Perseverance of a People
on the Cusp of Annihilation

______________

This religious awakening doesn't end in a conversion

by Caleb Miller

Over the course of a great many years, my father and a few of his friends have intermittently organized mountain-climbing excursions and jungle expeditions—a bit of danger in often remote locales—and I had always been eager to join them on one of these adventures. In previous years, I had been either simply too young to tag along on such physically demanding trips or else, due to school or some other unavoidable obligation, my schedule would not permit an extended absence. This time, however, my father had scheduled a trip specifically so that my brother and I could, if we chose, join him on a month long trek across the Nepalese border and into Tibet. The point of this particular excursion was to complete a "kora," a sort of ritualistic circling around Mount Kailas, a beautiful snow-capped peak in the Himalayan mountain range that rises up alone out of a flat desert plain. Not only is Kailas the spiritual center of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Bon, but it is also believed by the devout that many deities, including Shiva, the chief god in Hinduism, and various Buddhas reside above the mountain. Completion of the kora around the mountain is the ultimate symbol of worship and physical sacrifice. The faithful pilgrims who complete the trek have their spiritual slates wiped clean of any residual sins. And just to seal the deal and guarantee that one will achieve nirvana, there is also a lake adjacent to Kailas where even more lifetimes of sins can be washed away in mere minutes. This cleansing is believed to be so complete that those who participate in it thereby spare their souls the eternity of pain and torment that is reincarnation.

My father, as an ardent "Western" Buddhist (or, as I like to call him, a fashionable Buddhist who contemplates ancient philosophies involving such profound concepts as life-as-pain and anti-materialism in the reclining leather seat of his climate-controlled luxury vehicle), was more than happy to lay down a few thousand dollars to journey to this spiritual epicenter in order to have his soul cleansed. I realize that this little rant sounded a bit cynical or, at the very least, very skeptical, but I am an atheist and I hold a great deal of contempt and even hatred for organized religion and the resultant dogma. To me, a trip into the Himalayas and the dense jungles of Nepal sounded absolutely amazing. A spiritual pilgrimage to the resting-place of the Buddhas sounded like a joke. The trek itself was incentive enough for me, but I couldn't help feeling overwhelmingly hypocritical as an atheist participating in a sacred Buddhist ritual. Little did I know that this trip would give me an entirely new perspective and a better understanding of how religion can sometimes, however rarely, be a good and useful thing.

I won't be surprised if they seek to exist
To properly explain how I came to think beyond my vehemently negative prejudicial stance on religion, I feel I should preface the details of my journey with a brief history of the Chinese imperialist policies that have led to the current deplorable condition of Tibet. In 1949 China invaded Tibet and declared the country as one of its provinces. Within ten years the military had secured complete control of the country, forcing the spiritual and political leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, into exile. As a pacifistic people, most of whom practice Buddhism, the Tibetans believe all living things are sacred and therefore put up little to no real resistance against the violent invasion of the Chinese military. They have refused to respond in kind, instead favoring civil disobedience. But non-violent protest only works when the oppressing forces are not willing to torture and slaughter the protesters. So from 1949 to the present day, the Chinese have engaged in a policy of eradication: an attempt to destroy anything Tibetan and to more fully assimilate Tibet as a true colony of China. Because Tibetan culture, religion, and nationality are hindrances to Chinese occupation and total control of Tibet, China has attempted to wipe these things off the face of the planet. Even the Tibetan language has become a target; it is being systematically removed from schools. China has destroyed thousands of Tibetan villages, temples, and businesses and has built in their place a vast number of jails and detention centers where innocent Tibetans are imprisoned, tortured, and "reeducated" to suit Chinese policy. Prisoners are chained and shackled so they can be attacked by dogs or have electric cattle prods shoved into their mouths, rectums, and vaginas. In an attempt to make the Tibetans a minority in their own country, China has also implemented a policy of mass immigration sending waves of Chinese people flooding into Tibet.

I could go on for pages and pages about the way China exploits the Tibetan people, from the resources they strip out of the mountainsides to the areas of the country they use as testing grounds for nuclear weapons, but I really only want to give you a taste of the situation. In sum, the Tibetans are a broken people and because there are no countries that wish to intervene on behalf of these tortured people (despite the Dalai Lama's constant, very charismatic diplomatic visits with various heads of states and an astonishing level of public awareness and popular support for the Free Tibet movement), I will not be surprised, if in a decade or two, the Tibetans are no longer a people at all. They will vanish into thin air with no trace of their culture left except in dusty museum displays (147-54).

Our initial destination was Katmandu, the bustling jungle capital of Nepal. After a day of rest and reorientation following our incredibly long plane flight, we took yet another aircraft to the eastern city of Nepalganji where we clambered into a tiny ten-person propeller airplane loaded with cargo and sailed into the mist-covered Himalayan slopes. We were headed for the alpine town of Simikot near the Nepalese border into Tibet. Because there is no runway in Simikot, planes land in a shrub-covered section of the town located next to a giant precipice. (The planes taking off get just enough speed so that they won't plummet to destruction when they reach the edge of the cliff; it's an exciting sight to say the least.) As the mists parted, our plane crashed to a halt in the center of the town. The real part of our journey hadn't even yet begun.

