Seven Years in Tibet
Heinrich Harrer
Tibet has not yet been infested by the worst disease of modern life, the everlasting rush. No one overworks here. Officials have an easy life. They turn up at the office late in the morning and leave for their homes early in the afternoon. If an official has guests or any other reason for not coming, he just sends a servant to a colleague and asks him to officiate for him.
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The soft of fatalistic resignation with which they lent themselves to this backbreaking toil always used to infuriate me. As a product of our modern age, I could not understand why the people of Tibet were so rigidly opposed to any form of progress. There obviously must be some better means of transporting these heavy burdens than by manhandling them. The Chinese invented and used the wheel thousands of years ago. But the Tibetans will have none of it, though its use would give an immense impusle to transport and commerce, and would raise the whole standard of living throughout the country.
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An indescribable scene awaited us. There squatted hundreds, nay thousands, of monks wearing their read cowls and busy doing something for which privacy is generally regarded as essential. I did not envy Aufschnaiter his place of work.
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Still, we comforted ourselves with the thought that our life was very tolerable and that we had many reasons for satisfaction. We had a good roof over our heads and were no longer struggling to exist. We did not miss the appliances of Western civilization. Europe with its life of turmoil seemed far away. Often as we sat and listened to the radio brining reports from ou country we shook our heads at the depressing news. There seemed no inducement to go home.
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The daily life of Tibetans is ordered by religious belief. Pious texts are onstantly on their lips; prayer wheels turn without ceasing; prayer flags wave on the roofs of houses and the summits of the mountain passes; the rain, the wind, all the phenomena of nautre, the lonely peaks of the sno-clad mountains, bear witness to the universal presence of the gods whose anger is manifested by the ailstorm, and whose benevolence is displayed by the fruitfulness of the land. The life of the people is regulated by the divine will, whose interpreters the lamas are.
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I listened to the news the first thing every day and often found myself shaking my head and wondering at the things that men seemed to think important. Here it is the yak’s pace that dictates the tempo of life, and so it has been for thousands of years. Would Tibet be happier for being transformed? … by accelerating the tempo of existence it might rob the people of their peace and leisure.
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Christianity and Buddhism have much in common. They are both founded on the belief in happiness in another world, and both preach humility in this life. But there is a difference as things are today. In Tibet one is not hunted from morning till night by the calls of “civilization.” Here one has time to occupy oneself with religion and to call one’s soul one’s own. Here it is religion that occupies most of the life of the individual, as it did in the West during the Middle Ages.
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