Introduction

Walking the Mani Wall

Nepal Journal-August 26, 2001

I have about one week to go before I embark on a journey that will be my first experience away and hopefully out of touch with my American lifestyle. I have been dreaming of this journey for a long while and to tell you the truth I never really expected it to come true. I thought that Tony and I would continue to talk and talk about our big plans to go there, but end up settling for a simple vacation in the states somewhere. Nepal seems so far away and impossible.....does it exist? Only the television brings such far away places to life which never seems real to me because I am sheltered on my own little patch of the planet and that is all there seems to be. I only see a far off place in some distant past, but here we all are scattered across this planet as one, thriving at the same time, and living in our own daily routines separated only by night and day.
So why should I dream so much about Nepal? Many people here have asked me this with absurd looks on their faces. Even when I explain to them my love for hiking they still look at me like I’m crazy and I guess that is because they find more pleasure in taking a relaxing trip to the beach not a 150 mile trek through a third world country. However it is not just hiking that draws me towards Nepal, but my ever longing quest to find the real person that exists inside of me. I have been living in a complicated world filled with distractions that only seem to leave me with that hollow feeling as if I am missing something important in my life. I continuously worry about my future always rushing to have a plan or have control over what I am doing. Why can’t I just stop and as Ram Das would say, “Be Here Now”. It seems that with all the noise, material excess, and indefinite continued progress that plagues most of the westernized world that our heads are stuck in future plans...the bigger and the better. I’m tired of being stressed over my job, money, and my thirst for consuming material objects which I really don’t need. I am not seeing what is important and that is what I have now. I need to see what life really is and I feel like I must get away from the television, the trends, and most importantly I need to slow down. This is the hardest thing that any westernized human can do, “stop” doing things and just sit and listen to themselves. Many of us do not want to hear what that little voice has to say because it brings up our insecurities. Can you image what would happen if everyone in the world could stop and just sit and listen to themselves? No drugs or alcohol to numb our brains, no television, and no consuming our mind from our ever longing urge to want things. I am not even sure that I want to listen to the silence of my own spirit either, but I am screaming on the outside to get away from everything around me. It is time to escape and either face my worst nightmare of find that which is blissful. I need to reawaken myself to Buddhism, which has taught me to have compassion not only towards others, but also with my own self. I once was so inspired by this religion, but I have forgotten the way with my hindrance of worrying about what is ahead. I’m hoping that my pilgrimage through Nepal will be my time to stop and think about living for now. That is what I need a place to walk in silence, to think and to perhaps hear the whisper from the precious Buddha as so many other traveler’s I’ve read about have on their journeys through the roof of the world. I know I really don’t need to hide in the mountains to discover myself or find enlightenment, because if that is what I am searching for I will never find it. I am going there just to be there and that is a blessing in itself to touch the earth, feel the wind, and hear the rivers in a world that I am unfamiliar with. I have been reading the Snow Leopard, by Peter Matthiessen which is a record of the journal he kept when he trekked through Nepal in the fall of 1973. I am touched by his discoveries about himself and the world around him as he walks through the Himalayas. I hope I can see as he did, that which is beautiful and sad.............

Just as a white summer cloud, in harmony with heaven and earth
floats freely in the blue sky from horizon to horizon
following the breath of the atmosphere,
the same way the pilgrim abandons himself to the breath
of the greater life that leads him beyond the farthest horizons
to an aim which is already present within him,
though yet hidden from his sight.

-Lama Govinda, The Way of White Clouds

...Until you reach the path you wander in the world
with the precious Buddha completely wrapped up inside a bundle of rags...
...You have this precious Buddha!!
“Unwrap it quickly!!

-Dharmapada

Then bless me to embark on the boat,
to cross the ocean of the Tantras.
Through the kindness of the captain Vajra-master,
Holding vows and pledges root of all powers, more dearly than life itself!
Bless me to perceive all things as the deity body,
Cleansing the taints of ordinary perception and conception
Through the yoga of the first stage of Unexcelled Tantra,
Changing birth, death and between into the three Buddha bodies.
The Buddha The Dharma The Sangha

-Tibetan blessing

......If I walk through the forest I will not move the grass,
......If I swim through the river I will not raise a ripple.

-travelers oath