh Voices 2006 Book Awards in the category of current events (political/social). See the full list of winners...

Preface

This book is about corruption in Tibetan Buddhism, but not about sex scandals. We have already seen discussions about Buddhist teachers, particularly well known Zen masters and Tibetan lamas, having romantic affairs with their students. More...

Introduction

Near the beginning of Martin Scorsese’s 1997 film Kundun, a search party from Lhasa arrives at a small village in the dusty northeastern borderlands between Tibet and China. The time is the late 1930s. More...

"Fascinating account" or "purple prose"?

Publisher's Weekly, the magazine of the book trade, said that Buddha's Not Smiling was a "fascinating account" of the controversy over selecting the Karmapa lama. But their reviewer also said that "Unfortunately, Curren's journalistic account is not only highly partial but often badly written, filled with melodrama and purple prose. It will please Trinley Thaye and Shamar Rinpoche's partisans, but it is too one-sided to truly illuminate the Karmapa controversy."

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