Mountain Dharma

In this deeply engaging and well written work, David DiValerio takes us on a journey into Tibetan Buddhist meditation and ascetic practice, showing the path of the individual ascetic. This is a very important book for all who wish to understand the ascetic impulse generally and how this has been articulated in the history of Tibetan Buddhism. -- Gavin Flood, author of <i>The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory and Tradition</i> This finely observed study draws on a set of outstanding primers written for Tibetan retreatants themselves. Little known in modern scholarship, these works are filled with fascinating detail on how to live in retreat, discern the optimal natural setting, deal with other people, eat, connect to a glorious heritage, and manage the many psychological challenges. In this systematic overview, DiValerio keeps his eye on the ways that retreat was understood to positively shape persons, rather than being an exercise in negative self-denial. -- Janet Gyatso, author of <i>Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary</i> A truly landmark contribution on asceticism in the history of Tibetan Buddhism. DiValerio reveals core concerns defining the practice of meditating long-term in solitary retreat, and how profound interior probing of selfhood in high Tibetan and Himalayan fastness was always guided by an intensely prescriptive and didactic tradition. -- Toni Huber, author of <i>The Cult of Pure Crystal Mountain: Popular Pilgrimage and Visionary Landscape in Southeast Tibet</i> David DiValerio’s Mountain Dharma is a fantastic book that breaks new ground in the study of the history of Tibetan asceticism and retreat practice. Theoretically sophisticated yet accessible, his analysis highlights the normative ways of self-cultivation enacted by Tibetan ascetics for centuries and up to the present. It is an excellent and indispensable addition to the global history of meditation traditions. -- David McMahan, author of <i>Rethinking Meditation: Buddhist Meditative Practices in Ancient and Modern Worlds</i>