If you want to experience a moving Buddhist ritual on the wisdom of finding inner peace in our disorderly world, a Kalachakra Initiation would be an excellent choice.
The twelve-day teaching tradition is held most every year, usually led by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and attended by hundreds of monks, from most erudite to ordinary. More than a hundred thousand people typically make the pilgrimage from all over the world, including remote parts of the Himalaya.
In an era when Tibetan Buddhist culture has been under assault, at times brutally, by the Chinese, the Mustang restorations in Nepal may prove to be of even greater historic and cultural significance than we expected.
When bright images of hundreds of sacred deities neared completion a few years ago thanks to the art restorers’ painstaking skill, monks re-consecrated the temples of Thubchen and Jampa. Villagers resumed daily rituals of prayer and worship most had long abandoned, or never experienced.
With Raja Jigme Bista, king of Mustang, in 2010 on LoMontang’s preferred method of transit.
Our progress in restoring the temples and monasteries of LoMontang was slow in the first years. Some bureaucrats in Kathmandu blocked and then delayed the permits we needed, and we had to keep a close eye on the money we put into local charities to make sure it didn’t end up in the wrong bank accounts.
I heard fascinating stories about the Upper Mustang region in north central Nepal while trekking with ethnic Tibetan khampas* and my guide P.K. in the Annapurna range during the late 1960s. Mustang was further north, beyond the Kali Gandaki Gorge. A military checkpoint at the border prevented us from entering its stunning terrain, but my imagination was fired.
I would never learn why the Chinese government allowed me to organize the first attempt by American climbers to summit the eastern face of Mount Everest, the Kangshung Face. But I was surprised and delighted in 1981 when they did. The only non-Chinese climbing team allowed anywhere inside Tibet since the Dalai Lama’s exile in 1959 had been from Iran.
What do the people I admire most have in common? Empathy and altruism, and the ability to get things done.
Inspirational people have made a huge impact on my life. People like Sir Edmund Hillary, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Jimmy Carter, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela. Each strongly focused and dedicated to a particular cause.
Their struggles and achievements fueled a desire I’ve had since my college years in the ‘50s to do something, whatever I could, to fight poverty.
Two years after our first trek near Annapurna, my friend and Sierras climbing partner Scot Macbeth and I found ourselves hiking up the mountainside from the tiny Lukla Airport toward P. K.’s village, an ancient trading center known as Namche Bazaar.
We had been eager after that first trip to return to the Himalaya, and especially of course to see Mount Everest with our own eyes because of our new connection with our guide and friend, P.K. The area where most Sherpas live along the main trail northward rising to Everest’s peak is revered by mountaineers around the world as “the Khumbu.” This is part of eastern Nepal’s Solukhumbu District.
During my early treks in the Himalaya, I quickly came to appreciate that Sherpas are exceptional people.
Years later, recalling our adventures together in the Khumbu, Jimmy Carter said to me, “I have never met any people as admirable in their friendship, their unselfishness, and their eagerness to do what is right than the Sherpas who helped us in the Himalayan region.”
Why do all undergraduates minoring in poverty studies at the University of California, Berkeley take a course in business management? What management lessons does the private-equity world offer non-profit organizations? How can prospering immigrants in the U.S. best fight poverty in their homelands?
Our head Sherpa, or sirdar, on my first trek in the Himalaya was a polite man named Pasang Kami. He was short, wore glasses, and spoke only when he needed to. He had no schooling, but had taught himself to read, speak, and write in Nepali and English. He was ambitious and a hard worker. Everyone called him P. K.