Authorpreneur Dashboard – Yudron Wangmo
The Buddha of Lighting Peak
Teens
Sometimes it seems like no one has seventeen-year-old Dee Adair’s back. She’s got enough stress dealing with her little bro being locked up, a heartless homophobic grandmother, and an ex-girlfriend who gives her trouble every time they cross paths. Now, sacred Lighting Peak—her only place of peace—is scheduled for destruction. Bulldozers and dynamite are poised to excavate the mine, massacring the animals who live there in the process. Matrika Shergill, the mine’s hot no-nonsense owner, couldn’t care less about the furry little darlings. Dee must find the inner strength from her meditation practice to weather violence and betrayal—and harness the power of friendship—if she is to save Lightning Peak. Discouraged by apathetic adults, pursued by murderous goons, inspired by a sage, and yearning for love, she presses onward. The Buddha of Lightning Peak forges the transformational journey of an imperfect African-American lesbian teen lit up by the heroic promise to help all living things no matter what.
Book Bubbles from The Buddha of Lighting Peak
Have you had doubts about Buddhist teachings?
Dee, a a teenager, has arranged for her meditation group to use the rural camp she is a counselor at in the off-season. Now, her teacher Sandy, a lama in a Tibetan tradition of Buddhism, starts to talk. Sitting around the campfire, her friend Leslie expresses her doubts. As an American who has practiced Tibetan Buddhism for more than twenty years, I have an opinion about this. I think being honest about doubts is a good thing. Otherwise one's practice and the relationship with one's mentors is not genuine. Also, it allows for investigation—going deeper into the traditional teachings for clarity. At the same time, if we feel committed to that path and years go by and we always have a rigid know-it-all attitude, that isn't so good. Flexibility and humility can soften us and allow transformation into the kind of person we admire.
Do you like novels with layers of meaning?
Dee and Pauline are at a small meditation retreat, camping at the Y wildlife camp where Dee is a counselor in the summer. It is Autumn, and the camp is deserted. On the outer level, this is a teen getting to know an older woman acquaintance. Most Buddhist groups in the U.S. are populated by almost all white or Asian people. The group I am writing about in my Cycle of the Sky collection has three black members, among a core group of thirteen people. I didn't want to white-wash over that fact, so I mention it here. Nature really touches something deep inside Dee, and this place is very special to her; a place of safety and peace in her difficult life and much more. In this scene she is suddenly faced with a new reality that will turn her world upside down. On a deeper level, this book is an allegory according to the symbolism of Buddhist tantra. Dee is the drakpo khandro (dakini embodying subjugating enlightened activity) and Pauline is Palden Remati, a horse-riding protector who carries dice and a bag of disease. Her 'bag of disease' is her connection with lawyers. Hah! Seriously, she uses the law to protect the girls in the Cycle of the Sky books.
Excavating Pema Ozer
Teens
Weslyn Redinger wants one thing: to be normal again. Racked by panic attacks that have ruined her life and driven off her friends in the months since she saw the body of a young boy she loved rolled out to a waiting ambulance, she is now drawn into a circle of seekers who surround a mysterious stranger living in her grandmother’s backyard shed. After reluctantly attending his teachings, a series of dreams is unleashed—as vivid as her waking life. At night she is an attendant to the female teacher Uza Khandro from the Tibetan countryside, during the day she is a flawed sixteen-year-old struggling to get control over her body and her life.
Book Bubbles from Excavating Pema Ozer
Come with me to Eastern Tibet in 1918
As an in-depth practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism for many years, I am intimately familiar with the life stories of the enlightened meditation adepts in my particular lineage. Writing about the lives of two important non-monastic Lamas—priests—from the Golok region of Eastern Tibet was natural to me. I’ve never been there, but the lives of this sublime couple are emblazoned in my mind. It was a joy to imagine them together. The woman, Sera Khandro—here referred to by the name she was known by at the time—has become posthumously famous. She is one of the few women to be acknowledged as a legitimate source of revelations, called treasures (terma), which are still meditated upon to this day. It was unusual for a woman to know how to read and write, and rarer still to be become a lama. She documented her tough times of being disrespected and abused, as well as her devotion to her teacher-lover with great humility in her autobiography. Half of Excavating Pema Ozer is historical fiction about a fictional girl who became a student of this real couple. I worked very hard to be accurate, but also to bring you into the dramatic experience of growing up in the nomadic encampment of great lamas.
Another Life...or a Dream?
My main character, Weslyn, has a very realistic dream after sitting in on a group teaching by a mysterious Tibetan man who is staying in her grandmother's back shed. Have you ever had a dream so vivid and real that it almost made you believe there was a second version of you out there having a completely different life? Here a Tibetan brother and sister are scolded after missing the cue that a VIP, their family lama (Buddhist priest), had arrived unexpectedly. Rinpoche' is a Tibetan word meaning 'very precious,' or 'precious jewel.' Important lamas in Tibet are addressed as Rinpoche,' and treated with great respect.
Panic Out of Control
Have you ever had a panic attack? When I was a teen I had a big one. I was a budding young feminist and I'd heard about a feminist camp up in Vermont where they were building cabins and community. Somehow gaining my parent's approval, I got on a greyhound bus and arrived in Brattleboro. I went to my first meeting with the group. When I started to listen to them talk a huge panic attack started up inside. Poor young Yudron! To my mother's irritation, I got right back on a bus the next day and came home. I later found out that those women were totally batty, and I had saved myself from who knows what by leaving. My panic attack was sending me an important message. Weslyn's panic attacks in this scene in her Uncle Lou's truck are mainly from a trauma, but they, too, are sending her a message. Will she listen?
A Window in Your Reality
Have you ever had encounter with someone that opened up a window in your reality? A word, a touch, a look, that cuts through your usual way of thinking— opening you up to other ways of being in the world? In this scene, sixteen-year-old Weslyn had an experience like that with her Grandmother. This experience stayed in the back of Weslyn's mind and hinted at new worlds of possibility that were about to open up for her that would transform her life.
A Sky Burial
I wrote Excavating Pema Ozer as a way for you to drop into the experience of life in a traditional Buddhist community in Tibet, and a related practice community in California nowadays. In this snippet you experience a Sky Burial, one of the ways that corpses were disposed of in Tibet, through the eyes of a girl who had never seen one before. Remember, the ground is frozen most of the year in the high Himalayan mountains of central Asia. Here, the body is prepared and the process is supervised by a Tibetan priest (lama). In this case, the lama is Uza Khandro, an historical 20th century female meditation adept now known as Sera Khandro. I did my best to call up the sights and sounds, the smells and sensations, so that reading my book could transport you to eastern Tibet in the 1920's.
