MUSINGS - TRIUMPH IN TIBET!

This is one of a series of articles I wrote under the umbrella title:

EXPERIENCES FROM THE EDGE...

TRIUMPH IN TIBET!

TIBET is land of saints and bandits, indescribable beauty and incalculable hardships. Its sci-fi landscape - countless snow peaks fringing Mad Max sand dunes; spongy emerald hills rolling into ocre-mauve rocky sculptures that bow to the ancient ruins of once flourishing mustard colored kingdoms; flat-stretches smothered in purple flowers and leaping bunnies that blanket the earth as far as the eye can see; the roof of the world where a brontosaurus crossing your path wouldn't appear strange; the land of snows where madly-sane tribal people with purple chapped cheeks and eyes that bark, all at once scare and allure you; a place where you can see dusty-rose mountains bounce like mirages on the horizon 100 miles ahead; a shambala in the sky filled with celestial turquoise lakes, the legacy of monasteries too rich to depict with words and all under the gaze of a Mighty Everest...

This special, mystical land is BREATH-taking...not least because it's mostly 4500m above sea level. Yep - you stroll, drive, run, wank, dance and play at the height of planes swooping over European skies. Every step is an effort not to pass out. Headaches, nausea, nose bleeds, fainting, fevers and fatigue are all common symptoms at this socially unacceptable altitude. Garlic is man's best friend. Oxygen masks, nasal sprays and intravenous glucose hits are all highly recommended.

My travel buddy Peta and I were at the last leg of our journey - we had spent six months capturing our adventure on camera from the banks of India's sacred Ganges, through the jungles of Nepal to the peaks of...this nauseatingly beautiful hell- paradise. The first six days of driving from Kathmandu to Lhasa saw Peta and a couple of German Buddhists puke and squirm. I managed to keep it together enough to shoot scenics for the show, while feeling like I was about to black out into oblivion.

We encountered a great test to our fear in Lhasa as we were surrounded by dozens of Chinese officials in army attire who chose to follow and film us at His Holiness The Dalai Lama's former palace - the Potala. We ducked into a tunnel - there are over 1000 rooms in the Potala - and suddenly found ourselves in the private chamber of the 13th Dalai Lama, not open to the public...then we got the hell outta there. The next day ten hours worth of our footage was smuggled out by an Auzzie lawyer.

Just before departing for the peak of our pilgrimage, Peta left to film the former palace of His Holiness Karmapa Lama. I had been feeling progressively weaker so I stayed back with a chamber pot and some garlic. Then, suddenly, I fainted on our hotel balcony. It is the first and only time in my life I've had my eyes wide open and seen nothing but pitch black. I now understand the term 'black out'. The next thing I remember, I was on a drip and breathing apparatus in Lhasa's Chinese 'hospital for the people'. For ten hours I lay in a bed wondering if I was going to die. No one spoke English. I had no idea what medication was being pumped into my veins. Too weak to struggle, I remember recalling the Great Sage Adi Da's instruction in his book 'Easy Death'. Had it not been for the peace that filled my body from that recollection, I swear my heart would have leaped from my body in fear. Having heard myself cock-confidently rap that I don't feel a shed of fear about death many times over in my dumb teenage life...when the possibility of it...unexpectedly hits you...well...I yelled for a chamber pot...My fear was probably escalated by the Chairman Mao clone having his oxygen treatment in the opposite bed and the young Tibetan girl a metre away, screaming because her spleen had exploded...

A day later and we begun the testing long journey across the size of Western Europe on a non-existent road. In my fragile state, nine hour days driving in the back of an oil truck with the smell of diesel creeping into my lungs, and then ending each day camping the cold nights by remote rivers where wild nomads attacked my facial hirsute...well, it was humorous endurance. They say that it's the journey that counts and not the destination...wrong! There are exceptions to the rule. I couldn't wait to reach the holiest of holy pilgrim sites...the infamous Hindu-hailed, Buddhist-beloved, Jain-jollied and Bon-boasted - 'Mount Kailash' - a Shambala hot spot circumnabulated by thousands of devotional pilgrims of every faith and creed, all striving for...enLIGHTenment...

