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Product Description
In 1985, Catharine Burroughs was a Maryland housewife with two children—and two failed marriages behind her—running a New Age prayer group in her basement. Out of the blue, a monastery in India for which she had raised some money contacted Burroughs and asked her to host His Holiness Penor Rinpoche, one of the highest-ranking lamas of Tibetan Buddhism, on his first visit to America. After meeting Burroughs, and observing her and her followers for a period of five days, he told her that she was a "great, great bodhisattva," and already, unbeknownst to her, practicing Buddhism. Later, in India, he officially recognized this Jewish-Italian woman from Brooklyn as the reincarnation of a sixteenth-century Ti-betan saint, making her the first American woman to be named a tulku, or reborn lama.
The Buddha from Brooklyn tells the complex and fascinating story of how Catharine Burroughs, now known as Jetsunma Ahkön Lhamo, embarked on a journey to build the largest Tibetan Buddhist center in America. With boundless enthusiasm but precious little formal training in Buddhist practices and traditions, Jetsunma and her students bought an estate in Poolesville, Maryland, on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., and founded Kunzang Palyul Choling (Fully Awakened Dharma Continent of Absolute Clear Light). Under Jetsunma's tutelage, the group memorized sacred texts and held all-night prayer vigils. They asked venerable Tibetan lamas to visit and give them "empowerments." Many took Buddhist vows and became monks and nuns. And as word of this remarkable place spread, others came to see the new lama for themselves and joined her community.
Martha Sherrill, a writer at The Washington Post, heard about Jetsunma in 1993. She visited the center and was charmed by both its charismatic lama, the only Western woman in the male-dominated hierarchy of Tibetan Buddhism, and by the monks and nuns (all Americans) living there. They seemed, for the most part, like a remarkably happy group of people whose lives had been transformed by this exotic, imported faith—and by Jetsunma. At the beginning of The Buddha from Brooklyn, as the group is breaking ground for a sacred monument called a stupa, Sherrill commences her own journey to discover for herself what makes this unlikely lama—who enjoys clothes shopping and manicures, Motown music and Star Trek reruns—such a magnetic spiritual leader. And as the story unfolds, so do the secrets of this seemingly idyllic sanctuary.
Compassionate and clear-eyed, Sherrill takes her readers on a breathtaking exploration inside the monastery at Poolesville, a place where idealistic but flawed human beings struggle with their devotion every day. She demystifies monastic life and Tibetan Buddhism, and amends the simplified view that most Americans have of this 2,500-year-old faith. Weaving together the stories of the believers into a narrative structure that is as moving and beautiful as the stupa they are building, Sherrill has created a brilliant work of investigative journalism that raises profound, provocative questions about religious faith and its price. The Buddha from Brooklyn is a monument to the miracles and failures that stem from the deepest human longings.
Amazon.com Review
Buddha from Brooklyn begins like the biographies Crooked Cucumber and Cave in the Snow--a venerated Buddhist teacher from humble beginnings is surrounded by respectable Western students. Unlike the seasoned masters Shunryu Suzuki and Tenzin Palmo, however, Jetsumna Ahkon Lhamo, the red-headed woman from Brooklyn who wore a black leather jacket and stick-on nails, had no Buddhist training. And still she had managed to build up the largest monastery of Tibetan Buddhists in America. Martha Sherrill, a journalist for The Washington Post, introduces us to Jetsumna's monastery outside Washington, D.C., and to the world of Tibetan Buddhism. With a measured hand, she unfolds the life of Jetsumna and her acolytes, revealing the unshakable devotion, the enormous sums of cash, the ostracism, and the mysterious magnetism of the highest-ranked woman in Tibetan Buddhism. Jetsumna joined the illustrious ranks of Tibetan lamas after being discovered to be an enlightened reincarnation by the same lama who would later discover Steven Seagal. As Sherrill learns, Jetsumna did appear to be enlightened, and her students believed in her infallibility. They became model Tibetan Buddhists, doing prostrations, building stupas, saving all sentient beings. So why did the group occasionally seem like a cult? In a narrative of complexity and sensitivity, Sherrill struggles with the answers to this and other doubts even while she is attracted to the religion herself but troubled by its embodiment in this stretch of wilderness outside America's capital. --Brian Bruya
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