Starting at Simikot we traversed a little over sixty miles north through the Himalayan mountain range to a 19,000-foot pass spanning the border into Tibet. As we scrambled though the Nepalese section of the Himalayas, the lush countryside spotted with giant waterfalls and patches of jungle drastically built up my anticipation of what we would see upon reaching Tibet. I was already well aware of the fact that most of the Tibetan landscape is alpine desert, but for some reason the Tibet of my imagination was an exotic paradise of beautiful temples and magical towns dotting the steep mountainsides. It seemed as if this had to be true otherwise it just didn't make any sense to me why China would invade this little country and hold onto it with such brutal intensity.

The only visual relief from the monotony of the landscape was the various towns where we stopped in order to stretch our legs and purchase water. And it was these towns that ultimately destroyed my perception of Tibet as a magical place. Any monasteries or indigenous villages not burned to the ground by the Chinese military were quickly decaying and looked as if they could collapse at any moment. All of the other towns looked like cheap reproductions of Chinese ghettos. Hundreds of shops, all crammed together, all with neon signs, and all peddling cheaply made novelty goods and clothing, lined the garbage-covered roads. The Chinese government's cultural genocide of the Tibetan people, which I daily saw evidence of, made me want to vomit in disgust. In fact, it only took a day or two for me to become overwhelmed with hatred for China and what they had done to this virtually defenseless country.

After days of witnessing China's imperialist policies and the nothingness of a landscape that would make existentialists reconsider their beliefs, we finally reached Lake Mansarovar. The lake sparkled like a sapphire against its desert surroundings. Off in the distance I could see the solitary peak of Kailas rising up above the dust and glowing like a giant diamond. It was one of the first beautiful things I had seen in days and it was a liberating experience. For a moment I stopped loathing myself for being such a blatant hypocrite and simply basked in the astounding beauty of a country I had only minutes earlier deemed "the worst place on earth." It was finally time to start the kora around Kailas. Although I was beginning to feel a slight appreciation for Tibet, I still, in no way, expected Kailas to have an impact upon my beliefs.

On Kailas, there is an incredibly steep and rocky pass, usually covered in snow. It is the highest point on the trek and the most difficult part of the climbing and hiking. (No one actually climbs the mountain peak itself, out of respect for the religions to which it is sacred and because of a "force field" that supposedly injures anyone who attempts it.) Already absolutely exhausted from the long trek that lay behind me, that pass was punishing. As I slowly clambered across the ice and rock to the top of the incline, I collapsed. My body felt destroyed but it was liberating and relieving to see the hardest parts of the journey behind me. It took me several minutes to muster enough strength to continue with the journey, but as I slowly lumbered down the other side of the pass I saw what would forever change my understanding of religion: three tiny black spots in an ocean of pure blinding white. Along a large snow covered bank, three Tibetans were on their way to completing the kora, but they were doing it differently than myself and the other people I had encountered on the trek. These people would take three steps forward, drop to their knees in prayer, and then drag themselves a few feet forward on their bellies. I asked our guide Tilak what these people were doing and he explained to me that the extremely pious complete the kora while prostrating before the gods.

"Even in the snow?" I asked.

"Especially in the snow."

"And how long does it take to complete the kora when they do it like that?" I asked Tilak.

He answered matter-of-factly, "A little over three weeks."

It was a shocking moment. I couldn't imagine how anyone could spend three weeks crawling on one's belly through snow and ice and then up a pass so steep it nearly defeated me completely even though I climbed it normally. I was overwhelmed with confusion. My thoughts were racing in a thousand different directions at once. My initial reaction was to scoff. I thought it one of the most idiotic, ridiculous things I had ever seen. I asked myself "Why put yourself through so much discomfort and pain for something that doesn't even exist?" And that is when I had my little epiphany. The Tibetan people have absolutely nothing. They are some of the poorest people I have ever seen. Their land is so dry as to be incapable of yielding any crops. Their culture and language have been torn from their grasp. They aren't even allowed to carry around a picture of their true leader for fear of death and torture. In a land where the native population has been virtually destroyed and the remaining people are left broken with nothing tangible to give them hope, it is natural that those surviving Tibetans would look to something beyond their immediate surroundings for solace. Religion and their beliefs are the only things remaining which they can call their own and to which they can cling. And cling they do, with amazing zeal. Not even I could stand to take away the last bit of hope of a people on the verge of extermination.

Up until that point I had been entirely confident in my understanding of religion as an evil tool of control, as something to keep the masses complacent and ignorant, as something that had caused so much violence and spurred so many wars that I couldn't see any way it could benefit civilization. Suddenly, a crack had appeared in my reasoning. In Tibet, where the people had been stripped of anything and everything they can call their own, religion is something positive and motivating. It is a buoy helping the Tibetan people to keep their heads above the violent churning ocean that desires to drown them and their civilization forever. And for that reason I was able to find a level of respect and appreciation for religion that would never have been possible had I not seen for myself the atrocities that occur in Tibet every single day.

Caleb Miller is a junior in the Film program with the Critical Studies department. He sometimes plays in a punk band and has an interest in special effects makeup.

Works Cited

Tofani, Loretta. "Tibetans Under Chinese Rule." Genocide. Ed. William Dudley. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2001. 147-154. Rpt. of "Bodies Scarred, Spirits Broken." The Philadelphia Inquirer. 1996 .