"Science is a powerful, exquisite tool for grasping an external reality. But within that rubric, within that understanding, everything else is the human species contemplating itself, grasping what it needs to carry on, and telling a story that reverberates into the darkness, a story carved of sound and etched into silence, a story that, at its best, stirs the soul."
Brian Greene, Until the end of Time: Mind, Matter and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe

I’ve been a traveller most of my adult life, but when people ask me, “Where are you going next?”, I have no answer. There is no next. I’m here for now, and it’s a freeing feeling. No need to plan complicated travel schedules to take me to adventurous places, no need to train my body for changes in altitude, and tough hiking schedules. All’s quiet in my world. I’m paying attention to my needs: how much movement do I want and need to feel good; how much wildness do I crave in my day-to-day doings; how much time do I want to putter? My days have an uncanny emptiness. Few need my help. I only go places when I chose to do so. Even the commitments I made to do presentations are far enough away that I don’t have to feel pressured to produce. 
The dust gathering on my window-blinds in the sun don’t compel me to a cleaning frenzy. I’m just watching the soft down lie there with its crinkly tiny white hairs hanging on a sloping surface. Someone is singing a melodious song on the radio, titillating small waves of feeling in my chest, making my body sway while my brain is finding words to write this piece. The new ring on my finger holds a stone, found on a faraway Tibetan plateau where I went to experience the outer edges of self.
These days I’m looking inward and am exploring the inner edges of myself. One way is no better than the other; one may be cheaper than the other, but money doesn’t hamper or determine my travel. What then holds me in this moment, this place, without great plans to explore the world? 

They say the universe turns in on itself. The ever-expanding cosmos collapses into a black hole, and the whole thing starts over again. I guess a winter of hibernation wasn’t enough of a turning-in. I know to listen and watch the surrounding forces influence me, and right now they don’t pull me outward except for a short jaunt into the mountains around my home now and then. Last summer I let my vegetable garden lay fallow, I only put in cover crops to enrich the soil, while I was traveling. Maybe now is my fallow time, uncultivated, inactive, not producing. We know the importance of letting the land lay fallow, to allow the soil to rebuild its microbial structure.  Not that we adhere to it in our current production-oriented society; we add fertilizers to make up for the exhaustion the soil is experiencing. So it goes with our bodies and minds: we drink coffee or red bull to give us energy, we peruse the get-away offerings to stimulate our tired minds. More money can be made by offering a product to enhance our exhausted selves than just plain rest. You may remember the days when a bout of the flu was a week of being sick and a week of lying around, aka healing? I remember my mother sending me out for a walk in the watery spring sunshine when I was recovering from the flu. How strange it felt to go for a leisure walk by myself while everyone else was in school or at work.

The roots of who we become are generated in our youth. I was born a wanderer. My baby wanderings took place out from under my blankets in frigid temperatures and out of my clothes as I stood naked on the tray of my highchair, my arms stretched out like the leafless winter tree outside the window with its branches reaching. As a result, my parents tied me in my bed at night so I would stay warm, tied me in my highchair so I would be safe. 
At three years of age I went in search of frogs my brother had told me about. We were living on the outskirts of a medieval town in the southwest of Holland. A bulwark and a moat surrounded the original town, with sixteenth-century city gates and bridges to allow entrance into the town. A police officer found me, as I was standing on the edge of one of those bridges peering into the dark water in the moat. After that incident, I was staked out in the backyard like a goat, rope around my waist, rope connected to a pin in the ground. I saw a picture of myself, leaning my face into my four-year-old boy cousin’s ear. Was I whispering something about pulling up stakes together and exploring the world? 

I became a walker, an explorer of the world. There was so much to love about life and living in all these different places. But being tied down every now and then, I also learned about being in one place. I came home last fall from the Himalayas with a renewed love for life and I’m loving the living daylight out of my days right here for now. If the microbes of lying fallow do their work, a healthy base for producing new ideas, a new story will come about.

