Rehearsing Enlightenment: A Retreat in the Buddhist Himalayas is a memoir of David and Kayla Komito's seven-month-long stay at the guest house of the Dalai Lama's monastery in Dharamsala, India in 1992-93.

The book includes nineteen black and white photos and thangkas by Kayla. The cover is a color thangka painting of Green Tara by Kayla Komito.Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Kayla painted and showed her personal work in galleries in the San Francisco area. In the late 1990s Kayla began painting Tibetan thangkas on commission. All the images in her thangkas were created using traditional iconic grid lines, colors and forms. It is also traditional with Tibetan thangkas that the background images express a patron's or artist's unique interests and vision, Kayla has followed that tradition with her paintings.

Kayla was authorized to paint thangkas by her lamas: Tara Tulku Rinpoche (retired abbot of Gyuto Monastery) and Kyabje Denma Locho Rinpoche (retired abbot of Namgyal Monastery). David has been a scholar, author and professor of Asian Philosophy and Religion since the early 1980s.