Meditation Saved My Life: A Tibetan Lama and the Healing Power of the Mind

Phakyab Rinpocé’s is a remarkable story of adversity, transformation, and ultimately, spiritual and physical triumph. Beginning with escape from a Chinese prison in Tibet following years of torture and imprisonment, the book traces Phakyab Rinpoché’s journey to refuge in the city of New York and Bellevue Hospital’s Clinic for Survivors of Torture.

There, doctors fought a severe case of gangrene, contracted in prison, that was attacking Rinpoché’s right ankle. Rinpoché was also suffering from pleurisy and spinal tuberculosis, attacking his lower back. He had to wear a surgical corset in order to stand up.

The doctors ultimately declared the gangrene infection “irreversible” and recommended amputation of his right leg below the knee.

Struggling with this diagnosis, Rinpoché heard an inner voice say, “Cutting is not curing.” He rejected the surgeons’ advice and sought counsel from the Dalai Lama. His Holiness answered with one question: “Why do you seek healing outside of yourself?”

The book chronicles Rinpoché’s response: a three-year journey to healing through an extraordinary program of some eighty thousand hours of meditation and rigorous training in Tsa-Lung yoga. Living in a small studio apartment in Queens, this Tibetan spiritual leader was able to repel the infection, rebuild his anklebone, and restore full mobility.

Upon hearing of his unprecedented recovery, the Dalai Lama told Rinpoché to tell his story, a personal journey of healing through meditation and yogic discipline that is an example for the world.