A page-turning tale about Travel medicine, Tibetan lamas, and love in the Himalayas…
Finding a fascinating and gratifying medical practice in Kathmandu saved his medical career, but befriending a reincarnate Tibetan lama transformed his life.
This compellingly written memoir is a grand adventure tale of travel in Nepal and Tibet, tense and highly emotional medical encounters, new romances, and ground-breaking medical research. But all these eventually take a back seat to what the author learns about Tibetan Buddhism and the ability to train in compassion. The author reveals the details of his personal tutoring in Buddhism and his gradual exposure to mysteries and hard-to-explain events that he personally witnesses. For all the readers who dream about what it might be like to travel to the Himalayas and achieve a genuine spiritual connection, this book is the story of how that dream can come true.
You can pe-order a signed copy today!
What the critics are saying | Reviews of A Gentle Rain of Compassion
David Shlim has had a remarkable life, both in service of those in need in remote parts of the world and of spiritual discovery in the presence of some of the greatest Tibetan masters of our times. In Nepal, for over fifteen years, he was the physician of reference for visiting travelers and was also often called to look after the health of monastics, lamas and teachers. Uniting his medical vocation with the essence of Buddhism — altruism and compassion — he published a remarkable book, Medicine and Compassion — which led to his teaching physicians around the world on how to bring back compassion at the heart of their profession and day to day activities. His lively and insightful memoirs are a delight to read.
Matthieu Ricard
Buddhist monk, scientist, philanthropist, and translator, and the author of twenty books on Tibetan Buddhist topics.
I really believe that the author has written an important and wonderful book—this is not just the story of a young man in foreign parts (although it is that), or the story of his own, gradual enlightenment (although it is that too), but it is the story of how seemingly accidental the most important steps in our lives can seem. What is transcendent and original about this work in a sometimes tired and overcrowded memoir field is that the author somehow magically makes himself less important and the journey more important as we go along. How rare and lovely. I also think the writing and anecdotes are wonderfully done – he manages glimpses of humor and self-awareness, even as the reader is drawn along by the sheer edge-of-the-seat, life-and-death material. The work is tight, boiled down to a narrative that’s focused on this lovely, slow-opening of a realization – the work shifting from the adrenaline of trauma of medicine to the need for compassion in it.
Alexandra Fuller
Author of the New York Times Best Selling memoirs, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, and Leaving Before the Rains Come, among several other books. Fuller has written for The New Yorker, Vogue, and is a frequent contributor to National Geographic Magazine.
A note from the author, David R Shlim MD…
I’m still reeling from the news that my memoir won the International Book Awards prize for best autobiography/memoir in 2022. The award covers books from the last three years. I’m happy that my story about my relationships with great Tibetan teachers and my adventures, medical and otherwise, in the Himalayas can finally be shared.
Starting today, the book is available for pre-order from the publisher: https://www.diangelopublications.com/books/a-gentle-rain-of-compassion
The book will be released on 1 September 2022, but by pre-ordering you can guarantee getting your copy as soon as it is released. In addition, we are offering a limited number of signed copies of the hardback edition, which I’m sure you will treasure, and which would also make great gifts. I know that many of you are anxious to read the book, but probably not as anxious as I am to have you read it and tell me your reactions. As strange as it may sound, I’ve been writing this book for seventeen years. To have it emerge like this and get this immediate recognition is like a dream.
Although the book is a nice end in itself, my purpose in trying to share this story is to point to the ways that I learned about training in compassion, and the value of compassion in the world.