num_pages: 304
description: An investigative reporter explores an infamous case where an obsessive and unorthodox search for enlightenment went terribly wrong. When thirty-eight-year-old Ian Thorson died from dehydration and dysentery on a remote Arizona mountaintop in 2012 The New York Times reported the story under the Mysterious Buddhist Retreat in the Desert Ends in a Grisly Death. Scott Carney a journalist and anthropologist who lived in India for six years was struck by how Thorsons death echoed other incidents that reflected the little-talked-about connection between intensive meditation and mental instability. Using these tragedies as a springboard Carney explores how those who go to extremes to achieve divine revelationsand undertake it in illusory wayscan tangle with madness. He also delves into the unorthodox interpretation of Tibetan Buddhism that attracted Thorson and the bizarre teachings of its chief Thorsons wife Lama Christie McNally and her previous husband Geshe Michael Roach the supreme spiritual leader of Diamond Mountain University where Thorson died. Carney unravels how the cultlike practices of McNally and Roach and the questionable circumstances surrounding Thorsons death illuminate a uniquely American tendency to mix and match eastern religious traditions like LEGO pieces in a quest to reach an enlightened perfected state no matter the cost. Aided by Thorsons private papers along with cutting-edge neurological research that reveals the profound impact of intensive meditation on the brain and stories of miracles and black magic sexualized rituals and tantric rites from former Diamond Mountain acolytes A Death on Diamond Mountain is a gripping work of investigative journalism that reveals how the path to enlightenment can be riddled with danger.
language: English
title: A Death on Diamond Mountain: A True Story of Obsession, Madness, and the Path to Enlightenment
publisher: Avery