Nepal Quotes

Chasing angels or fleeing demons, go to the mountains.

If Nepal is to become a new Nepal, she must first become free from ethnic segregation.

I steeled myself for this interaction. Fact: I knew I could talk to people. Fact: Children were little people. Little, scary people. I took solace in the fact that if this demonstration went horribly wrong, I could probably outrun them.

Nepal is my home, a land of many wonders, but the greatest of them all is its unparalleled diversity and rich heritage.

कति सम्बन्धहरू अघोषित पनि त हुन सक्छन् । बिना बन्धन पनि त नाताहरू गाँसिएका हुन सक्छन् !

I am easily inspired by measurable progress...

But that’s the paradox of expectations; they are infamous for generally never being fulfilled

But whenever tragedy strikes, one is left either to die or with a plethora of ifs and buts to ponder over.

The Chinese say that there is no scenery in your home town. They’re right. Being in another place heightens the senses, allows you to see more, enjoy more, take delight in small things; it makes life richer. You feel more alive, less cocooned.

I think you think that sitting at your desk, frowning and smiling somehow makes you think you’re actually living some fascinating life. You comment on things, and that substitutes for doing them. You look at pictures of Nepal, push a smile button, and you think that’s the same as going there. I mean, what would happen if you actually went? Your CircleJerk ratings or whatever-the-fuck would drop below an acceptable level! Mae, do you realize how incredibly boring you’ve become?

If walking into the responsibility of caring for eighteen children was difficult, walking out on that responsibility was almost impossible. The children had become a constant presence, little spinning tops that splattered joy onto everyone they bumped into.

This medicinal potion was additionally consumed as part of a sacred ritual known as Sōmayajña where the Yogis that Jesus himself had taught were helped to reach an enlightened trance. In effect, Jesus had developed the Nirvanalaksanayoga Tantra specifically for women, to heal them from the psychological damage and abuse they had to endure at the hands of men. He wanted to enable them to rise above patriarchal dominance, realise their highest potential, and then he would guide them towards an enlightened state. The first person to benefit from this privilege was Mari [Mary Magdalene] herself. Jesus began teaching this discipline in every place that he visited: from Kashmir in the northernmost region of the Indian subcontinent, to Uttar Pradesh, and Mari would accompany him on every journey he embarked on, from east of the Indus to Nepal.

I think of the irony that in our language [Nepali] the word for love can also mean deceit.

Travel is the discovery of truth; an affirmation of the promise that human kind is far more beautiful than it is flawed. With each trip comes a new optimism that where there is despair and hardship, there are ideas and people just waiting to be energized, to be empowered, to make a difference for good.

I am no enemy of Nepal being a fully literate society. It is a good thing for society and the nation as a whole.

In Nepal, the quality of conversation is much more important than accuracy of the content. Maybe we get overexcited about information in England?

Arthur, I look at you, and I still see that boy on the beach with the red toenails. Not at first, but my eyes adjust. I see that twenty-one-year-old boy in Mexico. I see that young man in a hotel room in Rome. I see the young writer holding his first book. I look at you, and you’re young. You’ll always be that way for me. But not for anyone else. Arthur, people who meet you now will never be able to imagine you young. They can never go any further back than fifty. It isn’t all bad. It means now people will think you were always a grown-up. They’ll take you seriously. They don’t know that you once spent an entire dinner party babbling about Nepal when you meant Tibet.

The mountains were so wild and so stark and so very beautiful that I wanted to cry. I breathed in another wonderful moment to keep safe in my heart.

‎Never say you can't be a writer or a script writer, remember how well, characters in your dreams said their dialogues.

The Rough Guide to Nepal; The Great Sights of Canada; America by Car; Fodor's Guide to the Bahamas; Let's go Bhutan.

I could understand a world where she was in Nepal, though I couldn't figure out why she didn't text me back. I could understand a world where she was distant but not lost. I couldn't understand a world without her.

...Bhutan all but bases its identity upon its loneliness, and its refusal to b assimilated into India, or Tibet, or Nepal. Vietnam, at present, is a pretty girl with her face pressed up against the window of the dance hall, waiting to be invited in; Iceland is the mystic poet in the corner, with her mind on other things. Argentina longs to be part of the world it left and, in its absence, re-creates the place it feels should be its home; Paraguay simply slams the door and puts up a Do Not Disturb sign. Loneliness and solitude, remoteness and seclusion, are many worlds apart.

I’d been traveling in Asia long enough to know that monkeys there are nothing like their trombone-playing, tambourine-banging cousins I’d seen on TV as a kid. Free-living Asian primates possess a characteristic I found shocking and confusing the first time I saw it: self-respect. If you make the mistake of holding the gaze of a street monkey in India, Nepal, or Malaysia, you’ll find you’re facing a belligerently intelligent creature whose expression says, with a Robert DeNiro–like scowl, “What the hell are you looking at? You wanna piece of me?” Forget about putting one of these guys in a little red vest.

