 |
| Samdo Kunga, Tibetan mother and daughter, photo by Phil Borges |
Mindfulness brings compassion.
Looking out across the plains at seventeen thousand feet,
white clouds turning, turning into Tara, into Milarepa,
here on the plains where your people have crossed the icy turf
again and again throughout the ages,
welcomed with tea and kindness at every neighbor’s tent,
how do you bear to see trucks rolling in, laden with asphalt?
When you are four years old,
and you journey for days with Mother
to see a wonder, a sacred dance
on the monastery grounds,
monks in brilliant colors dazzling your young eyes,
music beyond imagination, the cymbals, the horns,
how could you ever live in a cement block house,
bored, tired, hungry and lost,
forgetful of all the nomad you ever were?
When one has arisen at dawn with the sound of the wind,
a thousand years of holy incarnations spinning madly in the cloud shadows,
mottling the faces of the high mountains nearby,
and you bundle up and say a prayer, giving thanks for all this,
your past, your people, your medicine, your sacredness,
how can there ever, ever come a machine to quarry the mountain down,
to beat the knowledge out of you, to herd you into silence?
Mindfulness brings compassion.
Tibet will never die.
Annelinde Metzner
Looking out across the plains at seventeen thousand feet,
white clouds turning, turning into Tara, into Milarepa,
here on the plains where your people have crossed the icy turf
again and again throughout the ages,
welcomed with tea and kindness at every neighbor’s tent,
how do you bear to see trucks rolling in, laden with asphalt?
When you are four years old,
and you journey for days with Mother
to see a wonder, a sacred dance
on the monastery grounds,
monks in brilliant colors dazzling your young eyes,
music beyond imagination, the cymbals, the horns,
how could you ever live in a cement block house,
bored, tired, hungry and lost,
forgetful of all the nomad you ever were?
When one has arisen at dawn with the sound of the wind,
a thousand years of holy incarnations spinning madly in the cloud shadows,
mottling the faces of the high mountains nearby,
and you bundle up and say a prayer, giving thanks for all this,
your past, your people, your medicine, your sacredness,
how can there ever, ever come a machine to quarry the mountain down,
to beat the knowledge out of you, to herd you into silence?
Mindfulness brings compassion.
Tibet will never die.
Annelinde Metzner
August 2008
See more of the Tibetan photography of Phil Borges here.
Experience a powerful Tibetan ceremony performed in Bodha Gaya, India.
Watch as Tibetan activists rappel off Arlington Bridge in Washington, DC, to hang a banner proclaiming, "Tibet Will Be Free" in February, 2012.
