Published in the International Herald Tribune
11 September 1998

LIFE: ENDLESS KARMIC LOOP
OR ONE CHANCE FOR GUSTO?

by Paul Spencer Sochaczewski © 1998

LO MANTHANG, Mustang.

Trekking in the mountains of Nepal is a fine way to solve the world's great dilemmas.

Gasping for breath in the rarefied air at 4,500 meters, I asked my friend Tashi if he could solve mankind's greatest enigma -- Freud's anxious whine "what do women want?"

He had no idea, and implied that the answer is destined to remain as elusive as Shangri-La and the yeti.

We were approaching Mustang's walled capital of Lo Manthang, where once a year masked monks exorcise demons during the rarely seen Tiji festival.

The people of this region are Tibetan, and their vision of cleansing and peace is largely based on removing those nasty inner conflicts that strive to make our lives annoying and hard to fathom. We watched monks in brocaded silk kick up dust in Lo Manthang's central square. Local people had walked for days, as we had, to take part in the three day renaissance of spirit.

I tried an easier question. "Tashi, what's the meaning of life?"
Tashi is a devout Tibetan Buddhist. For him, life is a nearly endless loop, where your past ungraceful actions generally come back to haunt you.

He explained his spiritual operating system. "Do whatever you can according to your capability. The more you help people now the better it will be in the next life. Believe in god. Meditate."

"Tashi, you're making it too complicated," I replied. "Basically life really is a beer commercial. You're only sure of going around once, so make the most of it."

But Buddhists, like the followers of so many other religions, believe that life is suffering. It's the Vince Lombardi school of religion - "no pain, no gain."

"Tashi, let me tell you the philosophy of the North American baby-boom tribe," I said. "Nobody on his death bed ever said 'Gee, I wish I had stayed later in the office and made love less.'"

Tashi is a bit soft from the city life in Kathmandu. His dark Mongol features open into a wide, voluble smile. He's a bit of a saint, devoting much of his time to finding educational sponsorships for poor rural Nepalese and Tibetan refugee children. He responds with an aphorism. "You plant rice, you get rice."

Tashi's "good works" are particularly inspiring since Tashi himself has had more than his share of tough breaks. His family fled Tibet just before the Chinese invasion of 1958. He lived much of his early life in refugee camps. He never went beyond the 9th grade. And, the toughest karma of all, his son has cerebral palsy.

I ask him whether anything can be done to help the boy.

"It's our karma," he explains. "My wife and I might have done bad things in previous life, and our son might have done worse things."

Tashi explains that he went to see the Dalai Lama's doctor in Dharamsala, India, who confirmed a diagnosis of bad karma, but nevertheless suggested that the boy take some medicine. The karma, in this case was stronger than the herbs, and the boy is still wheelchair-bound, unable to do anything for himself.

"You know, Tashi, all these religions and philosophies that predict some kind of next-world-reward calculated on how many karma points you earn now, are based on a big gamble," I said. "The only things you can be really sure about are that today you're alive and one day you won't be. Therefore, following the Cartesian logic of Anheuser Busch, the patron saint of fraternities, grab all the gusto you can while your plumbing's intact and before Alzheimer's sets in."
Being Asian and too polite to laugh, he pretended to think about it for a while.

On the trek we had stopped by the village of Gheling. By the village well, where the water wheel was carved like a prayer wheel and carried offerings to heaven with each squeaky turn, we glimpsed a shy, disfigured girl.

We asked about her and that night her father brought her to the house where we were staying.

Her name is Tashi Angmo. Several years ago a dzo spiked her in the eye with his horn. The wound was never treated, and her face became infected and ugly.

Poor and healthy is tough. Poor and disfigured is really tough karma. But who were we to interfere?

We asked the father why he hadn't sought medical help for the girl. With his daughter standing in the corner of the smoky room, as far away from him as possible, he mumbled excuses about being poor and that there weren't any doctors and he has many kids. It seemed to us, parents all, that he simply didn't care. "Don't give money to the father," Tashi warned. "He'll drink it away." Instead we channeled a few hundred dollars through a local non-governmental organization, and Tashi Angmo left her village for the first time and was brought to distant Kathmandu for surgery. She can now see out of the eye and maybe has a shot at a relatively normal life. Was it her karma to get gored by a dzo? Was it her karma for us to trek into her village while she was washing the family's clothes?

As we walked through the lunar landscape we talked about the charity Tashi runs, called the Himalayan Children's Foundation.

Through this group I sponsor the education of Tsering Wangmo, an 11 year old Tibetan refugee girl.Once she sent a poem:

"King love Queen
Queen love baby
Baby love milk
But I love you."

More recently, showing off a bit, she wrote:
"Please don't angry if there is some mistake in my letter and if my handwriting is bad. But I don't think that there is some mistake and handwriting is bad because no[w] I am 6 class."

Was it her karma to meet me through Tashi and get the education that might lead to a more successful life? Was it my karma to meet Tashi when two Canadian friends stopped by my Switzerland house one morning inviting me to go on a bike ride with this friendly man from distant mountains? Was it Tashi's karma to have a handicapped son and to devote his life to helping others?

Tashi had no doubts about his belief. "If you do good things you will get good things," he said. "If you plant rice you get rice."

Tashi collects karma points the way some people collect baseball cards. His version of karma implies a system of bonuses and penalties.

But I'm not sure anyone's keeping score. All I know is that synchronicity, in Jung's term, is real. We met, after all.
Do I understand any of this? Of course not. Pass me a beer, will you, while I read Tsering Wangmo's latest letter. "Many years gone I will be a good and best and intelligent girl in the world. That's all for today." She signed it: "I never forgot your kindness until you die."