Bones of the Master: A Journey to Secret Mongolia

Bones of the Master is both a thrilling adventure story and a fascinating spiritual journey, played out against the epic sweep of Chinese history, and gives us a unique insight into a lost mystical tradition. Inner Mongolia, 1959. A young monk makes a miraculous escape from the Red Guards who have destroyed his monastery and murdered his fellow monks. He flees over three thousand miles to Hong Kong carrying with him only five books of poetry and his monk's certificate, both of which would had meant certain death had they been discovered. His mission is to escape the Cultural Revolution and continue the teachings of his Ch'an Buddhist master, Shuih Deng. Woodstock, New York, 1994. Tsung Tsai, now an old master himself, leaves his Woodstock cabin to travel with his friend George Crane back to Mongolia in search of the bones of his master - to rebury Shuih Deng with the proper Buddhist ceremonies - and to lay the foundation of a new monastery in a China that is rediscovering its spiritual roots.Tsung Tsai says, 'I am a Chinese Buddhist monk. That is enough'. But he is much more than that - Tsung Tsai is one of those rare individuals whose life straddles two worlds: the past and the present, the East and the West, the old China and the new. He is a living link to a millennia-old tradition that forty years of Maoist repression almost extinguished.… (more)