Bluebird In Love with The World: What A Monk Can Teach You About Living From Nearly Dying

A gift from a friend that I couldn't put down, inspirational and led me to want to read and learn more from Mingyur Rimpoche. Brilliant.

Here's my take on this book. It's indeed admirable that this Tibetan Buddhist abbot left his monasteryto go wandering, as it were, following in the Buddha's footsteps of "going forth into the homeless life" . It's just disappointing that he only chronicles the first couple of weeks of that 4 year period. What happened after the first month? He uses his experiences during the first few weeks as the basis for teaching how a practicing Buddhist could meditate on his predicament no matter how extreme. That's well and good, and I truly appreciated how he could attempt to meditate despite the painful illness, which appears to be intestinal dysentery, which he contracted from tainted restaurant hand-outs. Subsequently he became more and more dehydrated and then became comatose at which point the custodian of the location he had sat in meditation, took pity on him and took him to the hospital for intravenous fluid re-hydration. But I started this book expecting to hear more about his 4 years of a wandering retreat. I guess he just wanted to utilize a recounting of the first couple weeks so as to make that a teachable moment out of the experience. I really think the author owes us, his readers, a full accounting of the 4 year period during which he undertook this journey. I wish I could actually reach out and tell him that, but I know too that he will never see my comments. For this omission, I will have to subtract one star.

The delivery came a wee bit late for my use in a seminary class. That was setting near death experiences, but I appreciate it anyway. The book is in good condition and it was wrapped in a protective fashion to make sure it arrived in good shape.