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Wisdom of the Sages

By Antonia Neubauer Myths and Mountains

“The real treasure is not to be sought in any distant region; it lies buried in the innermost recess of our own home. . . our own being.  And it lies behind the stove, the life-and-warmth giving center of the structure of our existence, our heart of hearts – if we could only dig.  But. . . it is only after a faithful journey to a distant region. . . that the meaning of the inner voice that is to guide our quest can be revealed to us. . . And the one who reveals to us the meaning of our cryptic inner message must be a stranger, of another creed and a foreign race.” 

Heinrich Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization 

He was an old man, a peasant, with fingers chapped and split from years of pushing a plow through the rock strewn fields of Dolpo. When Kamal, a friend and guide in Nepal, and I came upon him sitting by the road, he was relaxing on the grass, soaking up the warm morning sun.   

“How far is it to Reyche?” we asked. “What is the trail like? Does it go up or down? Are there any towns along the way? How long will it take to walk? And if we go slowly?” On and on we went with our questions.   

Finally the man stretched lazily and rolled his eyes. “Why are you asking me all these questions?  If you don’t start walking, you’ll never get there.” 

We looked at each other and smiled.  It was a simple statement. . . in one way. The old man was tired of dealing with our silly issues. Yet, in another way this old farmer had said something profound about life. Sometimes, we have just to cease worrying or questioning, and plunge in with our whole heart and soul, in order to follow our own path and arrive at our destination.  Kamal and I had to just “start walking.” 

This old farmer was one of the many “guides” or strangers that I’ve met since I started walking in Nepal. He was not a scholar, he had not attended university; but he was a wise man with a message, which, if recognized, could change lives.  For me, who leads treks throughout Asia and South  America and takes clients to isolated, unlikely places, there have been many such strange teachers. Not all are easily recognizable. Some, like the old man, have said something that made me  think. Others have taught by example. Some have handed me a gift that has led to a unique discovery or awareness. When I have listened  with my eyes and my heart as well as my ears, I have often found a clue to finding my own personal treasure. 

On one occasion in Nepal, I was hiking with Katherine, whose daughter had died a few months before she left on trek. The daughter had committed suicide rather than fight off the demons of madness that had made her life miserable. We had promised Katherine to do a puja, or prayer service for her daughter, and we sought out the lama of a small, local gompa or monastery not far from the village of Taplejung in East Nepal. While the lama was preparing for the blessing, he asked Katherine to tell him about her daughter and the family. As she tried to answer the lama, tears began coursing down her cheeks, and she reached a point where she could no longer reply. 

In the corner of the gompa, looking at us, was a tiny, wizened old woman. She was the caretaker of the building and housekeeper for the lama. She cooked, she cleaned, and she made sure that all was well with the local gods. Her body was bent from sweeping floors for many years with one of the tiny Nepali brooms, and more spiders had made homes in her hair than in the cracks and corners of the gompa itself. The wrinkles in her face were perennially lined with the soot of the fires on which she warmed the ever-present salt tea for the lama. Looking with compassion at Katherine, she came over  and watched her tears. Then, placing her sooty hands on Katherine’s shoulders, the woman compelled Katherine to look her in the eyes. Gently, she wiped Katherine’s tears, and spoke softly, “You must not cry, so much or you won’t be able to see your path.” 

Her message, like that of the old man by the road, was simple. Let go of the attachments. Don’t blind yourself with tears of the past. Keep your vision clear in order to find your own way in the present. Although the woman’s words were directed at Katherine, they were for anyone who was listening . . .including me. 

One man’s love of Mother 

Jimmy Thapa perched on a stool in the back of a Kathmandu restaurant designing and selling astrological T-shirts for a living. He is an extraordinary artist, whose real talent is painting miniature masterpieces on tiny canvases about the size of playing cards. One day, while I was sipping chai, milk tea, with him, he took out a package of his paintings. Before he would let me see them, he told a story.   

Several years ago, he had decided he wanted to paint the sacred Ganges from its source in the Himalayas down to where it flowed into the Bay of Bengal. Dressed in a simple white dhoti, he started his trip on the icy Tapovan Glacier in Ladakh and traveled slowly down to Gaumukh, where the waters first break through the snows, on to Haridwar and Rishikesh, where the Ganges enters the floodplains of India, and on to the magnificent Sunderban Delta, half as large as the British Isles, where the numerous distributaries enter the Bay of Bengal.   

Carrying his supplies and canvases in a plain cloth bag, he painted the mountains, herders, towns, villagers, pilgrims and animals all along his way. After a pilgimage of two years, he arrived at the delta, and had to cross to the other side. He put his work and his sandals in the cloth bag, sat it on his head, and stepped out barefoot into the current. As he walked away from the shore towards the other side, the waters rose up first to his knees, then to his chest, and then to his chin. For a moment, he hesitated, fearing that all his work of the past two years was on the verge of being swept away by the river that he had painted with such love and wonder. Taking a deep breath and staring deliberately into the current, he said quietly, “Ganga Mati, ki jai, bless you Mother Ganges. For two years I have been painting you in all your seasons, in all your colors. If you want this work, take it. It is my gift to you.” 

