Lotus Girl
My Life at the Crossroads of Buddhism and America
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
From one of the central figures in Buddhism's introduction to the West and the founder of Tricycle magazine comes a brilliant memoir of forging one’s own path that Pico Iyer calls "unflinching" and "indispensable."
The daughter of an artist, Helen Tworkov grew up in the heady climate of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism; yet from an early age, she questioned the value of Western cultural norms. Her life was forever changed when she saw the iconic photo of Thich Quang Duc, the Vietnamese monk who, seated in meditation, set himself on fire to protest his government’s crackdown on the Buddhist clergy. Tworkov realized that radically different states of mind truly existed and were worth exploring. At the age of twenty-two, she set off for Japan, then traveled through Cambodia, India, and eventually to Tibetan refugee camps in Nepal.
Set against the arresting cultural backdrop of the sixties and their legacy, this intimate self-portrait depicts Tworkov's search for a true home as she interacts with renowned artists and spiritual luminaries including the Dalai Lama, Pema Chödrön, Joseph Goldstein, Bernie Glassman, Charles Mingus, Elizabeth Murray and Richard Serra.
Interweaving experience, research, and revelation, Helen Tworkov explores the relationship between Buddhist wisdom and American values, presenting a wholly unique look at the developing landscape of Buddhism in the West. Lotus Girl offers insight not only into Tworkov's own search for the truth, but into the ways each of us can better understand and transform ourselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this stimulating and elegant memoir, Tworkov (Zen in America), the founding editor of the nonsectarian Buddhist magazine Tricycle, chronicles the lifelong search for answers that drew her to Buddhism. Born to an artist father and a melancholic mother, Tworkov was pained as a young adult by America's role in the Vietnam War and mystified by the 1963 self-immolation of Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Duc ("as much as I looked for signs of torment, the photograph not show a man in the throes of physical or mental suffering"). She traveled to Japan in 1965 and made her way through Asia, where she tried out meditation practices, pored over the works of Zen philosopher D.T. Suzuki, and generally sought "understanding beyond the limits of selfhood" through forays into Buddhism. After returning to the U.S. nearly two years later, Tworkov began studying Buddhism in the Tibetan and Zen traditions, but was perturbed by the sectarianism and scandals that plagued the American Buddhist community. In 1991, she founded Tricycle amid backlash from the "conservative" Buddhist establishment. With abundant self-awareness, Tworkov traces how she sought enlightenment only to find herself on a winding and ultimately rewarding Buddhist "path of confusion," while also providing an incisive insider's look at the naivete of the first generation of American converts to Buddhism. This enlightens.
