The Magician of Lhasa
by David Michie
Hay House

Matt Lester works at the Imperial Science Institute in London as a research manager for creating nanobots – highly functioning robots of microscopic size. When he moves to Los Angeles with his partner for a job opportunity, his life doesn’t pan out as smoothly as he anticipated.

Matt’s Los Angeles rental is next door to a Dharma Centre and he becomes friends with elderly Tibetan monk Geshe-la and his housekeeper Mrs Min. Fairly soon research scientist and skeptic Matt finds himself sitting on a meditation cushion, facing a golden Buddha and trying to work out the cause of his unhappiness and repeated nightmares.

Just a spiritual slob like most of us, Matt tries to come to terms with the mess of his life by trying to take on board some of the wisdom that Tibetan Buddhists carried to other countries when the monks were forced out of their homeland by Chairman Mao’s Red Army in 1959.

The parallel story in this spiritual thriller is of the monks and their escape from Tibet, over the Himalayan Mountains to India. With the Red Army destroying monasteries, looting treasures and killing monks, it was imperative to try to take some of the sacred texts to safety to avoid destruction.

What couldn’t be destroyed was the knowledge and the life lessons that had been handed down from teacher to pupil for thousands of years. And also the advanced learned practice of meditation that sometimes gave the monks psychic abilities and clairvoyance – with such a person becoming known as a magician.

International bestselling author David Michie is well known for weaving his knowledge of Buddhist meditation and Buddhist teachings into his stories, with my personal favourites being The Dalai Lama’s Cat and The Art of Purring. But he is above all a story teller whose engaging tales are richly satisfying because of the life lessons they contain.

Lezly Herbert

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