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by Dami Roelse

Long ago, when I began my quest into the why’s and how’s of this world, I had a face-to-face with Mt Everest. It was accidental; I hadn’t felt the allure of the highest mountains, not then. Humbled I stood there, surrounded by the giants of the world, Everest, Lhotse and Makalu. I took in the notion that I stood on a very high place on the planet, Kala Patar, 18,200 ft above sea level. Oxygen deprived, I could only climb a few steps at a time. I couldn’t foresee what this experience would mean in my life. I absorbed the experience and descended to the Everest glacier. After walking off the glacier, I flew back from Lukla to a life of wants and desires, a life of searching for answers that would satisfy, a life with a purpose. I never gave summitting Kala Patar much thought, I was young and strong, but I wasn’t a mountain climber; I was a tag-along in a relationship with a climber, a relationship that didn’t last.

Much, much later in life I became a long distance hiker. I walked away my grief over the loss of my partner; I walked myself whole; I walked myself into belonging. Doing so I climbed to heights above tree line, I yelled at the skies; I marveled at the light showing itself over the craggy peaks and passes at dawn,and let go of being the center of the world as the light disappeared at sunset. The world continued as day turned to night, night to day, no matter the upsets, the problems, the joys and lost relationships. When it was dark I rested, when it was light I turned toward that light with each step and found my belonging in the empty heights of the tallest mountains. One day when I stood on top of a 14,000 ft pass in the Sierra Nevada in California, I heard the voice. It said: “Go now while you can; go to Tibet and Mt Everest.” 

A year later I stood on Pangla pass, at 17,224 ft in Tibet with a view of the Himalayas, a view of Mt Everest (Chomolungma in Tibetan), Lhotse and Makala far away, but visible. The next day I made my way to the Mt Everest base camp monument at 18,300 ft elevation, one slow step after the other. It was snowing, and the clouds shrouded the mountain. I passed Rombuk monastery and saw a field of cairns stretching out toward expedition base camp. Cairns are stacks of rocks, one rock balancing on top of the other showing a tenuous and temporary relationship; they’re placed to mark a trail, to draw attention to a view, a place of significance. When I saw this field of cairns leading up to base camp, I felt the urge to make my own ritual cairn. While picking up rocks that would be suitable and called out to me, I came to a rope with small flags strung across the landscape, a barrier to keep people from entering the base camp terrain, closed off for the public to allow clean-up. To get closer to the mountain, I stepped over the line. Then I saw a rock suitable as a base to build my pile. The pile became a symbol of me, my life energy, as I had struggled to breathe and carry to this point. Minuscule Edelweiss surrounded the base. Even here in this rugged, desolate terrain flowers can exist, I thought. The pile grew as I placed rocks I found nearby, naming them one by one and letting them become representative of the loved ones in my life. When I looked up toward the mountain, misty clouds moved through, surrounding me and leaving me feeling alone in the landscape. I felt I could disappear in the snow, mist and fog. This is what dying will be like, I thought. Tears welled up, my body sobbed with a gut wrenching sadness I didn’t know lived inside me. I saw my life-ending as a disappearance into an invisible world so much bigger than I, a place of ‘ever-rest’.  I cried not because I feared dying, but I knew that the hardest thing about dying would be the saying goodbye to those I love. As I placed the rocks, I offered my life and loved ones to the mountain. I had returned to Everest, or Chomolungma meaning “Mother Goddess of the world” for a deeper understanding. Not knowing myself and my life when I first met her in 1972, this time she moved me to understand what ever-rest will be:not just a mountain named after an Englishman but a place that reminds me how I will disappear when the time comes.

by Dami Roelse

The current unrest in Hong Kong where students and young people are clamoring for democracy, take me back to images of other demonstrations that called out to Free Tibet. When we see the images, what can we learn about the Chinese regime? An authoritarian regime that doesn’t allow dissent, doesn’t allow free speech, and uses violence to stay in control. 
I had this image of the Chinese regime when I set out for Tibet this summer. As a foreigner you cannot freely travel around in Tibet. To visit you have to join a tour, so that the authorities can control and monitor your movement and your exposure to what Tibet is. The regime likes to keep track of everyone’s whereabouts. Considering the size of the country and the wide open spaces in Tibet, it would be easy for an adventurous person to disappear in the Hinterland and do some research about life in China. I didn’t have that opportunity; I had to learn about Tibet from a touring van with pre-arranged stops and visiting sites. 15 Days to get an impression and see the famous sites: Potala Palace, Jokhang Temple, Drepung monastery, Sera monastery.

