Lhasa 1993

He visted Tibet in 1993 and in 2005.

Every Shanghai morning I emptied the piss pot down a hole in the floor. In the filthy, dingy kitchen a fish head bubbled in wok oil. Broken, dusty, wooden shutters angled intricate spider webs.

I chopped vegetables on a scarred brown board with a sharp silver knife. The inlaid yak bone handle with blood red coral and blue matrix turquoise stones carried a deep dark yak scent.

Slicing, I heard melodious bells in Tibetan valleys as yak caravans weaved south from grazing pastures and trade routes. Each note was a vibrational frequency.

I bought the knife from an old persistent beautiful smiling Tibetan woman in the Lhasa Barkhor one freezing January day. Intuitively we understood each other communicating in eye language.

We walked a sacred clockwise path, a kora, as pilgrims performed their holy circuit to the golden statue of Shakyamuni.

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Chengdu to Lhasa for two hours. 33,000 feet above the Earth’s backbone. Everest is below.

Airport arrival. One small shack. Staff dump luggage from the plane into a dump truck. Throw your bag into a jeep. Let’s go.

Tsering, 21, a guide who studied in India and living with her grandmother for twelve years returned to Tibet. I joined her and a driver for ten days.

We explored Tibetan history, sects, motifs, murals and herbal medicine. We drifted inside waves of Khampa nomads, their long black hair tied in thick braids wrapped in red yarn with wide brown smiling faces wearing a fox or leopard pelt thrown over one shoulder. They were in Lhasa from eastern Kham.

Nomads settled on the edge of Lhasa for winter trading after a summer at higher altitudes. Devout pilgrims spinning prayer wheels muttered mantras with pure, joyful hearts.

The Barkhor was a rambling marketplace of traders. Silver and coral, dzi stones, bells, horns, medicine, silk, carpets, wool from India, fox and leopard furs, prayer flags, amulets, spices, yak meat, cassettes, jeans and toys.

Nomads and pilgrims from the Tibetan wilderness made a once in a lifetime pilgrimage to the Jokhang Temple, the holiest Buddhist shrine. Inside, behind a wire screen was a gold leaf statue of Shakyamuni, the title of Gautama Buddha. Pilgrims offered prayers, yak butter, khata silk scarves, coins and paper money, making prostrations, extended out on hands and knees, scraping stone floors.

Juniper smoke from chortens wafted into cold air. Blue, red, white, yellow and green Lung-ta wind horse prayer flags danced above whitewashed buildings.

A Tibetan woman in a rainbow apron and thick yak felt boots shuffled along saying prayers. Her joined hands rose in a blessing over her head, descended to her forehead and in front of her heart before she prostrated herself out, stretching full length along the ground on hands and knees and touching her forehead to the ground with extended arms.

She unfolded from the ground.

She walked forward performing her ritual. Earning merit.

Meeting Tibetans helped me understand resilience is more spiritual. One returns to a childlike nature, curious, playful, demonstrating innate morality and nobility. I never went back to sleep.

Awake for the rest of my life.

Tibet