Mount Kailash...OH ME OH MY! Kailash resembles the imaginary ice cream you want to lick forever. Standing in the spotlight - a lusty movie star on the red carpet - Kailash out-celebrities the backdrop of several awesome snowy peaks like a Masai Warrior's loin-tackle would a bunch of Japanese tourists in a police penis line-up. Kailash is Einstein, Da Vinci, Jesus, Mohammed, Gotama, Lennon, Mozart and Marley. Kailash restored my health instantly - like a light going ON...BINGO...

Cold, rain, wind, farts, garlic breath, altitude and attitude sickness aside, the sun set gloriously and we camped by a beautiful river that eventually flows into the Mother Ganges many thousands of miles away. The following day was spectacular - Sagadawa - Buddha's birthday. The energy was electric, even if Buddha did fail to show for the party...

(There were rumors Buddha was hanging out with the Beastie Boys and Richard Gere at a hamster fest in chutneyferretsville, but the rumors were soon dispelled when a rather serious German mantra-mumbling, born-again-Buddhist, announced that he'd been spotted with Elvis and Jim Morrison at a roadside cafe in Patagonia. The three legends were seen studying the esoteric significance of the double 'L' patterning the Welsh language. Apparently, Buddha sung their national anthem like a true Welshman, to the extent that the small Taffy community inhabiting this remote area of the Andes invited Lord Plenty to be their mayor...and several sheep grinned at the prospect...)

...The party was infectiously jam packed with hundreds of feisty Tibetan pilgrims and western voyeurs all waiting for a very tall sacred pole erection at the appropriate hour. Tibetan timing, as I soon discovered, is as accurate as a politician's promise. We waited patiently...and waited...for the enormous, flag'n bell adorned wooden phallus to stand to attention...but it refused to get a woody. In an attempt to drum out the dwindling energy, Peat and I ran around causing trouble - laughing with the limbless, sharing jokes with monks and missfits, kissing the brave...and eventually with a heave and a ho and a heave-ho...the pole went up...Wow! Powerful stuff...it didn't lean to the left, nor the right, which (apparently) is profoundly auspicious...

Having received the blessing of Buddha's birthday rod, we departed for our four day circumnabulation of Kailash with the knowledge that Buddha was happy - the one-pointedness of his heavenly todger being a cosmic sign that things were just dandy. The 'kora' was tough. We were to climb to nearly 6000m, sleeping in icy conditions in a tent that we'd rather haphazardly rented from two stoned imbeciles in Nepal with no front door and a shortage of pegs. We fixed my spoon to hold the guy ropes down and used Peat's sarong as an entrance flap. That night, I had the most powerful experience of my life to date - a heart-expansive, celestial run-in that is almost indescribable...

Suddenly, as I lay curled up in my sleeping bag, I lost bodily self-awareness. Any sense of "I" and "me" got swallowed by the magnaminous feeling-scape of the holy mount. The 'infinity-feeling' kept expanding until there was nothing but a pulsing vastness of blissful thoughtless feeling...and it didn't stop...it kept expanding to the extent that my ordinary association with the 'body-mind' disappeared completely - there was simply NO SEPARATION. This was not an intellectual assumption or drug-induced insight, but a direct, tacit and tangible first hand REALIZATION, in the present, as a living Truth. Paradoxically, "I" was all at once the limitlessness of outer space, my immediate environment, family, friends, the sound of the rushing river, the expanse of the entire Entirety in fact! I lay enveloped, caressed, kissed and fucked in an orgasmic 'witness position'...when gradually the Realization receded and I returned to ordinary feeling-awareness, it became obvious that in every breathing moment, I choose to dissociate from the Bliss of Reality, that it is an activity that "I am DO-ing", that I must take responsibility for...At this point, there was no way I could sleep! - I was pumped with so much energy I felt like I could run to 6000m. I left the tent and filmed the moonlit sky...it remains one of the most precious nights, etched into my heart...just me...standing there engulfed in the presence of...dwarfed in the presence of...alone, wired, alive, ecstatic! The chick who was laid up in hospital five days earlier was now at the roof of the world. And I had received an unspeakable vision, a gift, a blessing.

