In the footsteps of Atisha: A journey into modern Tibet
Nearly one thousand years ago the reputed Atisha Dipankara, a Buddhist scholar of royal birth from the town of Bikrampur (now Dhaka district) made the hazardous journey into the Land of Snow at the invitation of the Tibetan king. There, the Bengali achieved tremendous success in revitalising the Buddhist teachings after its decline and suppression in the region -- a task for which he was, and continues to be recognised as a Bodhisattva, an enlightened being.
After learning of Atisha's remarkable story, coupled with inspiration garnered from watching Brad Pitt's blockbuster hit, Seven Years in Tibet, I was pretty well convinced that a trip to Tibet included in the steep price of transportation, lodging and local guides, the opportunity to have my inner-Buddha flower. But alas, this did not happen. Perhaps it was my false expectations, or the daily snow showers and frigid temperatures that prevented such flowering -- but whatever my excuse for not returning an enlightened Bodhisattva, I'm not quite rushing to get my refund, either.
For many, including my pre-Tibet self, idealisations of the Himalayan kingdom are largely based upon fantasy. Propelled by popular culture and the mythical search for the last Shangri-La, the final bastion of spiritual utopia on Earth, the romance of Tibet, is chimera, an emotional construct of necessity. We need to believe a place on Earth exists in which peace and incorruptibility reign supreme, where the beauty of a land and its culture triumphs over some of the painful realties that life sometimes doles out. As much as I had hoped to encounter such a place, this was not the Tibet I experienced this past spring when my travel companion and I spent eight days driving across the Tibetan Plateau from Lhasa to Kathmandu.
It was clear from the beginning that a trip Tibet would be one unlike any other. Our travel agent in Nepal began by listing a litany of unpardonable faux pas: do not talk about politics -- especially not with monks, some of them are known to be Chinese agents; do not wear, carry, or show any image of the Tibetan flag; do not carry books that speak of or depict the Dalai Lama -- any of these infractions is grounds for immediate deportation. He concluded, "Do not expect much from the hotels, they are almost okay."
For the full version of this article please read this month's Forum, available free with The Daily Star on October 3.
The writer is an international policy Consultant with the Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh (PRI).
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