Entrepreneurs must have a vision that others do not currently recognise. People may feel that their ideas are hypotheses and impose a high level of uncertainty, but that is what entrepreneurship is all about: putting everything on the line for a view you believe in.

Of all the intoxicants you can find on the road (including a "national beer" for nearly every country in the world), marijuana deserves a particular mention here, primarily because it's so popular with travelers. Much of this popularity is due to the fact that marijuana is a relatively harmless diversion (again, provided you don't get caught with it) that can intensify certain impressions and sensations of travel. The problem with marijuana, however, is that it's the travel equivalent of watching television: It replaces real sensations with artificially enhanced ones. Because it doesn't force you to work for a feeling, it creates passive experiences that are only vaguely connected to the rest of your life. "The drug vision remains a sort of dream that cannot be brought over into daily life," wrote Peter Matthiessen in The Snow Leopard. "Old mists may be banished, that is true, but the alien chemical agent forms another mist, maintaining the separation of the 'I' from the true experience of the 'One.'" Moreover, chemical highs have a way of distracting you from the utterly stoning natural high of travel itself. After all, roasting a bowl might spice up a random afternoon in Dayton, Ohio, but is it really all that necessary along the Sumatran shores of Lake Toba, the mountain basins of Nepal, or the desert plateaus of Patagonia? As Salvador Dali quipped, "I never took drugs because I am drugs." With this in mind, strive to be drugs as you travel, to patiently embrace the raw, personal sensation of unmediated reality--an experience for more affecting than any intoxicant can promise.

‎Never say you can't be a writer or a director, remember how well characters in your dreams said their dialogu.

You can take a my body out of Nepal but you can never take my soul and Heart from a Nepal .

Technology hasn't got all the answers, and sometimes - just sometimes - what is needed is spirituality, time and some good mountain air.

The success of an enterprise is determined not only by its financial success but also by the positive influence it has on people's lives and the progress of a country.

Tourists who come to Nepal look at terraced fields and see their beauty but remain blind to the hard labour they extract from tillers.

Neutrinos, they are very small. They have no charge and have no mass And do not interact at all. The earth is just a silly ball To them, through which they simply pass, Like dustmaids down a drafty hall Or photons through a sheet of glass. They snub the most exquisite gas, Ignore the most substantial wall, Cold shoulder steel and sounding brass, Insult the stallion in his stall, And, scorning barriers of class, Infiltrate you and me. Like tall And painless guillotines they fall Down through our heads into the grass. At night, they enter at Nepal And pierce the lover and his lass From underneath the bed—you call It wonderful; I call it crass.

Meandering cows, tenacious bicyclers, belching taxis, rickshaws, fearless pedestrians and the occasional mobile ‘cigarette and sweets’ stand all fought our taxi for room on the narrow two-lane road turned local byway.

We spend almost all our time listening to the things people are saying that we rarely pay attention to our conversation with ourselves. It’s not always what we hear but it’s our inner conversation with ourselves that shapes our life.

I get goose bumps when your fragrance touches me. Darling, I'm healing and you are breaking me again.

Before enlightenment, cornflakes and coffee. After enlightenment, cornflakes and coffee.

The year was 1987, but it might as well have been the Summer of Love: I was twenty, had hair down to my shoulders, and was dressed like an Indian rickshaw driver. For those charged with enforcing our nation’s drug laws, it would have been only prudent to subject my luggage to special scrutiny. Happily, I had nothing to hide. “Where are you coming from?” the officer asked, glancing skeptically at my backpack. “India, Nepal, Thailand…” I said. “Did you take any drugs while you were over there?” As it happens, I had. The temptation to lie was obvious—why speak to a customs officer about my recent drug use? But there was no real reason not to tell the truth, apart from the risk that it would lead to an even more thorough search of my luggage (and perhaps of my person) than had already commenced. “Yes,” I said. The officer stopped searching my bag and looked up. “Which drugs did you take? “I smoked pot a few times… And I tried opium in India.” “Opium?” “Yes.” “Opium or heroin? “It was opium.” “You don’t hear much about opium these days.” “I know. It was the first time I’d ever tried it.” “Are you carrying any drugs with you now?” “No.” The officer eyed me warily for a moment and then returned to searching my bag. Given the nature of our conversation, I reconciled myself to being there for a very long time. I was, therefore, as patient as a tree. Which was a good thing, because the officer was now examining my belongings as though any one item—a toothbrush, a book, a flashlight, a bit of nylon cord—might reveal the deepest secrets of the universe. “What is opium like?” he asked after a time. And I told him. In fact, over the next ten minutes, I told this lawman almost everything I knew about the use of mind-altering substances. Eventually he completed his search and closed my luggage. One thing was perfectly obvious at the end of our encounter: We both felt very good about it.

