Tales of a Mad Yogi: The Life and Wild Wisdom of Drupka Kunley

Monson, codirector of the Natural Dharma Fellowship, debuts with an arresting biography of Drupka Kunley, a philandering late 15th-/early 16th-century Tibetan yogic madman. Monson depicts Kunley’s travels using a magical-realist aesthetic familiar to Buddhist texts, detailing a world populated with curious supplicants, detractors, and many signs and spirits. Known as a nyonpa (mad person) but also a saint, Kunley opened the Chimi Lhakhang monastery in Bhutan and there practiced his sexual methods of spiritual transformation, claiming a healthy sexual appetite and intercourse can lead to enlightenment. Tales of his travels from Tibet to Bhutan include supernatural activities such as “subduing demons with his ‘thunderbolt of wisdom’ (his penis),” seducing women in order to awaken their dharmic potential, reviving corpses, and drinking unfathomable amounts of alcohol. Stories of reencountering old connections make the narrative flow like a story rather than a collection of apocrypha, and Monson’s depictions of Kunley’s spiritual visions—notably a recurring one of a woman with golden robes and a flaming sword—carry a strand of magic throughout. Monson’s take on an obscure mad wanderer’s outlandish life is truly enthralling. (Aug.)