”Seven Years in Tibet” by Heinrich Harrer

Firstly, I saw a movie several times in Kyiv with Brad Pitt as the main character, and only in Germany did I read the book; of course, the book is much better and profound. The movie was Hollywoodized and romanticized too much. Honestly, the book is uncomfortable; it doesn’t offer enlightenment, it offers discomfort.

“Seven Years in Tibet” is a memoir that ultimately tells the story of inner transformation through exile. It's honest, raw, tough, and triggering. 

At its core, it explores the collapse of the ego of the protagonist (the author). Heinrich Harrer was an Austrian mountaineer, explorer, and writer. During World War II, he was a member of the Nazi Party. He was captured by the British in India, escaped from an internment camp, and lived in Tibet from 1944 to 1951, where he met and made a deep friendship with the young 14th Dalai Lama. 

The book shows how the spoiled and inflated ego of Harrer was step by step silenced, firstly by external challenges like war and internment camps, harsh mountain conditions, unknown Eastern traditions, and the unforgiveness of that region, and then by Buddhist values and traditions and the Dalai Lama's tranquility and childishness. The book depicts Tibet like a mirror of a human's soul, like a strong and very authentic cultural pearl that does not accept any Western intervention and that was destroyed by the Chinese regime. 

"Seven Years in Tibet" is not an adventurous memoir, but a spiritual unlearning. Unlearning was the practice Harrer did for all of the years he spent in Tibet. 

Harrer did not only experience war or imprisonment, but he experienced loss of freedom, status, and certainty, as well as hunger, illness, altitude, and extreme cold weather conditions. He dived into the abyss and, through losing his ego in the face of arrogance, he meets the society built on patience, rituals, non-violence, and spiritual hierarchy that ultimately changed him and forced him to come back to his roots, to whom he meant to be. 

The tragedy of the book was not about World War II; it was about the Chinese invasion that appeared like a silent earthquake, where there was no resistance or fight, but silent acceptance of the inevitable. 

One more book, one more intimate and real story that shows that only going through harsh experiences and losses a person can truly change.