And this is a Buddhist country?” said Matt, “This is a country of lovingkindness and compassion? Hah. I think the Americans would call this ‘tough love.’ ” “That is the paradox of Buddhism,” said Ranjit, “As a young doctor I would see these violent things and wonder why they happened, knowing that it was not something that Buddhists should do. Then I realized we are not born Buddhist. All the focus on channeling anger and dealing with hardship did not emanate from these people…. It was a lesson to these people. We are a land of Buddhists because we need to hear the lessons of Buddha, not because we follow Buddha.” -spoken by Ranjit, the surgeon, after an episode of violence....

Close your eyes, Matt, and focus on third eye, the second chakra of your being. Open third eye and you will feel energy of other river as it flows. And energy of Goddess.” He closed his eyes. He could sense the energy of the woman next to him and the power of desire. He felt warmth and a sense of belonging here. But that was all.

A woman in ancient China might bring one or more of her sisters to her husband’s home as backup wives. Eskimo couples often had cospousal arrangements, in which each partner had sexual relations with the other’s spouse. In Tibet and parts of India, Kashmir, and Nepal, a woman may be married to two or more brothers, all of whom share sexual access to her.20

A calm mind is the most lethal machete to chop the miseries of our life.

हाम्रै विगतका अनुभव र हाम्रै आगतका सम्भावनाबाट त बन्छन् नि कथाहरु ।

He wasn't a great man, but he had a great life.

Deep down, we are more scared of love than violence, we are more against romance than rapes.

Throughout my life, I’ve been a dreamer and a seeker, sharing my hopes of a better future for literature in Nepal. My concern is for humanity and I’m a person with optimism.

Boston is a great center of learning. That surgeon was a tantric Buddha,” said Ram in admiration, “The smell of cautery is the finest incense. It sharpens the mind.

Teaching in a village school in Nepal was a freaking piece of cake compared to teaching in my native land.

It is hard to write it in words that I can read, that re-establishes the fact that has been haunting me for the past one year.

Your future may hinge on your ability to disconnect yourself with the world and connect with your soul.

I like the way Nepalis point by pouting their lips; they reckon pointing with a finger is rude.

There’s nothing like the fecund beauty of calmness.

Nepal's political system is forever shifting from one set of coalition politics to the next without creating a safe and secure political space for governance.

The world is beautiful. What the world needs more of are people with a beautiful heart.

Due to Nepal's dependence on foreign assistance as the principal source of funding for its expanding development spending, its indebtedness has increased on a large scale.

I have discovered that some groups and castes are offered little to no opportunity to work in the public sector in Nepal.

There is no other place on the planet with such a diverse range of landscapes contained inside such a small geographical space as Nepal.

When someone close to us dies, we get a little closer to death too.

Nepal is confronted with many societal issues, including the caste system, child labor, illiteracy, gender inequality, superstitions, religious disputes, and a slew of other issues.

Seeing the name Hillary in a headline last week—a headline about a life that had involved real achievement—I felt a mouse stirring in the attic of my memory. Eventually, I was able to recall how the two Hillarys had once been mentionable in the same breath. On a first-lady goodwill tour of Asia in April 1995—the kind of banal trip that she now claims as part of her foreign-policy 'experience'—Mrs. Clinton had been in Nepal and been briefly introduced to the late Sir Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Mount Everest. Ever ready to milk the moment, she announced that her mother had actually named her for this famous and intrepid explorer. The claim 'worked' well enough to be repeated at other stops and even showed up in Bill Clinton's memoirs almost a decade later, as one more instance of the gutsy tradition that undergirds the junior senator from New York. Sen. Clinton was born in 1947, and Sir Edmund Hillary and his partner Tenzing Norgay did not ascend Mount Everest until 1953, so the story was self-evidently untrue and eventually yielded to fact-checking. Indeed, a spokeswoman for Sen. Clinton named Jennifer Hanley phrased it like this in a statement in October 2006, conceding that the tale was untrue but nonetheless charming: 'It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add.' Perfect. It worked, in other words, having been coined long after Sir Edmund became a bankable celebrity, but now its usefulness is exhausted and its untruth can safely be blamed on Mummy.

Maybe your college professor taught that the legacy of colonialism explains Third World poverty. That’s nonsense as well. Canada was a colony. So were Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. In fact, the richest country in the world, the United States, was once a colony. By contrast, Ethiopia, Liberia, Tibet, Sikkim, Nepal and Bhutan were never colonies, but they are home to the world’s poorest people.

Yulin, a festival in China where thousands of dogs are slaughtered for feast. Gadhimai Mela, a festival in Nepal where buffaloes, pigs, goats, chickens, and pigeons are slaughtered in large scale Eid, a festival observed throughout world where animals of various categories are sacrificed. Come to the land of gods, India, where women are slaughtered each year, each month, everyday. STOP female foeticide!

