The Global Rambler: April 2020

"Lha gyalo! De thamched pham!" Conquering a treacherous 19,000-foot Himalayan pass in the dead of night, winter 1923, Alexandra David-Neel paused in her final surge toward the forbidden city of Lhasa to echo the ancient Tibetan cry of victory - "the gods have won! The demons are vanquished." But she did so silently. It is the Tibetan custom to shout it loudly from the mountain summits, celebrating the triumph of universal good - but only in daylight. It doesn't do to tempt fate and the darker forces after sundown. David-Neel complied with this custom, and, as she recounts in her compelling narrative, she looked out over the moonlit glaciers and peaks and called to the six directions with the old Sanskrit mantra, "Subham astu sarvajagatam." May all beings find happiness. In Tibetan, it is offered thus: "Ge-o! Ge-o! Ge-o!" My Journey to Lhasa, Alexandra David-Neel, ix

Alexandra David-Neel, a French woman and extremely active explorer was set upon entering Tibet as a beggar-pilgrim and finding her way to Lhasa with her travel companion and adopted son, Aphur Yongden, a Sikkimese monk. She studied Buddhism, learned Tibetan and her travel notes and journals provided material for books on Tibetan Buddhism and culture. In 1914, she was presented by the monks of Sikkim with the consecrated robes of a "lamina," a female lama. She made multiple attempts to enter Tibet and was rebuffed each time by local authorities until reaching Lhasa on her 5th attempt.

Would it be possible to follow in the footsteps of Alexandra David-Neel in her final and successful attempt to reach Lhasa? Could, My Journey to Lhasa, be used as a travel guide? Her 1923 four month journey on foot and horse was beyond reason to replicate, but was an overland highway route by vehicle a possibility?

The problem for this post is that I cannot find any notes or files on our overland journey in Tibet, almost like it didn't exist except in my memory or imagination (after 45 years of traveling and guiding, those two begin to intermix). But, a couple weeks ago I opened a taped cardboard box sitting in an office corner and found stacks of slides, cassettes and photographs. One group of slides was marked "Tibet," another "Sikkim," and another "Nepal." Yes, the 11 boxes of slides marked "Tibet" were taken during our overland journey following In The Footsteps of Alexandra David-Neel from Kum Bum monastery near Lanzhou to Lhasa. (If you are interested in learning more about David-Neel, I have listed several books below.)

The slide presentation is completed. I cannot identify any of the locations for you except the beginning in Lanzhou and the end in Lhasa. If you are able to travel this route, you might send me the location names from your visit. You are able to see some of the landscape and monasteries that Alexandria David-Neel and Aphur Yongden traveled through during their overland journey. I believe that we traveled on China National Highway 109 with the following route: Lanzhou, Xigu, Minhe, Haldong, Xining, Huangyuan, Dulan, Golmud, Amdo, Nagqui, Damxung and Lhasa. The last image is a distant Sky Burial outside Lhasa. Please enjoy these images as you travel across the arid landscape to Lhasa.

Forbidden Journey - The Life of Alexandra David-Neel, Barbara and Michael Foster, 1986

My Journey to Lhasa, Alexandra David-Neel, 1927 & renewed 1955

Magic and Mystery in Tibet, Alexandra David-Neel, 1929, 1932, 1971

In The Footsteps of Alexandra David-Neel

Folkways' Image Library

YouTube
https://youtu.be/NhRTZW6MWwU

To the north of Bodhgaya, in India, where the Buddha Shakyamuni attained enlightenment, there was a land of high mountains rising like pillars to the sky. Below the mountains were beautiful lakes, mandalas of turquoise. The snow and ice were stupas of white crystals. The ocher slopes were of gold. In a kingdom, it was said, where autumn was colored with golden flowers and summer meadows had the scent of incense and the hue of turquoise, there would be found the true spiritual paradise, the home of the protector of the Land of the Snows. Among these mountains, the domain of the Chenrezig (or Avalokitesvara), the Bodhisattva of Compassion, there stood a rock in the shave of the Tara, the female essence. The prophecy maintained that one day, kings, monks and lamas would reside on this pinnacle, and that it would become a great center for learning and the transmission of the dharma.

In the eighth century, when Padma Sambhava brought Buddhism to Tibet, he came upon such a place, inhabited by demonic mountain goddesses. Padma Sambhava tamed their wild natures, converting them to dharma protectors, with the darkest of all becoming transformed into a transcendent figure whose white body was a shimmering crystal. The mountain itself took her form, becoming the seat of the goddess, queen of the dakinis, or sky dancers. Her body became literally the foundation of the monastery, the first temple of which was constructed over her left breast. A white conch shell was buried beneath her vulva, in a secret place out of which flowed all wisdom and doctrine.

Revered as Guru Rinpoche, Teacher of Teachers, Padma Sambhava, 'Lotus Born," was in time deified by the Tibetan people. His wanderings were as prayers, his very presence a sign of the sacred, imprinted on the landscape for all time. The wonder of his memory and the miracles of his deeds drew an endless stream of pilgrims and mystic saints to T'ing Ri and beyond, to the wild reaches of the mountain streams that drained the glaciers and ice fields of the highest and most rugged know of mountains in the world. He was the hero of heroes, a true Bodhisattva, the wisdom hero, the realized being who had found enlightenment and yet remained in the earthly realm of samsara, of suffering and ignorance, to help all sentient beings achieve their own liberation.

