Souvenir stand at Yamdrok Tso overlook
The final leg of my overland journey to Lhasa took me through one last high pass (Karo La Pass: 5,010m / 16,400ft) where we stopped and looked at the sacred turquoise lake of Yamdrok Tso. Tibetan pilgrims spend months circumbulating the lake, but the most devout pilgrims do not complete this circuit through walking, but instead through prostration. The Tibetan form of prostration is an all-out, full body exercise. The person stands upright and with hands together reaches up to touch the top of the head, throat, and heart, then kneels down on all fours and in one motion slides his entire body horizontally on the ground with his hands stretched out before him. He then slinks back to the all fours position and stands back up in one fluid motion. It is difficult for the uninitiated to perform just one prostration, and yet the practice is that three such prostrations must be performed in order to achieve one set. The pilgrim never does just 1 prostration — 1 set must be completed. It was hard to imagine doing thousands upon thousands of prostrations for months at a time in order t0 circumambulate Yamdrok Tso, but it had been done each year for centuries. Blew my mind. Some pilgrims take things even further doing prostrations around other holy sites in Tibet like Mt. Kailash or between monasteries separated by hundreds of miles. I stood over the lake and marveled at its color and stillness. Not a wave appeared to ripple. The entire trip had so far been without boundary – meaning I never felt boxed in or contained by anything — whether landscape, cityscape, or anything else. Then, as the descent to Lhasa (13,000ft) began, the change came. I first recognized the forms of familiar things like leafy trees, grassy knolls, and a river. The once empty spaces that had surrounded everything became cut up and gave way to paved highway roads with onramps /offramps, signs, stop lights, and glass and steel buildings. There would also be another boundary that I would come up against on my second night in Lhasa (something insidious that I will have to describe later). I spent 3 days in Lhasa and as I shuffle through my notes from that time at present, it is more difficult than I thought about how to best convey the experience. The unjust and unfair exists everywhere and sometimes in unequal parts to the just and fair. There is war and peace, oppression and liberation, and knowledge and ignorance. Each of these is tied together like the day to the night, and cannot be understood in proper context without the other. So, I will start with my first night in Lhasa. I had spent the entire day at the Drepung and Nechung Monasteries and at Norbulingka, the summer residence of the Dalai Lamas. And I had of course lost my tour group because of my lengthy lingering and meandering and they left without me. I charted my own course from there and ended up at the old quarter of Lhasa, the Barkhor, where I found a restaurant with a rooftop serving area that had an unobstructed, diagonal view of the Potala Palace.
Potala Palace – Lhasa, Tibet (2007)
I’ve seen some of the most electrifying sights in Asia, but the Potala stands apart. It brings to life what myths and the sacred are made of. When I first saw it as we drove into Lhasa and felt it loom over the city, I had to avert my eyes because I wasn’t ready to absorb its presence. I just couldn’t do it. I would have to wait, and so I did until the evening of that first day. The sun was lowering into the sky when I took a chair at the restaurant and used the railing of the terrace as my table. To my left was the Potala. I swallowed it in with my entire being. It was incomprehensible in size, staggering in its symmetry and zig-zagging escalation. Its central buildings were trapezoids of white with red rimmed windows with the main central building in red with black rimmed windows. It sat like a throne on the huge mountain rock it had been built on in the 1650s by the 5th Dalai Lama. It butted up against the sky and smoldered with an aura of longing. It had been the home for the 5th through the 14th Dalai Lamas, and had stood empty since 1959. If not for the action of a Chinese general who blocked the ransacking and looting of the Potala by the Red Army who had stormed Lhasa, the Potala would likely have been destroyed. It is now a PRC state museum. I don’t think I was able to adjust my gaze or to do anything else except nurse my bottle of Everest Beer in passing intervals. I didn’t look at the food menu until 30-minutes or so had passed. My mind had stilled for the first time during the week I had been in Tibet. I had seen a phrase painted in the Drepung Monastery earlier that day and it said: “Subdue Your Mind In its Entirety.” Easier said than done I had initially thought. Yet, here I was later in the same day and the stark awesomeness of the Potala had dwarfed anything else of substance in me at that moment. I felt such a sense of pride in the human spirit. How the collective power of mankind when harnessed and geared toward a shared purpose was capable of reaching such majestic heights.
Potala Palace
As the sun set and the sky darkened, lights lit up the Potala and then it transformed into the sublime — seemingly floating and pulsating in a moonless sky. Fireworks went off. What a sight. It was perfect. I had been pulled here by something restless inside me. This restlessness quieted on that first night when I sat in silence and engaged the Potala with my heart and mind. I can say with no exaggeration that for the first time in my life, I truly gave thanks — and not just some b.s. kind of “I’m so lucky to be here” thanks — but a vulnerable, soul-baring thanks. While I had been transfixed by the Potala, I had simultaneously been reflecting on my own shortcomings and failings as a person who was far from perfect, far from knowing anything about where his life was going. The Potala stood before me as a giant — personifying my potential to attain something meaningful. It was Nirvana incarnate and it was so close at hand. I was thankful.
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