Just then, Larry recalled a conversation he had with a friend in Ireland, about the situation in Nepal between the King and the Maoists. The friend was sided with the Maoists, which was more or less his political leanings in any case, and stated that at least they were trying to help the people. So Larry had remarked upon the rising death rate, and how the Maoists are just as brutal as the security forces, yet the friend simply shrugged and said you have to expect some collateral damage in a revolution. Oh how he hates that phrase, as that makes it sound like the people’s lives are meant to be expendable, something that a person’s life should never be. Of course, it is very easy to disregard people you have never met, and who are certainly not your friends or family members. After all, in the eyes of an outsider, who is in no danger whatsoever, the people caught up in the situation are nothing more than simply statistics.

The implicit social contract is that upper-class girls will keep their virtue, while young men will find satisfaction in the brothels. And the brothels will be staffed with slave girls trafficked from Nepal or Bangladesh or poor Indian villages. As long as the girls are uneducated, low-caste peasants like Meena, society will look the other way—just as many antebellum Americans turned away from the horrors of slavery because the people being lashed looked different from them.

The flowers in Tibet were always taller, more fragrant and vivid. Her descriptions, imprecise but unchanging from year to year lead me to an inevitable acceptance that her past was unequaled by our present lives. She would tell me of knee-deep fields of purple, red and white- plants never named or pointed out to during our years in India and Nepal- that over time served to create an idea of her fatherland, phayul, as a riotous garden. I pictured her wilderness paradise by comparing them not to the marigolds, daises or bluebells I crushed with my fingers, but to the shape of household artefacts around me: lollipop, broom, bottle. Disparate objects that surrendered to and influenced the idea, space and hope of a more abundant and happy place.

We found a smooth inviting boulder under a vast banyan tree, and sat in companionable silence. There unexpectedly, on that rock, I saw the secret of contentment. True happiness is only ever possible if you have been unhappy. And there, at that moment, I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt so peaceful. It wouldn’t have been possible for me to take in any more happiness. Moti turned to me and smiled as if she knew. I realised then that this moment and this wonderful feeling would sustain me for a long, long time.

I reckon that blaming people fixes nothing. You're the only person who is going to sort you out. No-one else really can - or really cares, enough. That's what Nepalis know - better than anyone. That's our Western disease. Don't take responsibility. Take on a lawyer!

Dealing With Genuine Gurkha Knife - New official Khukuri (kukri) supplier of the British Gurkha Army. Welcome to Ex Gurkha Khukuri House, The first Kukri Gurkha Kukri Knife - The Khukuri(gurkha knife),a semi-curve metal knife,is synonymous with the valor of legendary Gurkha soldiers.Though Kukri is national

As I write these words, half a year has passed since I returned from Nepal, and on any given day during those six months, no more than two or three hours have gone by in which Everest hasn’t monopolized my thoughts. Not even in sleep is there respite: imagery from the climb and its aftermath continues to permeate my dreams.

There is no God, but we whole world can creat (God) by loving & helping eachothers !

।। नेपाली जाती जहाँं जहाँं पुग्छ, मन मुटुमा राष्ट्रियता र पैतालामा देश तन्काई रहन्छ ।।

You have to get lost before you can be found.

Flowers of love are beautiful but all too soon they wither as the fleeting shimmer of the Moon.

There’s a mountain before us all and there’s a narrow passage alongside it too. Both are there for a reason. Nobody will offer us a guided tour.

अत्याधुनिक बौद्धिकताको सगरबाट थिचिएका छौँ हामी ।

तर आजको म आजै हुँ, भोलीको म आजको म होइन नि ।

Success doesn’t just happen; it doesn’t pot out on its own. Success is all about the choices you make. It’s a balancing act between what to choose and what not to.

Knowing that most people don’t have easy access to knowledge, I don’t take libraries for granted. I worship them.

Today in Nepal, devotees of the goddess Gadhimai celebrate her festival every five years in the village of Bariyapur. A record was set in 2009 when 250,000 animals were sacrificed to the goddess. A local driver explained to a visiting British journalist that ‘If we want anything, and we come here with an offering to the goddess, within five years all our dreams will be fulfilled.’26

Home, to me, was any place by my mother’s side. Since my mother’s death, the idea of home has assumed many forms. I use the word loosely to refer to India, Nepal and even Tibet when I am in San Francisco. Home is a place that is always imminent but never present. Or maybe it is the very opposite, maybe I am at ease whenever I am and the feeling of not belonging to any one place is a condition of being at home.

Monsoon Love is a love story with a few comic twists. The idea for this story came to me when I went into the local town of Pokhara with a friend to buy his son a birthday present. We had just arrived at the shops when a heavy down pour began, and as we had arrived on his motorbike and didn’t have raincoats or umbrellas so we had to wait for the rain to stop. We were standing under a awning watching the street while we waited, and I noticed this very beautiful young woman walk past me dressed in a t-shirt and jeans with the cuffs rolled half up her legs, but the way she held her umbrella made it impossible to see her face, though with the nice body she had her face must have been just as lovely. Then I though, imagine some guy stuck working in an office, and seeing a view like that every day of the same woman, and falling in love with her despite not seeing her face.