With that, he stepped farther out into the stream, looking straight ahead and walking steadily through the flowing current. Miraculously, the water level began to drop, and he easily reached the other bank. There, Jimmy took the cloth sack down from his head, put on his sandals, and made his way home to Kathmandu. He knew that a true gift to the river is not only the paintings themselves, but the willingness to give them back to their source, to “Ganga Mati.” 

Sometimes wisdom is passed on by example, rather than words, as I learned on a trip off of the main trails in the Annapurna Range. I had spent a long day hiking, and was dusty and dirty when I finally arrived at the campsite with my trekking group and crew. Rather than rest, I followed our local guide, Krishna, to find some water.  With his big plastic water container and a cup, Krishna was looking for our group’s drinking and cooking water; I, for bathing water. We walked fairly far from the campsite, up and down hills, and along the dry, grassy terrain.  I began to wonder if he really knew where to find a stream. Finally, around a curve, he stopped at the base of a hill.  There was a small trickle of water, hardly enough, in my opinion, to fill a small cup, much less a large plastic bottle. I was ready to turn around, go back, and tell my tired group we would have to move camp to where there was more water. 

Krishna never hesitated. He plucked four large rhododendron leaves from a nearby tree and laid them on top of the largest stone he could find in the stream, forming  a sort of spigot. Then he took a few pebbles and placed them on the leaves. The water trickle still wasn’t strong enough, so he removed three leaves and delicately balanced a pebble on the last remaining leaf. That made a better stream, but he still couldn’t get the cup under the trickle of water. Picking up a small stick, he began to dig some dirt and small rocks from underneath and along the sides of his miniature waterfall to make a deeper hole. Finally, he took tiny bits of dirt and lined the top of his “spigot”, narrowing the stream and increasing the flow of water over his rhododendron leaf.  At last there was enough space to put in the cup and enough water to fill it. The final task was filling the large plastic bottle with many small cups of water. 

During the 45 or so minutes that the process took, I watched in silence, squatting next to him by the stream. Earlier, I had been ready to turn around, give up, and move camp. In fact, there was enough water. I just hadn’t seen with Krishna’s eyes and his matter-of-fact patience. “Look again,” his actions seemed to imply. “In our world, we can transform a trickle into a waterfall that can easily nourish 20 people.” 

Time’s elusive nature 

Often, my trekkers are impatient and preoccupied with time. They love numbers and always want to know “when” we will get someplace, despite the fact that each of us walks a different pace, and things happen on a trail that can interest or delay us. Sally, one of my clients, was tired hiking up and down Nepal’s steep hills. She asked me one day to find out from a farmer how long it would take our group to get to the town of Suki Pokhari. The farmer saw that we were a group of grandmothers, wrinkled his brow, and said, “two and a half hours.” Forty-five minutes later, we passed another farmer, and Sally begged me to ask him the time to Suki Pokhari. The farmer replied, “two and a half hours.” Forty-five minutes later, we passed a third man, and the same interchange occurred. Again came the response, “Two and a half hours.” It was abundantly clear that, from any point on the trail, it was two and a half hours to Suki Pokhari. 

But what, you might ask, is an hour to a peasant who does not even have a watch, for whom getting up and going to bed depend solely on the sun and how fast his feet can walk? And what difference did the time truly make to us?  Suki Pokhari was our only destination.  When we arrived, we arrived. 

In Nepal, where Buddhism and Hinduism meet, monks or rishis are often the purveyors of wisdom. On the top of a forested hill named Shivapuri in the Kathmandu Valley a succession of hermits or Babas have lived for decades in the same tiny hut. I had come to camp on the top and visit with the present Baba. He was about 50, and, although he had several disciples, he did all his own cooking and cleaning, always staying in control of his own simple life. Although his life was basic, the Baba was most learned. He composed music, had read not only his own Asian classics, but many of ours as well – Shakespeare, Dostoevski, Kant, and other writers and philosphers. He also helped to oversee a school down in the valley.   

When I wandered over to his hut, I found a young German man in his late 20s sitting crosslegged on the floor in front of the Baba, asking him  questions. The man was lamenting the fact that he was working to earn his living and support his family back home, and had no time to sit and meditate. The Baba looked at him and  explained that in his tradition work could be a form of meditation if done with concentration and reverence.  Moreover, explained the Baba, the German was at a point in his life where he was doing what was expected of him.  

“My predecessor lived to be 133 years old,” said the Baba.  “He used to tell people that according to the Vedas, life had four stages or Ashramas. The first stage is that of childhood and discovery.  In the second stage, one fulfills the duties of a householder – work, marriage and child-rearing.  That, my friend, is where you are. You are where you are supposed to be. Then, when your hair turns white and your family is grown, you are a free man and can walk the world,” the Baba continued. “Only then, after self-discovery through walking, can you enter the fourth stage.  Then you can be a true Sannyasin, and serve as a teacher to others. Do not hurry your life.” 

