The Wheel of Life

Fifteen years have passed since my initiation at Tashiding, thirteen since The Wheel of Life first saw the light of day - years disappointing in some ways as regards both book and author. The critics were kind and some friends were good enough to prophecy widespread public interest; if interest was not shown by as many people as expected, that may have been because the book appeared a little while before the importance of the Vajrayana (Tantric Buddhism) began to be appreciated in the West. My Tantric Buddhism of Tibet met with a much warmer reception. As, in a sense, that work was the outcome of the events recorded here, it may be that readers will now find The Wheel of Life of somewhat similar interest. Much more disappointing to me personally has been my own rate of progress. Given so many rare and precious opportunities, I have achieved much less than my Lamas hoped for me - hence the title of one of the new chapters, The Ox-drawn Spacecraft! For those who were kind enough to write to me of finding spiritual inspiration in the book, let them not suppose my subsequent failure to wing upwards was due to any faultiness on the part of my Vajrayana spacecraft. Had I been without sloth and family ties, the new chapters might have related a very different story. Let me comfort them, too, by pointing out that they are likely to learn at first hand, whether in books or conversation, only of comparative failures, because those who succeed are too modest to write about it; in fact, a man who claims to be Enlightened can be dismissed as a fraud, since the very process of Enlightenment would render him incapable of making such a claim. (from the Preface to the Second Edition)