Christopher Lasch in The Culture of Narcissism describes how despair Of the future leads people to fixate on youth. The Rites teach women to fear our own futures, our own wants. To live in fear of one’s body and one’s life is not to live at all. The resulting life-fearing neuroses are everywhere. They are in the woman who will take a lover, go to Nepal, learn to skydive, swim naked, demand a raise, “when she loses this weight”—but in the eternal meantime maintains her vow of chastity or self-denial. They are in the woman who can never enjoy a meal, who never feels thin enough, or that the occasion is special enough, to drop her guard and become one with the moment. They are in the woman whose horror of wrinkles is so great that the lines around her eyes shine with sacred oil, whether at a party or while making love. Women must await forever the arrival of the angel of use, the bridegroom who will dignify the effort and redeem the cost; whose presence will allow us to inhabit and use our “protected” faces and bodies. The expense is too high to let us fire the wick, to burn our own fuel to the last drop and live by our own light in our own time. Where the Rites of Beauty have instilled these life-fearing neuroses in modern women, they paralyze in us the implications of our new freedoms, since it profits women little if we gain the whole world only to fear ourselves.

What do you know of love? You've been watching too many Hindi movies. Love is something you grow into over the years. Love is like a plant. It needs time and effort to raise it. You need to let the roots grow deep and strong before the stem is thick enough to support the leaves and branches. Only when the plant is full grown do you get the flowers and fruit of love. Your love is just a seedling. Ignore it and it will die away. You're mistaking lust for love.

If you’re having a bad day just realize that some days are bad and you can do nothing about them. Try to stay calm and remind yourself that it’s just a fleeting day and also a day to show yourself that you can face anything and come out of it, smiling.

Corruption is the most pervasive and pernicious source of evil in public institutions. People's distrust of public organizations is so profound that they have little faith in their ability to collaborate with them and achieve sustainable development objectives.

I recognised just how different Alexander was from children raised in Britain. The most obvious distinctions were his maturity and broadness of view. He hadn't lost his innocence or childish ability to play, but he enjoyed conversations with adults, and he saw no problem in playing with any child of any age. He was wonderfully gentle with the little ones. He was never fazed by differences, and cultural diversity was of interest rather than a reason for prejudice, though, - like our Nepali friends - he liked to classify people.

They have twenty-four one-hour sittings every day with only one table per sitting." Sam groaned as he closed his laptop. "I'd better grab some sandwiches on the way. It sounds like the kind of place you only get two peas and a sliver of asparagus on a piece of butter lettuce that was grown on the highest mountain peak of Nepal and watered with the tears of angels." "Not a fan of haute cuisine?" She followed him down the stairs and out into the bright sunshine. "I like food. Lots of it." He stopped at the nearest café and ordered three Reuben sandwiches, two Cobb salads, and three bottles of water. "Would you like anything?" he asked after he placed his order. Layla looked longingly as the server handed over his feast. "I don't want to ruin my appetite." She pointed to the baked-goods counter. "You forgot dessert." "I don't eat sugar." "Then the meal is wasted." She held open her handbag to reveal her secret stash. "I keep emergency desserts with me at all times- gummy bears, salted caramel chocolate, jelly beans, chocolate-glazed donuts- at least I think that's what they were, and this morning I managed to grab a small container of besan laddu and some gulab jamun.

You can even hunt the Yeti or abominable snowman if you want to, in Nepal. Boris Lissanevitch or Tom Mendies of Nepal will arrange a Yeti hunt for you anytime that you want. Tom has never seen a Yeti track but Boris has seen several and will almost guarantee that you see a track and with any luck will see an abominable snowman. Actually they are more plentiful than generally believed. The main thing is to get up high enough in the mountains. This can be rugged and keeps most hunters from getting one. They are simply an ape-like animal with reddish-brown hair, facts that are well known in the mountains.

After Guru Rinpoche subdued Tseringma, he pursued her four younger sisters. One by one, they repented and became Buddhist deities, moving to mountains of their own. Miyolangsangma patrols the summit of Everest on the back of a tigress. Now the goddess of prosperity, her face shines like 24-carat gold. Thingi Shalsangma, her body a pale shade of blue, became the goddess of healing after galloping on a zebra to the top of Shishapangma, a 26,289-foot peak in Tibet. Chopi Drinsangma, with a face in perpetual blush, became the goddess of attraction. She chose a deer instead of a zebra and settled on Kanchenjunga, a 28,169-foot peak in Nepal. The final sister—Takar Dolsangma, the youngest, with a green face—was a hard case. She mounted a turquoise dragon and fled northward to the land of three borders. In the modern Rolwaling folklore, this is Pakistan. Guru Rinpoche chased after her and eventually cornered her on a glacier called the Chogo Lungma. Takar Dolsangma appeared remorseful and, spurring her dragon, ascended K2, accepting a new position as the goddess of security. Although Guru Rinpoche never doubted her sincerity, maybe he should have: Takar Dolsangma, it seems, still enjoys the taste of human flesh.

