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| Botswana - Leopard at rest (2016) |
Folkways Image Library
#63 - Tibet: In the Footsteps of Alexandra David Neel (1996)
"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
YouTube
https://youtu.be/NhRTZW6MWwU
#62 - Kathmandu, Nepal: Boudhanath Stupa
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| Boudhanath Stupa Ceremony - Kathmandu, Nepal (1994) |
Folkways Image Library
#61 - Tibet: Some Considerations
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
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
#59 - Maui & Hawaii: A Retrospect (February 2019 & 2020)
For some reason, I thought those Discover Hawaii programs from 1975 to about 1978 had been discussed on a previous post. I don't see it, so it seems appropriate to remember them now.
This February, we spent 10 days on the big Island, Hawaii, at a rented house just south of a town named Captain Cook. This was my first return to the island since about 1978. But first, a word about what Discover Hawaii was about.
In Post #11, this program was briefly mentioned. It began in 1975 when I was working at the Western Forestry Center located near Washington Park in Portland Oregon. I was developing forestry related educational programs when approached by a woman, who happened to be a travel agent, with a suggestion to offer a program in Hawaii. It seemed like a good idea and the Western Forestry Center had the connections in the islands with national, state and county forestry offices as well as some private gardens.
The research and planning took about 6 months or more in order to contact the various agencies in Hawaii who would be receptive to visits by a small groups of travelers as well as have the personnel resources to talk with us. Further, this was going to be a camping trip, so I needed to find suitably located state and county campgrounds where we could pitch our tents or, when possible, stay in cabins. The planning came together and an initial group of 8 persons learned of the trip through the Western Forestry Center's Newsletter. If I can recall correctly, the approximately 18 day trip cost about $850.00 per person and included 4-6 nights on Kauai, Maui and Hawaii with all their meals. I purchased six Wilderness Experience 3-person tents which had plenty of space for 2 persons and cooked all our meals over an Optimus 8R camp stove. I drove a Hertz 12 passenger van with gear and luggage in back and shopped on each island for our food, which was kept in a box just inside the passenger's sliding door. Space was tight, but not crowded.
Many of our campsites were located next to the beach. Most of the time, we were the only people camping or staying in the cabins. We attracted some attention from the locals, since everyone, except myself, was 60+. One late night at Anahola Beach, we were awoke by loud talking not far from our tents. I climbed out of my tent in the dark to find out what was happening. Several men had dug a pit and were prepared to spend the night, drinking beer and roasting a pig for a morning wedding and luau. Would I join them? Of course. Come morning, we were all invited to spend some time with wedding families and the luau. These opportunities happened multiple times during the Discover Hawaii years.
I could recall only few of the camping and cultural/historic/natural history stop names, until our 2019 and 2020 Island visits. This last February, while driving through Captain Cook to our house rental, we passed a sign for Hapuna Beach (memorialized at the bottom of Post 11). I had not remembered on which island the beach was located, but noted the location with plans to return to the beach before we flew home.
My young daughter came with me on a couple of the Discover Hawaii trips. Since I was responsible for driving, pitching tents, cooking meals, leading hikes and introducing guests and speakers, I couldn't attend to her during those "tours." One of our visits on Kauai was Alexander's Nursery in Kapaa. It happened that the families young manager's had a daughter the same age as mine. You can imagine my daughter's wonderful experiences staying in a tropical nursery for up to 3 weeks, picking morning breakfast fruit from the trees, enjoying the fragrant smells and spending time down on the beaches. When our travelers flew home from Honolulu, I would fly to Kauai on the small mail plane to pick her up and she would sit behind the pilot and "shotgun" seats, on the day's mail, fly to Honolulu and to board our flight home.
So, in retrospect, what changes did I observe on Maui and Kauai? Traffic, traffic, traffic. Crowds, crowds, crowds. We drove roads that didn't exist in the 70's. Homeless people in the campgrounds and parking lots. Big hotels and condo's with golf courses along the beach front. Costco, Burger King, Subway, Pizza places, etc. located in big or small strip malls stretching along the roadsides. On some beaches, a person must arrive by 830-0900 am to find a blanket space. In the 70's, the beaches were nearly empty except for a few locals who may be surfing. The sun was still shining and the ocean was still blue. Whales, dolphins and turtles could still be seen after long waits in traffic along the road, searching the beach parking lot for an empty space and looking for a good observation place.
The eyes of the beholder. If you hadn't visited the Hawaiian islands in the 70's or earlier; if you hadn't trekked Annapurna or the Khumbu in the 70's or earlier; if you hadn't walked the Venice canals in the 70's or earlier, if you hadn't hike up to Taktsang in the 70's or earlier, you wouldn't know the differences. You would be seeing with fresh eyes, your experience untainted by a purer time.
#58 - New Blog Posting Schedule
It has become a little too stressful meeting a weekly deadline for my Blog posts. As we head into spring, summer and fall, I don't have the 8 - 10 hours each week for research, transfer slides to digital format, turn slides into a YouTube presentation and write the Blog. The Blog writing needs to share time with garden work, hiking, camping, lawn mowing, sipping wine, etc..
The Global Rambler will be posted every two weeks beginning with this post.
You can look forward to the following Blog Posts:
21 March - Maui and Hawaii: A Retrospect (February 2019 and 2020)
04 April - Tibet: Some Considerations
18 April - Tibet: In the Footsteps of Alexandria David-Neel
02 May - Tibet: The Solace of Sacred Terrain
16 May - Nepal: A Toe in Tibet and A Tiger on the Trail
30 May - Myanmar: Hiking Backcountry Burma
13 June - Sikkim: Walking Beside the Dalai Lama
I appreciate your taking the time to read my Global Rambler Blogs.
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