Her best reviewer: the Dalai Lama

Published 7:00 am Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Along the rocky road of publishing, Naomi Rose found a new spiritual path.

The early 1990s found islander Naomi C. Rose at a crossroads in both her career and her spiritual life.

Rose knew her road as a technical writer had reached a dead end, and the spiritual path – a lifelong journey that had seen Rose try New Age practices, join Unity Church, dip into “a little bit of Zen” and even make up her own church – seemed blocked, as well.

But her unconscious pointed the way to fulfillment through a creative endeavor that would become “Tibetan Tales for Little Buddhas,” the children’s book from which she reads May 23.

“I started having these dreams at night showing me going to art school to create children’s books,” Rose said.

Rose was baffled, but the dreams kept coming, finally prompting her to audit a class at Poulsbo’s Northwest College of Art.

“I loved it so I jumped into art school,” she said. “I just totally shifted from left to right brain.”

Soon a dream illumined the spiritual path as well.

“There were these monks in reddish-color robes and I heard a voice say, ‘follow the path of Tibetan Buddhism,’’’ Rose said. “I’d never heard of Tibetan Buddhism, but I started getting involved.”

When Rose attending a teaching session by Lama Surya Das, a Tibetan religious teacher who lectured in Seattle, she had what she calls a “homecoming experience,” a mystical epiphany that confirmed the rightness of her new path.

When Surya Das learned that Rose wanted to write books, he encouraged her to take stories from a book he had just published – the first recording of traditional oral stories – and rework them for children.

Rose picked several tales and Surya Das supervised her project for several years to make sure the stories and illustrations conveyed the spirit of Tibetan Buddhist teachings.

The neophyte author knew she had been lucky to be handed the material, but the same good fortune would not carry her through finding an agent and publisher; it took another 10 years to bring the book to print.

“It didn’t happen easily from that point on,” she said. “Plus, I needed to develop a lot more skill. I had writing skills and I was developing my art skills, but writing for children is a totally different thing.”

Rose eventually shifted the stories from third person to first person for the immediacy of that voice.

The 64-page book contains three stories, each told from the point of view of a Tibetan child, and illustrated by Rose’s paintings.

In the tales, children encounter magical and mystical beings that help the young person reach an understanding of such Tibetan Buddhist – and universal – principles as the wisdom of kindness.

“That took years of trial and error,” she said. “I wanted to keep the essence of the wisdom, but how do you do that and turn it into something that children can understand and Western minds can understand?”

Rose was frustrated – and on her third literary agent – when she decided to try to get the Dalai Lama involved.

Rose sent the draft of the book to a contact in Darmsala in India, where the Dalai Lama lived. The book was passed from hand to hand until it reached the Dalai Lama’s secretary.

There it languished until, one week after the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings, Rose emailed the Tibetan official, pointing out the benefits of a book promoting peace and kindness.

“A few days later, Rose received a fax from the Dalai Lama with a forward that both praised the book and expressed a wish that readers “…become aware of the existence of our country and the values that we hold dear.”

It still took a while for Rose to find a publisher who wasn’t convinced that a book of “wisdom tales” wouldn’t sell.

But Rose persisted, and finally a Santa Fe, N.M. publisher, Clear Light, took on the project.

“They loved it for all the right reasons,” she said. “It was ‘this has great benefit for the children in our culture.’”

At the suggestion of the new publishers – whom Rose learned were friends with the Dalai Lama – Rose included a Tibetan translation for the children of refugees.

The stories also promote, in simple terms, the benefits of such practices as chanting, geared to help quiet the mind and lead one to more tranquilly accept life’s vissicitudes.

“I felt I was meant to do this book and I think it will be of benefit to others, but it’s also been benefitting my own life and spiritual practice,” Rose said.

“I’ve had to put the wisdom in these stories into practice just to get through the last 10 years of rejections.”

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Naomi C. Rose reads from her debut children’s book, “Tibetan Tales for Little Buddhas,” 3 p.m. May 23, at Eagle Harbor Books. A portion of proceeds from book sales benefit Tibetan refugees. Information: 842-5332.

More about Rose and her work can be found at www.naomicrose.com.