Previously unpublished photographs and video

stills of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the late Thomas Merton, accrued over the course of the eleven year project. The book chronicles the 40-year unfolding of COMPASSION beginning with the meeting between The Dalai Lama and Merton in 1968, the historic first-visit by helicopter by The Dalai Lama to the Abbey of Gethsemani in 1994, the subsequent Gethsemani Encounter in 1996, and the climactic recording and filming inside Mammoth Cave, the Abbey of Gethsemani, and the Furnace Mountain

Zen Temple in 1999. Additional photographs from the Interreligious Vigil for World Peace led by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the meeting between The Dalai Lama and Muhammad Ali.

The story behind the story behind the story  . . .

how links are made between strangers,

how awakenings occur, and the melody of continuing connections is the mystery we are all a part of.

As we awaken to the commonality in us all, Compassion is a quiet state of mind that lends insight when all else fails. It is a current, it is our destiny.

Music can move you into that state seamlessly, finding yourself in the heart of the mother once again released from the external . . . to simply refocus on your
very essence.

Each of the us who are part of this holds a line, a lineage back . . . and in the end they are all connected.