Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West - Hardcover

Donald Lopez provides in this book a cultural history of the strange encounter between Tibetan Buddhism and the West. He reveals fanciful misconceptions of Tibetan life and religion and examines the movement for independence from China and the politics of the term "Lamaism", a pejorative synonym for Tibetan buddhism. The book aims to present more than pop-culture anomalies, the history of Tibet presented is embedded in scholarly souces, and constitute a union of both the popular and academic.

In this book, Donald Lopez provides the first cultural history of the strange encounter between Tibetan Buddhism and the West. Charting the flights of Western fantasies of Tibet and its Buddhist legacy, Lopez presents fanciful visions of Tibetan life and religion, ranging from the utopian to the demonic. He examines, among much else, the politics of the term "Lamaism", a pejorative name for Tibet's religion; the various theosophical, psychedelic, and New Age purposes served by The Tibetan Book of the Dead; the strange case of the Englishman with three eyes; and the unexpected history of the most famous of all Buddhist mantras, om mani padme hum. Throughout, Lopez demonstrates how myths of Tibet pervade both the products of pop culture and learned scholarly works.