Exactly. I think the original tantric Buddhists took notice of was some very wise old people who never studied in their youth, but took part in a range of risk-taking adventures when they were younger, and finally became wise when they reflected upon their lives in old age. There is only one problem.” “Which is?” “Risk-taking is a way to die young. It is dangerous and you may forfeit the opportunity to grow old. An early death is not a sure path to wisdom in old age,” Ranjit said, running his finger around the inside of the pipe bowl, “and if you survive without reflecting, then you simply become an old degenerate.

Matthieu Ricard es un biólogo molecular que hace treinta años decidió convertirse al budismo y actualmente es el asesor personal del Dalái Lama. Este hombre de sesenta y un años, que vive en un pequeño cuarto en Nepal con las mínimas comodidades, es considerado por los científicos de la Universidad de Wisconsin el hombre más feliz de la Tierra. Los puntajes de “felicidad” obtenidos por él mediante los métodos más modernos de la neurociencia y en sesiones continuas superaron todas las expectativas. En una calificación posible que iba de 0.3 (muy infeliz) a -0.3 (muy feliz), Ricard logró un sostenido -0.45, un récord imposible de imaginar.

As in other exercises my father taught me, the way to begin is to sit up straight, breathe normally, and gradually allow your mind to relax. “With your mind at rest,” he instructed those of us in his little teaching room in Nepal, “just allow yourself to become aware of all the thoughts, feelings, and sensations passing through it. And as you watch them pass, simply ask yourself, ‘Is there a difference between the mind and the thoughts that pass through it? Is there any difference between the thinker and the thoughts perceived by the thinker?’ Continue watching your thoughts with these questions in mind for about three minutes or so, and then stop.

Most people would not attempt to climb Mount Everest on their own. Typically, climbers will look toward Sherpas, who have served as guides for generations in Nepal, high in the Himalayas. They help climbers prepare and show them along the routes that will get them to the top. They are seasoned and know every details of the trails. But your guide is even more essentail if you are to make it back down safely. Coming down the mountain can be the most perilous part. You're tired. Your defenses are down. You may very well fall at the critical moment. You need that guide. As you approach retirement, you are moving to a different phase of life. You are descending the mountain.

Padampa stayed for a long time in the high valley of Tingri, on the frontier between Tibet and Nepal. Among his innumerable disciples, four were particularly close to his heart. One day, one of these close students arrived in Tingri after a long absence and was so saddened to see how much the master had aged that he asked, “Sublime being, when you leave this world, you yourself, without doubt, will go from bliss to bliss; but what will become of us, the people of Tingri? In whom can we place our trust?” For Padampa, dying would indeed be no more than passing from one Buddha-field to another. But for his disciples, his death would mean never again seeing his face or hearing his voice. “In a year’s time,” he said, “here you will find the corpse of an old Indian hermit.” Their eyes filled with tears, and it was for them that Padampa taught these Hundred Verses of Advice. A year went by, and Padampa began to show signs of illness. When his disciples worried about his health, he told them laconically, “My mind is sick.” To their perplexity, he added, “My mind has blended with the phenomenal world.” He thus demonstrated that all dualistic perception had disappeared from his mind. “I do not know how to describe this type of disease,” he added with a serene sense of humor. “Bodily ills can be treated, but this is incurable.” He then fixed his gaze on the sky and passed away.

This reality strikes many as tragic, as if oppressed former slaves and Indigenous peoples being subjected to genocidal warfare should magically be unified against their common enemy, “the white man.” In fact, this is precisely how colonialism in general and colonial warfare in particular work. It is not unique to the United States, but rather a part of the tradition of European colonialism since the Roman legions. The British organized whole armies of ethnic troops in South and Southwestern Asia, the most famous being the Gurkhas from Nepal, who fought as recently as Margaret Thatcher’s war against Argentina in 1983.28 The buffalo soldiers were such a specially organized colonial military unit.

As a displaced community, Tibetans often speak of learning to look to the future without forsaking tradition. And as Tibetans continue their flight from Tibet to India or Nepal and then scatter farther and farther away from the physical land of Tibet, the conversations on identity and culture become more crucial and complex. As the distance increases so does the desperation in keeping Tibet as the eventual home, our aspired home. Yet it is the loss of Tibet and its very distance that also awakens us to view patriotism and identity in new ways that are not guided solely by Buddhist philosophy. Self-assertion- an approach avoided in the past because of the Buddhist aspiration to prevent focus on the self- enters our identity as Tibetans.

