AND A FEW PHILOSOPHICAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE DIFFERENCES IN EACH AS A SUMMARY OF SPITI-02

June 29, 2002

I am aboard an a-340 Airbus across the northern Atlantic, in my fifteenth hour of flying, having completed the long flight from the subcontinent of Asia to central Europe—a seven hour flight after the even longer road rides, by bus and jeep. But, after a brief interval in Frankfurt and a chance to say farewell to the team members who are splitting at this point, I have climbed aboard this flight, and plan to type the last of the chapters in the Spit-02 book, which will be Jun-B-21. I do not need to see the movie “The Count of Monte Cristo” again, and the light will be with me as I am flying the same speed as the sun is coursing through the sky westward. So, I am now over some watery geography after seeing a great piece of the highest and driest pieces of planet Earth.

I am already attuned to the next trip, having completed the letter to the Personal Secretary of His Holiness the XIVth Dali Lama for the audience we enjoyed in Dharamsala, I am reading the rather murky history of the Ladakh region.

I realize now that I have a rather unique perspective on this region having been there more often than most people, in the “kingdom in the Clouds” a not very easy place to get to and forbidden to most. Our medical missions have made it possible for me to enter it, and the method of getting to know the people there has been beyond tourism, so that I have got to know these rather \gentle people directly, with their unwashed hair down, since they come to me for help. It has been a challenge, given the rather primitive stage of transportation and accommodation, but it has been rewarding to see this inside glimpse of a very well defined piece of the geographic universe, even though I still consider my self first and foremost an Africanist. I will remain interested in that unique blend of very different peoples in a milieu of the vast continent of Africa. But I have had a unique opportunity to learn about this Buddhist population of the remnants of the old Tibetan Guge Emprie and the Changpa peoples, and their Buddhist heritage, so I should see the one resource that has made them unique—their Tibetan Buddhist faith. The ancient Bon religion was the faith that kept them together at the era of the Pali language, but it was supplanted about a thousand years ago by the marriages that cemented some of the old warlords claims, with brides coming from the families of the Buddhist elite. The red-hatted sect, was the p [art of the pure and ancient Mahayana type of Major Path Buddhism (l had once studied in “Great Religions of the World” as far back as Calvin College) and the “modern “reformist “ school of yellow-hatted Buddhism came about purely by accident when some progressives came in to the movement, and when inducted into the Buddhist hierarchy, they had simply run out of the red hats and were given the yellow hat! Now, anyone with the name “Geelhoed” should be a kinsman of any “Yellow Hat” and as a consequence, I was delighted to be working this trip in the Pin Valley where the Yellow-hatted sect of Buddhism is still predominant---reformers, but hardly to be accused of slipping into modernism!

The trip began with a smaller mixed crew of the medical team, with all of them freshmen or entering medical profession friends such as Keith Carr who was here as a consequence of reading my experiences previously sent to him, including the book “Our of Assa.” Keith’s motivation, as I cited in reference during the audience with the Dali Lama’s secretary, was almost Buddhist---he had said he had spent twenty years of his life as a professional chemist making wealthy industrialists richer, and now he was interested in reversing that trend and doing something good for people who had not had much of a chance at modernity, and were short many advantages in material goods, but were longer on spiritual richness.

I had a bit of a falling out early in this trip both over the leadership of this mission, which seemed confused in some minds dude to the pompous pronouncements of a non-participant, whose only function was ceremonial aggrandizement---seeking the reward without the effort, in both authority and authorship. You are already aware of the rather extensive authorship of each of these iterative medical missions, and I did not want to have the responsibility without the authority, and said so empathically. That seems to have been resolved. You are also aware that I am a writer in these wildernesses, much as the early explorers of the Dark Continent would send back descriptions of what cultural features they had seen and participated in over the course of their travels. I am doing just the same, perhaps a century later or more in a civilization that has been more than two centuries removed from public, and at least Western, access and recognition.

