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Comment: Dust jacket shows some fading as well as some rubbing, scuffing and edge wear including some chipping, creasing, flaring and creasing. Some marks in the margins as well as a couple notes on cover page in pencil. Many pages also show signs of dogearing.
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Imji Getsul: An English Buddhist in a Tibetan Monastery Hardcover – January 1, 1962

3.0 3.0 out of 5 stars 2 ratings

From the "Here is the daily life and routine of a very remote monastery on the Tibetan border. The author was a novice there, speaking the language, experiencing the discomfort and the blows and the beauty of that life. Lobzang Jivaka rejected most of the common values of Western life, to search for truth; and found it in an obscure corner of the world. This is fascinating as a work of travel, and as a religious book of some authority. It is an Englishman's account of life at Rizong Gompa in Ladakh, which he came to love as much as he had loved Oxford."
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0010L2IVM
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Routledge & Kegan Paul; First Edition (January 1, 1962)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 201 pages
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.01 pounds
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.0 3.0 out of 5 stars 2 ratings

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Gtsan-SmyonHe-Ru-Ka
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3 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2014
    ... so it gets three stars for that - a Westerner's stay in a Ladakhi Buddhist monastery in the early sixties as a novice monk. Unfortunately his grasp of the language is shaky and he signs on as a menial helper in the kitchen, so his experiences and ability to take information in are quite limited. There is an appendix with an abbreviated history of Rizong monastery and another with the rules for a getsul (novice monk) as well as a Tibetan/Ladakhi glossary.

    If you happen to run across a copy and have an interest in Himalayan Buddhism or Ladakh in general, you'll probably find it interesting but also frustrating due to its constrained scope. There is nothing really about the author's life up to gaining access to Rizong monastery, and some of the references that are in there are deliberately misleading (such as suggesting the author passed through India during WWII and thus became interested in Buddhism).

    The author, Lobzang Jivaka, had an extremely interesting life, making the reduced scope of this book further frustrating. The book The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth-Century Medical Revolution is a good introduction to the author's life, first as Laura Dillon, then as Michael Dillon, and finally as Lobzang Jivaka, and the period after staying at Rizong as Imji Getsul.

    My soft-cover copy has no date or publishing information or even copyright, looks to have been published in India.

    If you are interested in Michael Dillon's story, you should look into Out of the Ordinary: A Life of Gender and Spiritual Transitions
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  • Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2011
    The author is Michael Dillon, an Englishman otherwise known for having been the first person to undergo phalloplasty. This book is an interesting account of the several months he spent in Rizong Monastery, in Ladakh, in the early sixties, just before he died. It is mainly a travelogue, detailing his unique personal experience in the monastery. In this, it is unprecedented, to my knowledge, as no other Westerner had been ordained and allowed this kind of access before. And this to me is the most interesting dimension of this work. The book is however also a deeper reflection on Tibetan Buddhism. Quite a few good drawings and some pictures from Rizong complete the volume.
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