I remember one worship experience in which we were all singing "Our God Reigns." One of the verses begins, "How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news." I was standing next to the only Nepali delegate to the conference. His coworker had been arrested for his faith the day before he was to fly to join us. In his cultural tradition, the man next to me worshiped barefoot (as in God's command to Moses in Exodus 3:5 to take off his sandals, because he was standing on holy ground). As we sang about the feet bringing good news across the mountains, I saw my brother's feet. I thought about the thousands of Hindu villages scattered across mountainous Nepal, and I realized we were singing about his feet: feet that were taking the gospel to places I will never see. I confessed, "Lord, you are doing something in the world I never knew.

Há mais de dois mil e quinhentos anos nasceu no Nepal um homem chamado Siddharta Gautama, um príncipe pertencente a uma casta nobre e que vivia num palácio. Ao constatar, porém, que para lá do palácio a vida era feita de sofrimento, Siddharta abandonou tudo e foi para a Índia viver numa floresta como um asceta, dilacerado por uma pergunta: 'para quê viver quando tudo é dor?' Durante sete anos deambulou pela floresta em busca da resposta a essa pergunta. Cinco ascetas convenceram-no a jejuar, por acreditarem que a renúncia às necessidades do corpo criaria a energia espiritual que os conduziria à iluminação. Siddharta jejuou tanto que ficou esquelético e o seu umbigo tocou-lhe na coluna vertebral. No final, constatou que o corpo necessita de energia para alimentar a mente na sua busca. Decidiu, por isso, abandonar os caminhos extremos. Para ele, o verdadeiro caminho não era o da luxúria dos dois extremos. escolheu antes o caminho do meio, o do equilíbrio. Um dia, após banhar-se no rio e ao comer um arroz-doce, sentou-se em meditação debaixo de uma figueira, uma árvore da iluminação, a que chamam Bodhi, e jurou que não sairia dali enquanto não atingisse a iluminação. Após quarenta e nove dias de meditação, chegou a noite em que alcançou finalmente a clarificação final de todas as suas dúvidas. Ele despertou por completo. Siddharta tornou-se Buda, o Iluminado.

Since we were on Everest, many other climbers have succeeded on the “big one” as well. She has now been scaled by a blind man, a guy with prosthetic legs, and even by a young Nepalese teenager. Don’t be fooled, though. I never belittle the mountain. She is still just as high and just as dangerous. Instead, I admire those mountaineers--however they have climbed her. I know what it is really like up there. Humans learn how to dominate and conquer. It is what we do. But the mountain remains the same--and sometimes she turns and bites so damn hard that we all recoil in terror. For a while. Then we return. Like vultures. But we are never in charge. It is why, within Nepal, Everest is known as the mother goddess of the sky--lest we forget. This name reflects the respect the Nepalese have for the mountain, and this respect is the greatest lesson you can learn as a climber. You climb only because the mountain allows it. If the peak hints at you to wait, then you must wait; and when she begins to beckon you to go then you must struggle and strain in the thin air with all your might. The weather can change in minutes, as storm clouds envelop the peak--and the summit itself stubbornly pokes into the fierce band of jet-stream winds that circle the earth above twenty-five thousand feet. These 150+ mph winds cause the majestic plume of snow that pours off Everest’s peak. A constant reminder that you have got to respect the mountain. Or you die.

I stepped somewhat apprehensively into 2020, unaware of what was to happen, of course, thinking little about the newly-emerged coronavirus, but knowing myself to be at a tipping point in my life. I had come so very far over the years, the decades, from my birthplace in the United Kingdom, to Thailand, Japan and then back to Thailand to arrive at an age—how had I clocked up so many turns under the sun?—at which most people ask for nothing more than comfort, security and love, or at least loving kindness. Instead, I was slowly extricating myself, physically and emotionally, from a marriage that had, over the course of more than a decade, slowly, almost imperceptibly, deteriorated from complacency to conflict, from apathy to antagonism, from diversity to divergence as our respective outlooks on life first shifted and then conflicted. Instrumental in exacerbating this had been my decision to travel as and where I could after witnessing my mother’s devastating and terminal descent into dementia. For reasons which even now I cannot recall with any accuracy, the first destination for this reborn, more daring me was Tibet, thus initiating a new love affair, this time with the culture and majesty of the Himalayan swathe, and the awakening within me of a quest for the spiritual. I had, over the years, been a teacher, a lecturer, a consultant and an advisor, but I now wanted to inspire and release my verbal and photographic creativity, to capture the places I visited and the experiences I had in words and images—and if possible to have the wherewithal of sharing them with like-minded people.

