By Ian Baker
ISBN-10: 0143036025
ISBN-13: 9780143036029
The delusion of Shangri-la originates in Tibetan Buddhist ideals in beyul, or hidden lands, sacred sanctuaries that show themselves to religious pilgrims and in instances of obstacle. The extra distant and inaccessible the beyul, the vaster its reputed traits. historic Tibetan prophecies claim that the best of all hidden lands lies on the center of the forbidding Tsangpo Gorge, deep within the Himalayas and veiled by way of a titanic waterfall. Nineteenth-century bills of this fabled waterfall encouraged a sequence of ill-fated ecu expeditions that ended in advance in 1925 whilst the intrepid British plant collector Frank Kingdon-Ward penetrated all yet a five-mile portion of the Tsangpo's innermost gorge and declared that the falls have been not more than a "religious fantasy" and a "romance of geography."
The center of the Tsangpo Gorge remained a clean spot at the map of global exploration till world-class climber and Buddhist student Ian Baker delved into the legends. no matter what cryptic Tibetan scrolls or earlier explorers had acknowledged concerning the Tsangpo's innermost gorge, Baker decided, might be tested basically by way of exploring the uncharted five-mile hole. After numerous years of encountering sheer cliffs, maelstroms of impassable white water, and dense leech-infested jungles, at the final of a sequence of striking expeditions, Baker and his nationwide Geographic-sponsored crew reached the depths of the Tsangpo Gorge. They made information all over the world via discovering there a 108-foot-high waterfall, the mythical grail of Western explorers and Tibetan seekers alike.
The center of the World is likely one of the such a lot appealing tales of exploration and discovery in fresh memory-an remarkable trip to at least one of the wildest and such a lot inaccessible areas on the earth and a pilgrimage to the center of the Tibetan Buddhist faith.
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Extra resources for The Heart of the World: A Journey to Tibet's Lost Paradise
Example text
He told me then of a Dzogchen practice that should be undertaken in total seclusion, remote from human habitation. ” He demonstrated how one must act out an innumerable range of existences from heavens to hells. ” He took me by the hand and led me into a back room, where he took a small gold-plated Buddha from a shelf. After holding it at the top of his head and reciting an inaudible prayer, he placed it in my hands. When I walked out onto the lawn a female security guard brandishing an AK-47 smiled angelically as bougainvillea flooded from the roof like purple light.
The Dalai Lama also spoke at length about subtle beings such as dakas and dakinis6 who, according to the Tantric teachings, congregate at such sanctified places, bestowing powers on those who meditate there. He then told a story of his previous incarnation, the 13th Dalai Lama, who had traveled to the sacred mountain Wu Tai Shan on the frontiers of Tibet, where he had crossed an invisible threshold and visited a temple that no others could see. Through the power of meditation, His Holiness said, great practitioners are able to enter hidden realms which, though part of this world, are beyond the range of common perception.
Higher up in leech-infested forests, local herders still tended yak-cow hybrids called dzo (dzomo if female), shifting their camps according to the season. When I reached Chatral Rinpoche’s encampment it was dark and pouring rain. Saraswati led me to a loosely shingled storage shed piled high with sacks of barley and rice. In the surrounding huts, the Lama’s students engaged in esoteric forms of meditation. I faded off to sleep to the piercing blasts of their kanglings, ritual instruments carved from human thigh bones that are used in Tibetan Buddhist rites for severing attachment to the physical body and outmoded forms of thought.
The Heart of the World: A Journey to Tibet's Lost Paradise by Ian Baker
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