While we visited the religious sites in rapid succession I learned about the three Tibetan Buddhist sects, the three Buddhas of the past, present and future, the three ways one can be buried in Tibet depending on your religious or non-religious status. I learned that those scary looking devils are actually protecting you from evil, that the black horseman Buddha protects children when a monk puts a black smudge on their forehead. I learned that Tibetans have many ways to prepare for a better next life: walking or doing prostrations around a holy site (which keeps everyone very limber), doing innumerable prostrations in a temple, the more the better; “paying” respect to favored lamas and teachers, by leaving money and/or donating butter to the many butter lamps in the monasteries. (see images below) Like buying your way into heaven which Catholics promoted by coercing donations to erase sins, Tibetans buy and exercise their way to a better next life. 
The monks in the monasteries were busy putting on the Tibetan art of debate shows, dressing for celebratory religious dancing, or chanting traditional chants in the lavishly decorated halls of the monasteries. Religious tradition, yes, but spirituality?  
 
When the Chinese entered Tibet, they did horrendous damage to age-old cultural and religious sites. It seems the Chinese authorities have had a change of mind and instead of trying to stamp out religion they’ve embraced the cultural icons, rebuild the monasteries and taken control of initiating monks and appointing the religious leaders. The Dalai Lama escaped, and he is still a most revered leader among practicing Tibetan Buddhists. What you can’t have you idolize. And so a movement to Free Tibet was born. What would a free Tibet do on the world stage at this point? Join the many underdeveloped countries in holding up their hand for donations from the West? Have a religious leader direct economic growth, develop mining of Tibet's raw materials? 
 
In 1959 Tibet and its inhabitants were living in the middle ages, poverty, superstition, violence and religious dominance reigned. Now 60 years later the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) or Xizang Autonomous Region (XAR) is a prosperous, modern, wired, part of China. Poverty is almost eradicated. Even the nomads have houses, jeeps and cellphones. The monasteries are doing a brisk business with tourists (many Chinese) and Tibetan pilgrims. The regime has rebuilt the important monasteries, the monks are on salary and the next generation is getting free education. China is a secular regime and I believe that the regime counts on the power of education, which will in time eradicate traditional religion. And so the monks rake or sweep the constant flow of bills left by pilgrims and devoted Tibetans around the holy statues. The believers are paying to keep the monasteries intact. Resistance has been stymied by controlling the people’s wishes.
 
Is this all bad? Or is it a good thing that an authoritarian regime moved a large population out of poverty, by educating the people with modern ideas and advanced science, and providing housing, infrastructure and stability? The people at the bottom enjoy getting their basic needs met; they enjoy running a small business, have enough food and a warm place to sleep at night. As long as they put a Red Flag on their roof and are loyal to the regime, they can have these basics. 
 
The totalitarian regime works great for moving a society along toward prosperity. The trouble begins when bellies are full and educated people want to have their say in how things are run. Hong Kong has been affluent long enough that the people don’t want to bow to the regime. 
 Will the Chinese regime bend and respond to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? (for a refresher on what this is, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs). The Chinese gave the Tibetans their monasteries back. They have shown flexibility in allowing Capitalistic Socialism on their way to the goal of total Communism. Does the Chinese regime know that rigidity will break them? Just as the monks exchanged spiritual practice for religious commerce and a steady income, will the Chinese regime lose its ideals and fall for the allure of property and ownership? Judging from events in Hong Kong, and observing the throng of wealthy, well- dressed Chinese and Tibetans driving a BMW, the people are making their choices.  

by Dami Roelse

by Dami Roelse

by Dami Roelse