On day two, having not slept a wink, but still pumped with the 'infinity-energy' of my previous nights encounter, Peat and I celebrated by dressing up in...well, I wore a Chinese leopard-skinned whore outfit with four inch platform heels and Peat donned a black wig and purple heels. We climbed the hill in front of Kailash's north face and performed a trippy sketch where an Essex gal (Peat) and a Welsh slut (moi) have miss-read their holiday brochure and have somehow ended up in Tibet, thinking they were literally going to MOUNT Kailash...(Kailash cannot be mounted, only circumnabulated)...We prostrated in our fancy attire, twiddled our mala beads, sung 'Wham' songs, played an intellectually-challenged game of 'Scrabble' and drank bite-size Baileys before retiring to our tents for another night of freezing astral travel...Another day at the office.

The following day we climbed to the height of the Mount Kailash victory 'pass', breathless and exhausted, only to stumble upon a Yanky playing John Lennon's 'Imagine' on his guitar. This is one of my all time favorite childhood songs. I whipped out the camera and sung along between tears. Bright prayer flags blowing in a sublime breeze, Peat and I did a poem-rap to camera and then continued our 12 hour hike to a monastery. The destination, the journey, the climb, the presence...sweet as Grace...

After visiting the fantastic 'Guge Kingdom' - Western Tibet's spectacular ancient city - we bathed in the hot sulphur springs on the shores of Lake Manasarovar - the female 'Yoni' counterpart to Mount Kailash's male 'lingam'. Out of the blue, I suddenly felt a swoon of the mysterious presence that had intoxicated me at Kailash. That evening the same Divine Feeling that had revealed itself to 'ego-reinforcing George' completely overwhelmed me again. I was transported to the realm of all-expansive feeling and this time I felt the concentration of infinity rest at the heart. It went on for almost an hour. Afterwards I was charged with such an extraordinary energy, like an energy-mirror - I felt the pain of the ego-knot I tighten with my every reactive emotion, dissociative activity and separative motives. It became clear to me that there is nothing more important than consciously allowing this Mysterious Process space to unfurl its petals. I realized that I had a responsibility to develop the muscle of sadhana , to engage an ever-increasing dedication to spiritual practice in the midst of my hectic human life...

The penultimate day of our time in the wild - this inhospitable, remote, snowy, scorchingly hot, bizarre, bewildering land that is Tibet - and our camera batteries finally died. After driving through nine rainbows, our final capture was a double rainbow arching its hues over the too-beautiful-to-describe landscape. I wept. Whilst playing frisbee with some Tibetan children, vagrants in this no-map-place, the heavens opened...And silver light rained onto our gathering. We 'wrapped up' our filming - sixty hours of whacked-out weirdness. Speechless, enraptured, exhausted, blissed-out, sun burnt, snow burnt, blistered, gob smacked, god-smacked, joyous and jolted - Tibet has provided a teaching I shall never forget...but, having felt too much, I dare not return.

© G3 JULY, 2000

AN ASIDE

That the profundity and depth of revelation increases...happiness soars...and a sensitivity, tolerance, compassion and undulating desire to Realize the Divine Mystery intensifies the more the disciplines of a truly religious life are practiced with seriously kick ass, taboo-bustin', True Humour...well, those were the heart-seeds planted during my time in Tibet... That Realising Truth is possible even for a Westerner surrounded by material comforts and all the ephemeral illusions of the conditional world - that all of us have the potential to become Brightness Itself - has been rammed up my skirt and my clit has been quivering with excitement ever since...Tidy!