Daja Wangchuk Meston

Who was Daja Wangchuk Meston?

Daja Meston was an author and Tibet activist, an American citizen who was raised as a Tibetan Buddhist monk. In 2007 he published his memoir, Comes the Peace: My Journey to Forgiveness.

Meston was taken to Nepal at the age of 3 after his mother was drawn there for religious reasons. After being ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist nun by Lama Thubten Yeshe his mother placed Meston as a foster child with a Tibetan family, and at the age of 6, he was given to the care of Kopan Monastery as a novice monk. Gradually his nun-mother became a source of confusion and embarrassment because her infrequent visits to the monastery drew unwanted attention to the lone, white boy monk. Meston remembered his time in the monastery as a terrible experience--partly because he was a white outsider and also because young monks were treated and fed so poorly. He was expelled as a teenager for violating the vow of celibacy, and--despite being culturally Tibetan and unable to speak much English--he was sent "home," first to Italy and then to California, where he lived with his unknown step-grandmother. He eventually made his way to Boston where he enrolled at Brandeis University and graduated in 1996.