The participants with whom I have just parted company in Frankfurt airport have reflected philosophically on what they learned in the course of the trip---picking up a foreign language and skill in approach---both learning medicine and pure clinical skills, not polluted by excess reliance on technologic tests, since they were non-existent. In fact the most sophisticated testing available would have been the pulse oximetry I had packed to use on this trip, but like all the rest of the things I had packed in preparation for this and the subsequent excursions, it never caught up with me, so I had to fly with what ever I had carried in my hand, and on my person. Even the simple matters of my stethoscope, and simple tools were absent, locked away in Delhi, to perhaps accompany me in the next excursion s to Ladakh and Lingshed, but unavailable in this trip through Spiti. No matter. Medicine is not “stuff.” It is pure information, applied as an art to human problems, and can be given as advice within limits, which may sometime include the application of some specific technology or pharmacology. Fortunately, the latter DID accompanying me to the remote Spiti Valley and even some excess is left behind for the start up on the next trip. My only “Check-in “ bag on this return trip is the same small carry-on daypack I had carried in with a few rolls of film, now all exposed, a few extra audiocassettes, now all recorded, and two GPS units, now well-used in the latitudes, longitudes and altitudes of these unique Himalayan ranges that are the buckling of the earth’s surface from the ramming of the peripatetic subcontinent enroute up from the southern hemisphere, sub ducting under the underbelly of the Asian mainland and thrusting up the highest mountain ranges on earth. It is theses magnificent and stark mountains that define many other features of the landscape and human geography: for example, they are the reason for the air masses that move with the tilt of the earth and produce the monsoons---the rising air looses its ability to carry the waters absorbed as the equatorial air was swept up from the Indian Ocean, and rising up the “Abode of the Gods” (“Himalaya”) it dropped the precious fluid of the gods that sustains life---the monsoons, now begun on the southern slopes. We had explored the “rain shadow side” of the Himalayas in the stark arid deserts of Spit and Lahoul Valleys, but all along these barren stretches life is made possible by the melting of the glaciers from long since fallen snows, melting to produce torrential rivers which generate not only irrigatable life, but also power generation for the sate of Himachal through NATHPA. All along these high Himalayan passes, the chief productivity is not the scattered fields of irrigated peas or barley, with a few terraces of wheat, planted in a very labor intensive process, but an even more labor-intensive process---that of the human soul seeking what is eternal and satisfying in an earthly environment that is not a source of sustainable happiness. Only when we get beyond the desires and greed for material things and cultivate this spiritual richness can human beings find happiness. That is an attempt made by the Buddhists, monks ands laity alike, twirling the prayer wheels and drums, carving the Mani stones that will go into Mani Walls and mang stupas and chortens—an incomplete process or trying to arrive at some completion of this struggle to find meaning in life. Maybe they are closer to it than the Valley Girls I carry into this environment, who are concerned about not having the latest CD to play to entertain themselves passively during the long drives, but the modern observers are enthralled n watching the monks n prayer themselves are transformed by seeing these people in their pursuit of goals very arduous, but probably more worthwhile than the acquisition fn of still more things.

I am not a devotee, or practitioner of Buddhism, of any of the sects I have studied. But, I do honor the Dali Lama and his followers for having shed some of the enticements that seem to have plagued modernity on the other side of the world—the Western preoccupation with the acquisition of stuff, which probably brings less happiness than the mind-numbing endless repetition of ritual does to the Buddhist practitioner here. The relentless pursuit of truth in each environment is not perfected in either area, but there are far fewer distractions to its attempt here in the ”Abode of the Gods.” The God, who surely did make this earth and the people in it to whom we are all responsible for this search, may be more kindly disposed to the still seeking non-materialists than to the smug and self-satisfied n other more materially endowed worlds

So this trip has been a repetition for me and a revelation to the others not just of spectacular geographic topography but also a different and perhaps more meaningful way of living life than that which comes from consumption and desires for all things marketable beyond basic needs to be sustained. They may still fall short on a very big basic need but they are clearly putting far more labor intensive effort into seeing a way through t than most of the redundantly supplied and spiritually impoverished.

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