Against the lush and exotic background of a mid-1900's Cambodian landscape, Ona Ny's childhood unfolds like a dream. She is treasured by her family, particularly her brother, and though her ecstatic trances sometimes make her feel like a bit of an oddball, her ability to translate her visions into art is gratifying.
But while her mystical nature may seem frivolous during her childhood, years later, after Ona has become a loving wife and mother, it enables her to detect the subtle changes around her that indicate that the blissful tranquillity of everyday life is about to come to an end.
BUDDHA WEPT is the story of the life of an Asian mystic who lives through Cambodia’s self-mutilation at the hands of the despot Pol Pot during the late 1970s. The character of Ona Ny is so beautifully drawn, at once so ephemeral and so authentically human, that the reader cannot help but want to be at her side as her life's journey takes her from a world of bliss to a world of unspeakable cruelty. Her sufferings are the reader's sufferings, and her gift—the ability to muster the spiritual resources needed to transcend suffering—is the reader's as well.
BUDDHA WEPT is about the many aspects of good and evil that lie within each of us. It is about saying 'yes' to life, even when the word feels like a contradiction to the chaos around us. Most of all, it is about the vast power that sleeps within the core of the human heart until heartache awakens it.
Rocco Lo Bosco is a massage therapist, and, along with his wife Regina, the co-director of The Yoga Darshana Center in Babylon, Long Island, NY. The Lo Boscos studied Yoga for over twenty years with the recently deceased Gurani Anjali, a master from Calcutta.
Most literature devoted to the Cambodian holocaust argues that no real recovery is possible for survivors. Though this is certainly true for many, Rocco Lo Bosco's close friendship with a Cambodian survivor, coupled with his own beliefs and the teachings of Gurani Anjali, motivated him to create a strong and passionate counter-statement through BUDDHA WEPT.
Rocco Lo Bosco's stories and poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, among them Maelstrom Review, Another Chicago Press, Alaska Quarterly Review, Blue Unicorn and more. ACROSS A DISTANCE OF KNIVES, his book of poetry, was published by Slough Press in 1982. He served as editor for the Moksha Journal from 1987 to 2000. BUDDHA WEPT is his first novel.
