COMPASSION MANDALA

Logan grew up in the suburbs of Chicago but was always fascinated with Asian culture: She was drawn to the spiritual practices of Japanese bushido—the way of the warrior—and achieved a fourth-degree black belt in karate. Upon learning about a famed warrior class in Kham, Tibet, she traveled there brimming with enthusiastic curiosity, a trip that would forever alter her life. After volunteering for a small outfit dedicated to cultural preservation and ecological conservation, she started a nonprofit organization of her own, the Kham Aid Foundation. The catalog of projects the group undertook over the years was as long as it was diverse. Logan concedes it had, especially in its early years, “no overarching strategy”—it preserved historic architecture, dispensed student scholarships, built greenhouses, raised money for medical clinics, provided agricultural and handicraft training, and more. The author lucidly explains the peculiar pitfalls of dealing with the Chinese bureaucracy, within which Chinese law is often treated cryptically, like a “state secret.” She also depicts, with impressive thoughtfulness, the challenges systemic corruption posed as well as the obsession among many Westerners with interpreting Tibet only through the lens of its struggle with China: “Poverty-fighting clashed with the movement’s unspoken rationale that Tibet was a lost paradise that could only be recovered under self-rule.” Logan deftly captures the cultural nuances of a world little known to or understood by Westerners. More than an account of philanthropic work, this is a love story with a whole culture, Logan’s “chance to become an adopted child of snowy peaks and monumental temples, to throw off our dismal industrial burdens and disappear into the mists of Shangri-La.”

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