To guide the people in their quest, and to ensure the eternal resonance of the wisdom doctrine, Guru Rinpoche planed along his path spiritual treasures, sacred texts and tantric teachings that might survive times of persecution, remaining magically hidden in the landscape until ready to be unveiled. Some were actual manuscripts sealed away in chortens or cached in caves. Others were instructions passed down in mystic script and concealed within the five elements, earth, water, fire, air and ether. Some were sequestered in meditative space alone. To facilitate the endless flowering of the dharma, Guru Rinpoche through prophecy reached in the future, empowering a tradition of treasure seekers, tertons, spiritual adepts destined to discover over time these dharma treasures, advanced and esoteric techniques that, like flashes of the spirit, allowed the seeker to bypass the mundane liturgies, yogas, and visualizations of orthodox practice and cut through to the very essence of Buddhahood.

Howard-Bury had just covered his mouth with a kerchief when he saw the most arresting of sights: a solitary man, well in the distance, who seemed to be stumbling repeatedly, only to regain his feet with the predictability of a metronome. He would then stand erect for a moment, only to stumble once more. As they came closer Howard-Bury recognized the man as a Mongolian. He wore layers of sodden wool and both his hands and his knees were wrapped in filthy rags. His hair was matted,his face black with grease, and his forehead shone where the grease seemed to have been rubbed away.

The man mas a pilgrim eleven months out of Lhasa, moving 650 miles toward Kathmandu, one body length at a time in ritual prostration. From a sanding position, he would look ahead, lift his hands touched in prayer over his shoulders as high as he could reach, and then, bringing them back to his forehead, throat, and chest he would bend forward to the ground. Touching the earth on all fours, with hands flat and squarely on his knees, he placed his forehead on the ground making five points of contact. Thus he would purify from his being the five poisons of hatred, desire, ignorance, pride and jealousy: that they might be replaced with the five corresponding aspects of wisdom. Standing once more,he drew his hands again in prayer to his chest, a symbolic gesture indicating his willingness as a aspiring bodhisattva to take on the suffering of all sentient beings. With each silent prostration he moved that much closer to his goal, which was not a place but a state of mind, not a destination but a path of salvation and liberation that is the ultimate quest of the pilgrim.

Wade Davis, Into the Silence

Folkways Image Library

Though we do not wholly believe it yet,

the interior life is a real life,
and the intangible dreams of people

have a tangible effect on the world.

James Baldwin

FOLKWAYS LIBRARY

Tibet Section

John F. Avedon, In Exile from the Land of the Snows, New York, 1984

Barbara M. and Michael Foster, Forbidden Journey - The Life of Alexandra David-Neel, Harper & Row, 1987

Alexandra David-Neel, My Journey to Lhasa, (Forward by His Holiness the Dali Lama),
Beacon Press, 1983

Alexandra David-Neel, Magic and Mystery in Tibet, Dover, 1971

Hugh M. Richardson, Tibet and Its History, Shambhala, 1984

Michael Buckley and Robert Strauss, Tibet: A Travel Survival Kit, Lonely Planet, 1986
(A Good Pocket-Size "Travel Companion")

National Geographic, March, 1984, Vol. 165, No. 3, "Peoples of China's Far Provinces", Page 283.

Lama Anagarika Govinda, The Way of the White Clouds: A Buddhist Pilgrim in Tibet, Shambala , 1971.

Luree Miller, On Top of the World: Five Women Explorers in Tibet, Mountaineers, 1984.

Heinrich Harrer, Seven Years in Tibet, J. P. Tarcher, Inc., 1982

R. A. Stein, Tibetan Civilization, Stanford University, 1972

Filippo de Filippi, An Account of Tibet**

William Montgomery McGovern, To Lhasa in Disguise, Century Co., 1924**

Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game

Peter Fleming, News from Tartary

Peter Hopkirk, Quest for Kim

Kathleen Hopkirk, Central Asia, A Traveler's Companion

Ian Baker, The Heart of the World, A Journey to the Last Secret Place

Manjursri, The Mission of George Bogle to Tibet and The Journey of Thomas Manning to Lhasa

Mildred Cable, F. Houghton, etc., The Challenge of Central Asia, World Dominion Press**

W.Y. Evans-Wentz, Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa

Jamang Norbu, The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes

William McGovern, To Lhasa in Disguise, A Secret Expedition Through Mysterious Tibet, The Century Co. **

Giotto Dainelli, Buddhists and Glaciers of Western Tibet, KP London**

John Snelling, The Sacred Mountain, East West Publications

Edmund Chandler, The Unveiling of Lhasa, Edward Arnold Co.**

Graham Coleman, Handbook of Tibetan Culture, Shambhala

David Snellgrove & Hugh Richardson, A Cultural History of Tibet, Shambhala

Robert Byron, First Russia Then Tibet, Macmillan & Co., 1933

Melvyn Goldstein, William Siebenschuh, Tashi Tsering, The Struggle for Modern Tibet - The Autobiography of Tashi Tsering, M.E. Sharpe

Note: Other title suggestions if you are interested.

** Hard To Find

The Global Rambler

#64 - Botswana: Spotting a Leopard on Safari (2016)

#63 - Tibet: In the Footsteps of Alexandra David Neel (1996)

#62 - Kathmandu, Nepal: Boudhanath Stupa

#61 - Tibet: Some Considerations