Meditation Saved My Life: A Tibetan Lama and the Healing Power of the Mind

by Phakyab RINPOCHE, Sofia Stril-Rever (With)

Meditation Saved My Life is a moving first-person account of the mind’s innate healing abilities. In 2003, Tibetan lama Phakyab Rinpoche was arrested, imprisoned, and tortured by Chinese officials bent on uprooting Tibet’s indigenous religion. Although Rinpoche escaped his captors and fled to New York, his ordeal left him with life-threatening injuries, including gangrene of the ankle. At Bellevue Hospital, doctors gave Rinpoche a shocking choice: accept leg amputation or risk a slow, painful death. However, an inner voice prompted him to try a non-western cure — meditation. Rinpoche began an intensive yoga routine that included thousands of hours of meditation, and against all scientific logic, his injuries gradually healed. As his mentor the Dalai Lama told him, “You have within you wisdom that will give you the strength to heal.” In Meditation Saved My Life, Rinpoche shows us that we all have great healing powers that lie dormant within us.

Genres: Meditation, Buddhism, Nonfiction, Spirituality

272 pages, Paperback

Published April 4, 2017

Reviews

[Michel B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd give this important book 5 stars. Yet, I also have to give it zero stars (averaged out to 2.5, I rounded up). The zero stars is due to the following:
Back cover: "...Phakyab Rinpoche, who reveals the secret of the great healing powers that lie dormant within each of us." BUT inside you discover after getting through 2/3 of the book, that the Master cannot tell us the 'secret' - he can only share it with a handful of people that have achieved a high enough degree of expertise in meditation. As such, we're told that a wonderful method exists - just not how to do it. Personally, I can accept this - I trust the Master's reasoning and judgement. But I don't like being told one thing on the back cover (presumably to help sell the book) and being deceived in this way.

The deception -whether purposeful or not - is unfortunate, because I truly believe that this book can be a life changing story for many people. The story is well documented and explained and can have a great impact to help better people's lives. I feel as if it might have such an impact on me. IN FACT, I had a truly 'bizarre' (karmic. - to use the text's approach at explaining phenomenon) experience while reading this book, which truly shocked me and which I choose not to dismiss as coincidental.

[Katrina Bos · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this book. The story is incredibly interesting and beautifully written. But more importantly, it had so many gems of wisdom for me personally. Many ideas that I've heard many times now make complete sense. That wisdom "landed" inside of me. This is an incredible book.

[Dhyan Summers · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a wonderful book of the healing power of the mind from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective. Very up close and personal, a Rinpoche from Tibet shared his experiences with a gangrene foot that specialists all told him had to be amputated.

He defied them and went into an extraordinary retreat at the end of which is foot is completely healed. Well written and inspiring.

[Edward Fenner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite an interesting book. This monk's story is well-known and well-documented. The mind is a powerful organ that is still not well understood. He makes the case (by being living proof) of just what the mind can achieve. Granted, he himself says he is a rare and unusual example because he meditates far more than even most high-level monks. Still, there are lessons to be learned here in the grand scheme of things. The book goes on and on a bit at times so feel free to skim or skip a page here and there.

[James Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Amazing Story

Meditation Saved My Life is an inspiring book. Added to my list of all-time favorites. It shows the power of unbounded compassion.

[Ginger Eager · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most powerful aspects of this memoir was Phakyab Rinpoche's certainty. He sat with the question of amputation for his gangrenous foot, came to understand that this wasn't the right choice for him, and left Bellevue Hospital. His faith appeared to be less in outcome--that his foot would be healed--than in what had been revealed to him thus far: he was to refuse amputation and commit to a rigorous meditation practice that he'd learned as a young man. In short, Rinpoche addressed each piece of his unfolding experience as it happened rather than casting ahead with wishes and fears. I learned so much from this, and I'm quite grateful for this book!

[Colin Gilreath · Rating 4 out of 5]

A miraculous account of how one dedicated Monk used his inner power to heal through meditation. The doctors and hospital workers refused to believe his story. Diagnosed with a gangrenous foot/ankle and told to move forward with amputation, something inside him told him not to have the surgery. He turned out to be correct, the Dalai Lama told him to heal from within. That’s exactly what ends up happening.

[Susan CoMO · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkable story, well told.

[Tristy at New World Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

Endorsements:
“Phakyab Rinpoche’s amazing odyssey, beautifully depicted in this extraordinary book, inspires so much spiritual courage, strength, and wisdom. Our deepest aspirations and unimaginable possibilities are illuminated by the radiance of this precious jewel.”
— Krishna Das, kirtan wallah and devotee of Neem Karoli Baba

“Phakyab Rinpoche shares with us the compelling narrative of how he healed the injuries he sustained in Chinese-occupied Tibet. Importantly, his story powerfully demonstrates what we now know from science: compassion awakens within us our own power to heal both the mind and the body.”
— James R. Doty, MD, founder and director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University and New York Times–bestselling author of Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon's Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart

“Meditation Saved My Life tells us that we can overcome hatred with compassion and let go into healing. Phakyab Rinpoche opens heart and mind with the core spiritual teachings of Tibetan Buddhism in clear, inspiring language. He reminds me that bodhisattvas are here with us and that we can aspire to emulate them to reach our own realization.”
— George Pitagorsky, author of The Zen Approach to Project Management: Working from Your Center to Balance Expectations and Performance, teacher at New York Insight Meditation Center, and division CIO at New York City Department of Education

“Phakyab Rinpoche’s Meditation Saved My Life is a beautifully written, heart-gripping, and inspiring narrative of the courageous struggle of a wise and compassionate Tibetan lama who became a great teacher and healer, risking it all and winning over disfigurement and even death. Read this book and rekindle your faith in the human determination to choose compassion and courage, mind over matter; and ignite your own life.”
— Robert Thurman, Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University and translator of The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The First Complete Translation

“Phakyab Rinpoche is a gem, a spiritual teacher whose infectious, joyful radiance fills every space he enters and whose loving, childlike delight lifts every heart he encounters. His very presence is the essence of healing. This wonderful book is a true spiritual masterpiece, a story of profound healing shared with humility and grace by a master of consciousness.”
— Ramananda John E. Welshons, author of Awakening from Grief: Finding the Way Back to Joy and One Soul, One Love, One Heart

“[Phakyab Rinpoche] will teach the world how to heal.”
— His Holiness the Dalai Lama

[Sunny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great bio about perseverance. Cured infected foot.