I listened in silence. Before I began trekking, I had been a schoolteacher, one who had stayed in secure, comfortable hotels when she traveled, but had never really “walked the world.” In retrospect, I think my students learned in spite of me. Now,  my hair was turning white, my children were grown, and I had become a middle-aged pilgrim escorting trekkers who wanted to be pilgrims too. 

A question of illusions 

Tengboche Rimpoche, the head of a large Sherpa monastery, presented another view of travel.  He had granted me and my group an audience in his receiving room high in the Everest hills in the shadow of majestic Khumbu Yu La, the holiest mountain to the Khumbu Sherpas. Each of us had prepared a question for him that had meaning for us. 

Frank went first.  He was an extremely successful doctor, head of the medical association in his specialty, and well off financially. He had carefully drafted a question that he thought would impress the Rimpoche. “In my town,” Frank began, “I am considered an important person and feel very big. Yet here, in the shadow of the mountains, I feel so small. What does this mean?” 

Tengboche Rimpoche smiled at Frank and chose his words slowly and carefully. “In truth, the mountains are neither big nor small, just as you are neither big nor small. Big and small are only perceptions, illusions. You simply ‘are,’ just as the mountains ‘are.’” 

“Then why am I here?” Frank continued. “What is it that draws me to your mountains?” 

Rimpoche sat quietly for a while, digesting Frank’s question, forming his reply. When he spoke, it was very gently. “Sherpa boys travel to America. They see the cars and the electricity, and they say, ‘this is good.’ And you, you come to our cold land, where there are no cars and there is no electricity; and you say, ‘this is good.’ It is all illusion.” 

Although Tengboche Rimpoche was talking directly to Frank, each of us felt the truth of what he was saying. For me personally, I had come to Nepal in part to find answers and direction to my own life. At first, I had been overwhelmed by the warmth and the hospitality of the people, the joy of hiking trails, the simplicity of Nepali life. As I began to know the country and the people more, I realized that this was a naïve foreigner’s vision of Nepal. In fact, most of the local people couldn’t understand why we, with our cars wanted to hike up trails, viewed “simplicity” as poverty, and had just as many worries in their world as we did in ours. Where we worried about car payments or college tuition, they worried about monkeys stealing the apples from their trees or how to finance their child’s marriage. In truth, I had found that Nepali “grass” was no greener than my American grass. It was simply a different variety.  

A gift delayed 

Kamal, my Nepali partner on many treks, is a sadhu or wise man himself, although he doesn’t know it yet. He gave me a gift that echoed the wisdom of Heinrich Zimmer and Tengboche Rimpoche.One day, as I was just about to return home from Nepal, Kamal handed me a copy of The Alchemist, a book by Paulo Coelho. I was preoccupied with leaving and put it aside in my duffle bag. When I returned home, I put the book on my night table under the pile of books I needed to read one day. There Kamal’s gift lay for several months. One day, I was feeling very discouraged, and was cleaning house to distract my mind. As I dusted the night table, I found Kamal’s book. 

It told the story of a young shepherd who leaves his home and family and journeys to a strange land in search of his destiny and his treasure.  After many adventures and encounters with bandits, beautiful women, merchants, camel drivers, philosophers and an alchemist, he finally achieves his dream and finds his treasure. But achieving his dream is not without perils and requires devotion to his cause and much courage on the part of the boy. As the boy’s heart says to him, “Every search begins with beginner’s luck. And every search ends with the victor’s being severely tested.” Moreover, the story makes clear that on the road to achieving a dream, you have to commit your whole heart and soul single-mindedly and fearlessly. “If a person is living out his destiny, he knows everything he needs to know. There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve, the fear of failure.” 

And so the boy pursued his destiny across the oceans and the desert. Finally, when he came to what he thought was the site of his treasure, he was attacked by a thief.  Leaving the boy bleeding in the sand, the thief mockingly told him about his own dream of buried treasure. Of course, the treasure is back in the boy’s home. 

Thus, my friend Kamal with his book was confirming what others were saying and what I have found for myself through my wanderings. We have a path, a destiny, a treasure that is ours to find. To find it, we have to leave our secure world and, as one of the earlier Everest explorers said, “walk the feather-edge of danger.” We need , according to the peasant in Dolpo, to commit ourselves and stop questioning. Clear vision, as the old woman affirmed is necessary to find our way.   

As we walk, we must be able to let go of our everyday possessions and attachments. On our way, we need to be as patient as Krishna, alert to the world around us, and not concerned about how long our quest will take. We have a lifetime.  Moreover, we have to accept that the answers will not come all at once, but in stages, as the Baba explained, stages that are appropriate for where we are in our life. At the end of the search, however, we come full circle. Despite the distance we have traveled, the real treasure will be found in our own home, in our own hearth, in the “innermost recesses” of our soul; but we had to go to a strange land and have a stranger tell us where to look.