Book commentary and analysis

¶ … Sky Burial

The story of lost love told by Shu Wen was very sad, both because she lost her husband so soon after their marriage and also because, in a sense, her life ended at that time as well. Hoping to find out what had happened to her husband, Shu Wen, a young doctor, traveled to Tibet not knowing that the information she sought would cost her thirty years of her own life and change her life so profoundly. Initially, she only knows that her husband, also a doctor for the Chinese military, was killed in action in Eastern Tibet, but she receives no other information or details about the circumstances of his death. It seemed incredibly romantic to me that she followed her husband's last known travels to find out exactly what had happened to him.

The novel seems to present the contrast between the tremendous changes that the protagonist, Shu Wen, undergoes over the next three decades and the lessons that she learns from the Tibetans about all things being connected. On one hand, she undergoes incredible changes in her life orientation and cultural identity because she spends thirty years in Tibet and learns the Tibetan perspective. On the other hand, she learns through the Tibetan philosophy that the loss of her husband is merely a change in the external ways that he was part of the physical world and that in another larger sense, he is still connected to her and to the world in the more philosophical sense where all things and all living consciousnesses are permanently connected.

During her search for information about the death of her husband, Shu Wen encounters a woman whose life is in peril in the company of Chinese soldiers, some of whom suspect her as possibly being a spy or a member of the Tibetan resistance movement. Shu Wen rescues the woman and treats her medically to save her life. Shu Wen is then taken in by the woman's family and they begin to teach Shu Wen about Tibetan life and philosophy. There seems to be a parallel between the fundamental changes that Shu Wen undergoes as a person and the many social, military, political, and economic changes that are transpiring in China, her homeland, during the same time. During the next thirty years, Shu Wen gradually comes to adopt the Tibetan way of life and loses all connection to her previous identity. Instead of worrying about everyday matters and day-to-day concerns, Shu Wen gradually comes to adopt the Tibetan perspective that emphasizes prayer, self-reflection, and disconnection from the ordinary concerns of human beings that limit their philosophical growth.