About Book
Renowned photographer Don Farber, one of the most important chroniclers of Buddhism today, brings the face and the spirit of contemporary Tibetan Buddhism alive with this remarkable book. "Portraits of Tibetan Buddhist Masters" - a collection of superb color photographs presented with brief biographies and teachings from each master - is a vibrant work, a testament to the compassion and wisdom that lies at the heart of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.Farber felt compelled to record the last of the living Buddhist masters who received their training in Tibet and then fled the country following the invasion by China, as well as other masters who survived many years of imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution. He has worked with a sense of urgency to photograph and interview these extraordinary beings who have been the custodians of this endangered Buddhist tradition. His collection of portraits also includes some of the bright lights of Tibetan Buddhism, the younger masters who will carry the tradition into the future.
As a photographic archive of Tibetan Buddhist masters, this book plays an important role in preserving Tibetan culture, in all its richness and complexity, through the words and faces of its esteemed masters.
About Author
Inspired by Buddhism early in his career as a professional freelance photographer, Don Farber became a disciple of the late Vietnamese Zen master and scholar Thich Thien-An and in 1977 embarked on a ten-year photographic study of life in a Vietnamese Buddhist temple in Los Angeles. Following the publication of Taking Refuge in L.A. (1987, with text by Rick Fields and an introduction by Thich Nhat Hanh), Farber set out to photograph Buddhist life internationally and, to date, has carried out this work in eight Asian countries and the United States. His travels resulted in his critically acclaimed book Visions of Buddhist Life (California, 2002; foreword by Huston Smith) and Tibetan Buddhist Life (2003). This Fulbright scholar's photographs have been exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Asia Society in New York, have appeared in magazines such as Life and Time, and are often published in the Buddhist magazines Tricycle and Shambhala Sun. His photographs have been featured on the covers of many books, including the international best-seller The Art of Happiness (1998) by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler. Sogyal Rinpoche is a world-renowned teacher of Tibetan Buddhism and the author of the best-selling book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (1992). Rebecca McClen Novick is the author of Fundamentals of Tibetan Buddhism, cowriter of Tibetan Buddhist Life, and the editor of a number of books on Tibetan Buddhism.