Express News Service
As a geographic marvel, the Himalayas dominate our consciousness––the 8848 metres of Mount Everest, the majestic wonders of Kailash Mansarovar, and others details capture our focus.Within this discourse, it’s easy to lose sight of the Himalayas as a unique cultural landscape in which people are bound by traditions and belief systems, deepening ties to the terrain. The harsh lifestyles embed a philosophical outlook on all born there, or those who travel distances to call these mountains home. To most of India, especially Hindus and Buddhists, much of it is sacred.
It is the ultimate destination for spiritual seekers as much as it is the abode of gods and their acolytes. Every sage and guru down history has spent some phase of their lives seeking divine knowledge in its hallowed laps.
In Mystics and Sceptics: In Search of Himalayan Masters, editor Namita Gokhale combines her inborn communion with the mountains with her love for mysticism and literature by inviting 24 writers to contribute essays on the people or groups embodying the deep spiritual knowledge and the mysticism of these locales. A couple of essays present the counterpoint, deal with charlatans too.
The roots of Tibetan Buddhism may be traced far back to antiquity. This form of Mahayana Buddhist thought holds sway over believers all across the range, including Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim and many regions of Himalayan India. The early chapters of the book detail the life and thoughts of the nun Yeshe Tsogyal and her emanation, tertön Khandro Tare Lhamo, as well as the great monk, Milarepa, formulating their philosophy through their songs and life choices. ‘The Handsome Monk’ by Tsering Döndrup tells, via fiction, the story of Gendün Gyatso, a monk driven to drink and lust by the violence of Chinese aggressors at the border.
Two forms of physical endurance admixed with spiritual practice are detailed: trance runners and the mystic marathon. The former recur in many Himalayan societies, and are ordinary monks who cultivate the extraordinary capability of running great distances swiftly. The mystic marathon is a spiritual event in Tibetan culture where a few monks prep for great physical endurance through practice and prayer until the ‘Great Caller’ is chosen to set off from, Shalu,a small town, with accompanying monks, to visit the Dalai Lama’s residence at Lhasa, travelling at speeds that defy carriages.
The 14th-century mystic from Kashmir, Lal Ded, is resurrected via her poems and spiritual legacy by Ranjit Hoskote. In the chapter ‘Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh’, Navtej Sarna’s flawless prose follows the travels of the two Sikh Gurus. Guru Nanak set off on long spiritual quests, including a prolonged stay in various locations along the Himalayas, where he discussed and debated with siddhas and monks, who followed the tenets of religious living. Guru Gobind Singh established a small fortress and a settlement at a spot named Paonta, close to where the river Yamuna emerges. His stay in the mountains was spiritually elevating, despite being marred with politics, including a battle which he led and won.
In the chapter on Swami Vivekananda, ‘Moving Mountains’, Makarand Paranjape writes about the profound impact of the Himalayas on the religious leader, more specifically how his meditations there guided his learnings and philosophy. Romola Butalia details the tales, secrets and ascension rites of the siddhas in ‘Siddha Traditions’, including the stages of enlightenment a seeker traverses.
‘In Search of the Miraculous’ recalls how Bhushita Vasistha succumbs to the allure of living in an Osho ashram. “I didn’t know then that humanity had systematically arrived at this monotony to avoid the anxiety of greeting the unexpected, embedded within the everyday.” As it happens with all cults, the promised and the actual are poles apart, and she is left in a messier, albeit wiser, state than before. “It took me so long to realise that he, the leader, and we, the followers, had gravitated to each other due to our complementing pathologies.”
In a moving essay, the editor pays obeisance to her gurus––Neem Karoli Baba and Siddhi Ma––mapping the spiritual terrain of Kumaon and Garhwal, including Sombari Baba, who materialises and dematerialises at will. It is almost illicit to write on spiritual topics, given that it may trigger sceptics, sometimes the sceptic on the other side of the same believer coin. Kudos to the compiler of this fascinating anthology that may just prove to be the sceptic’s tipping point.
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