One of my favorite writers, Marco Pallis, endeavoured to place himself in the great lineage of British mountain climbers in the early 20th century through scaling some of the most challenging Himalayan peaks. But when Pallis reach Tibet, he seemed to lose interest in climbing, his attention was distracted. Or, perhaps it is more appropriate to say that his attention was focused. Pallis was drawn to the still very living Vajrayana tradition he found there, and eventually became a Buddhist in the Tibetan tradition, studying with various masters, and even being recognized as part of a tulku lineage, that is, someone who bears within them the ‘incarnation’ of a previous life, or at least the specific energy of a previous life. A Tibetan master who met Pallis recognized this incarnation within him.
This is something of a simplification, to be sure. Pallis wrote a remarkable book called ‘The
Way and the Mountain’ to describe this transformation. It is a profound text that most everyone
should read. It won’t make you want to
climb Mt. Everest, but might want to make you tackle the Everest within.
A good friend of mine recently sent me some photos from a
mountain climbing trip. They looked
amazing, but I soon realized, ‘this may in fact be illegal in Bhutan.’ This was a fairly profound realization for
me. It’s not because the Bhutanese
consider mountains sacred. It’s because
the Bhutanese consider ALL things sacred.
So they don’t let people go too near those things that are the most
sacred, and thus they don’t allow anyone to climb the highest peaks. This is a remarkable conservation paradigm
for me, and I hope it lasts.
In the West we may still consider some things sacred, but not all.
To me, this a futile, if not impossible to hold, paradigm. If not everything is sacred, then nothing
is. There is no separation. So instead of respecting nature, we set out
to conquer it. It’s not a big leap for
me to make between this, and the destruction of our natural environment that
proceeds apace, and for which science only provides fleeting and superficial
solutions.
I’m also currently reading Wendell Berry’s classic ‘The
Unsettling of America’. Now there is a
conservationist, and also an agriculturalist.
He sees all things as sacred, so can overcome the illusory duality:
sacred vs. profane. He notes that
‘wilderness’ is not something humans are separate from, that we can’t look at
it as distinct. We are part of it, and
cannot preserve it without playing a role within it.
He notes that ‘We need what other ages would have called sacred
groves. We need groves, anyhow, that we
would treat as if they were sacred-in order, perhaps, to perceive their
sanctity.’ (p.30) I think his point is that, if we don't account for the sanctity of nature, we no longer perceive it at all. Thus, the Bhutanese outlaw mountain climbing
to ensure that the sanctity of mountains is remembered. Otherwise, we risk forgetting. I think our culture of climbing to the top of
mountains for the sake of it is proof of this.
The Zen Buddhists say, when you get to the top of the mountain, keep on
climbing. But we no longer know how to
do this, so we seek climb one mountain and immediately set out to find another mountain to climb, forgetting where the ultimate Peak
really is.
I am sadly no longer in Bhutan, my contract ended, my visa
expired, and I was very sad to leave.
Truly it will be an impossible experience to replicate, and I doubt I
will ever see a place so special again on this earthly plane (even if I return
to Bhutan, since it is already changing so much everyday). I am in Thailand now, which strikes something
of a balance between maintaining a sense of the sacred, and giving in to the
frivolity of the modern world.
Unfortunately, it is a balance that will always tip further and further
towards the demands, assumptions, and ideologies of modernity, and Thailand is
already following the way of the West in this regard, as Bhutan likely will far
too quickly. The juggernaut of
globalization thunders on leaving no sacred groves in its wake. Hopefully at least a few of the mountain
peaks will be preserved, Deo Volente.