Can you send stuff out from Nepal by air, John?’ ‘Ooh! No. No. I can’t do anything like that. No. No. No. Now, I know a man. He knows a man who might know.’ ‘How much would it cost?’ ‘Well, money is the thing, and they always do things for a fair and honest price, I promise you.’ ‘What’s a fair price, John?’ ‘You will tell me, I’m quite sure.’ ‘What will you want out of it, John?’ ‘If I help you do business, I’m sure you will give me a drink.’ ‘A drink?’ ‘Yes. If a man does something for you, you give him a drink. Please, if everything goes well, give me a drink.’ ‘Can you check that the quality will be all right?’ ‘I only smoke Tom Thumb, but I know a man who has a knife.’ I took this as a yes. ‘Can you make it smell-proof?’ ‘Not if God made it smell.’ ‘Do you know a man who can?’ ‘No. But if you do, let him come and do it, or give me instructions.’ ‘How much can they send?’ ‘I should think it depends on when you want to do it by.’ ‘Well, John, the Americans will want to do a ton as soon as possible.’ ‘Now I was in America once, and the thing is that Americans will always want more, and there is no end to their madness. Lovely people, for sure, but you have to keep them in line. When my visa ran out, the Immigration asked me why I wanted to extend it, and I said it was because I hadn’t run out of money. He stamped it and said, “Have a nice day.” So, if the Americans ask for a ton tomorrow, say you will do half a ton when Wales win the Triple Crown. That will deal with their madness, and everyone can get on with their lives. It saves all that tidding.’ ‘Tidding?’ ‘Talking Imaginary Deals.’ Accurately conveying the contents of my conversation with Old John to Ernie wasn’t easy. I told Ernie hashish could be exported from Nepal for about the same price as Robert Crimball charged in Bangkok, but 500 kilos was the most they could do at one time, and someone would have to be sent out to ensure the consignment was smell-proof. Ernie sent his right-hand man, Tom Sunde, with money, instructions, and smell-proof know-how. Tom came to London first before going to Kathmandu to meet Old John. He had been authorised by Ernie to keep nothing from me regarding the intricacies of the New York scam.

1. Dari balik tingkap ini aku sengaja mengintaimu, memasang kamera pada jalusi untuk melihatmu mencumbui malam. Seperti gerimis yang baru saja turun, menggiringmu melewati teras rumah tetangga lalu sengaja menggeletakkan tubuhnya di atas sofa abu abu yang dulu engkau beli dari pesta Sri Ratu. Tangan tangan hujan tidak meronai pipimu dengan warna merah jambu melainkan coklat tua agar senada dengan jaket yang dikenakannya. Walau, ia hanya seorang penjaga yang membawa suar kemana mana. Namun ia juga adalah samudra tak bernama yang tak urung menelikung tubuhmu dengan kata luas tak terperi. Sebagaimana kata kata rayuan yang diucapkannya bergema bersama lantunan tembang tembang lawas yang ia rekam sepekan sebelumnya dari sebuah aplikasi di internet. Ia tak menyembunyikan tangannya yang sibuk menggali harta karun jauh ke dalam lubukmu. Membiarkan pikiranmu terbang melayang ke pelataran Sukuh, ke atas puncak arca garuda di Cetha dan lalu melayap jauh hingga ke Khajuraho. Menangkap semburat lidah api yang asyik menyigi setiap detail relief candi yang akan membuat nafas kalian tersengal sengal. Memanggil awan dan memetakan semua rencana perjalanan wisata mimpi kalian ke Thailand, Bhutan, Nepal, Burma, India, Sri Lanka, Maladewa hingga ke China. Pada lukisan Lee Man Fong engkau menjelmakan dirimu menjadi seorang gadis Bali yang bertelanjang dada. Bersimpuh di bawah pohon sambil memantrakan puja. Sementara aku terjatuh dan terjerembab berungkali dari loteng ini dengan kaki yang goyah dan juga patah. Tak sekali kali berani beranjak hanya untuk sejenak menghela nafas. Karena lelaki pembawa suar itu telah menaikkan tubuhmu ke atas kereta berkuda dan menjelmakan dirimu menjadi seorang permaisuri. Seperti paduka Sri Ranggah Rajasa yang menyunting Ken Dedes di balik kejayaan Singosari. Ia sungguh lelaki pemberani yang tak gentar mengajakmu menari. Menjelajahi gunung, lembah, kebun dan persawahan di bawah naungan pohon pohon banyan di pinggiran jalan. Melewati sekumpulan bocah yang tengah bermain gundu, gobak sodor dan sunda manda. Engkau tak menghiraukan mereka dengan bising lagu dangdut di balik suara desahanmu. Menancapkan lembing pada setiap cubitan bibir yang bernafsu menyadap getah dari busung dadamu. Tajam gigi taring dan juga geraham yang menerakan sebuah marka rahasia di atas jenjang lehermu. Sedang mataku terantuk gelap yang berjatuhan di bawah pintu palka yang merapuh ini, saat layar mulai terkembang dan lelaki keturunan nelayan itu menggeser lunas perahumu di atas lidah ombaknya.