To begin with, I would like to say a few words about travel literature. As a genre, it is very popular nowadays. The study of this genre was widely spread in the nineteenth century. Travel literature is much diversified because it describes a person or a group of people who visit some concrete place, another culture, and other people. And as a fact, the writer describes his emotions, his experience during his or her traveling to that place on the globe.
The traditions of travel literature are laid in the methods of narration. The writers of travel literature are not who move their characters and themselves from one geographic area to another freely, but they are analysts of contemporary reality, they generalize historical experience in their prose, the experience of generations, the experience of spiritual emotions, and understanding of critical contemporary issues, in particular, the present national disasters which make the readers revise previously established notions of indigenous moral and ethical standards of public human’s conduct.
And such books from travel literature as “The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk” by Palden Gyatso and “Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure” by Saran MacDonald draw my attention a lot.
Palden Gyatso is an outstanding representative of this trend, travel literature. His book “The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk” captures the interest of many readers all over the world because of its reality and truthfulness. This story is based on real events and covers the period from 1950 till 1992. In his book, Palden Gyatso illuminates the evil and horrible years of the Cultural Revolution. And he maintains great compassion for those people who have suffered with him.
When I was reading “The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk” I was impressed a lot by Palden Gyatso. Despite all horror and pain which he had experienced during his life, during his imprisonment, he maintained his sense of hope, trust, and love for mankind.
“My story is not a glamorous one of high lamas and exotic ritual, but of how a simple monk succeeded in surviving the destructive forces of a totalitarian ideology” (Gyatso 5). These are the introductory words of the book. And they make a great hint of subsequent events of Palden Gyatso’s life, described in his work.
Palden Gyatso is a Tibetian monk, who dedicated all his life to this calling. But, suddenly, everything changed, because of the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950. He was imprisoned for 33 years. Palden Gyatso led a Tibetian way of life and the Chinese aimed to destroy all manifestations of such life. That is what this story is about.
Palden Gyatso entered the Monastery at the age of 10 and he dedicated his life to religion and did all the things that monks do. But all his quiet life did not happen, because of the changes: China invaded Tibet. A lot of monks were imprisoned without a strong reason. Palden Gyatso was among them. The Chinese wanted to obliterate Tibetan studying and introduced the so-called “socialism”. And the author of the book described all these events in detail and these changes pierce the reader cold and horror (Laventure).
Palden Gyatso describes the conditions in prison, all the tortures that he and other monks have suffered. He points out that even minor disobedience could bring him to death. People could not do anything to change the current brutal situation. And I would like to introduce some sentences from the book about that tragedy:
“It was far safer for everyone to forget their loved ones. We all learned to live as though we were orphans, with no parents or brothers or sisters or even friends in the outside world. This was perhaps easier for me as a monk than it was for some other prisoners. I was used to being solitary. I have no strong ties, no memories of a wife or children tugging at my heart. There were many cases of a wives remarrying in order to prove that they had completely severed ties with their reactionary husbands. The Party liked this sort of public declaration” (Gyatso 87).
As he writes in his book, during all the years of imprisonment, he did not lose his hope and believed that nobody can break the human spirit. And this idea is contained in every word through each sentence of the autobiography. As he wrote: “The human body can bear immeasurable pain and yet recover. Wounds can heal. But once your spirit is broken, everything falls apart. So we did not allow ourselves to feel dejected. We drew strength from our convictions and, above all, from our belief that we were fighting for justice and for the freedom of our country” (Gyatso 198).
What is surprising is that those difficult times did not break Palden Gyatso down. On the opposite, he writes that prison made him good. There he understood what is the main aim and power of Buddhist teaching.
I must admit that there is not a single word that is invented and decorated with unreal details by the author. The most frightening fragment in the book is when the author describes the process of daily tortures. The Chinese did not spare even women. As the author puts it, he lost all his teeth during the electrocution; he was beaten brutally, hundreds of monks were starved to death, people were fallen under psychological mind games, etc.
Thanks to his hopes and believes Palden Gyatso withstood all the violence but had to escape from his motherland to India. But he did not give up his way of life. And through “The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk” he tells the truth of Tibet to the world and the readers understand how an ancient Buddhist civilization has been destroyed by the Chinese.
To my mind, this story is an inspiration for everybody. People have to believe that patience, responsibility, and compassion are the main human weapons of all the troubles. This is a story of real heroism and it helps to open eyes to reality.
Another book “Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure” which is written by Sarah MacDonald is also the autobiography of “The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk” by Palden Gyatso. In both these books, the authors describe religion, as the main spiritual serenity and inspiration. But the main difference is that Palden Gyatso wrote about his tragic experience during 33 years of imprisonment, and Sarah McDonald wrote about her traveling to India and self-discovery.
The book “Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure” is more easy and pleasant to read than “The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk”.
This book is about Sarah’s journey, about her new acquaintances, about her new experience in the religious sphere.
This book is written in a humorous, light-hearted manner. The writer describes all the traditions and customs of India, of its religion. India is full of beauty and glory in her book. For example, Sarah MacDonald, visiting India, became a vegetarian; she developed herself as a person. She understood that meditation brought her a lot of goodness.
Though as the author writes, she has already visited India once and had negative emotions about it, “because of its poverty, dirtiness and heat” (Illiterarty). She even vowed herself never to visit it again. But in this autobiography she changed her mind and, on the opposite, she admired India.
Sarah MacDonald tried to examine India, its people, and religion properly and reflected it in her book.
Sarah points out in her book that she is interested in religious, spiritual recovery that is why there are a lot of places which she was visited during her traveling. For example the Sikh Golden temple, the Hindu Kumbh Mela, a Zoroastrian fire temple, a Buddhist meditation center, and other places in India that helps her to relax and to feel the state of calm.
As in the book “The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk”, in “Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure” the author wants to prove to the audience that spiritual beauty and recovery is the main way to overcome all troubles and difficulties. But, fortunately, Sarah understood it through her staying in India and poor Palden Gyatso survived it during 33 years of a difficult period of life.
To my mind, Sarah made a great impact when she was describing India. She gave her narration a vivid, pleasant, relaxing shade. In the beginning, she writes about her bad experience in India when she was there for the first time. But further on, she rethinks her views. And the narration is full of different types of religion, such as Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism, and their influence on the human body and soul.
I must admit that the style of narration, the usage of different literary devices in this book arouses interest even those people who deny any manifestations of any religion.
The most extraordinary thing in this book is the description of the cows. For most American and European people, it is only an animal, nothing else. But Sarah MacDonald opens our eyes. And when I have read about them in this book, I have changed my mind.
Sarah tries to make important all her new meetings with different religious traditions. And she examines, whether it is necessary for her or not, whether she wants to connect her life with it or not. She describes her great desire to practice all these different things. And it makes an impression that this book is something like a spiritual guide for any person.
To cap it all, I can say that both books: “The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk” by Palden Gyatso and “Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure” by Saran MacDonald are worthy to read because they describe the spiritual way of living which only improves and develops any person. And it is only the reader’s choice whether he likes a dramatic and serious way of narration as “The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk” by Palden Gyatso or a pleasant and humorous way of narration as “Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure” by Saran MacDonald.
Works Cited
Gyatso, Palden. The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk. New York: Glove Press, 1998. Print.
Illiterarty, Book review: Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure by Sarah MacDonald. 2008.
Laventure, Tom. “Tibetan Monk Who Survived 33 Years in Chinese Prison Says Nations Should Put Human Rights before Commerce”. Asian American Press. 2010. Print.
MacDonald, Sarah. Holy Cow. An Indian Adventure. USA: Broadway, 2004. Print.