Pilgrimage To The Land Of Snows

I'm just back from Tibet.
I came back late last night and the rich mix of experiences, impressions, thoughts, feelings boil in me...It's quite strange to find myself in my old room that I have lived in for 7 years, back to the city that I have considered "home" for 8 years...
It's quite a big difference. Not a difference that can be measured in the cities difference in development. It's a difference of soul.
For me Beijing has no soul. Tibet has.

I don't know quite how to "adapt" to my old self, and I'm really not sure if I wish to...
For at least couple of weeks I have almost completely forgotten about my long-time sorrow and sadness, my loss of motivation and purpose...
I'm not quite uncertain how to express most of my thoughts and observations which are many and put some of them into words.

No doubt. It was a trip which in my current confused emotional state I needed badly. A new experience to hopefully stir change. I haven't traveled for very long.
At this time that I find myself at my life's crossroads, with big changes awaiting, a trip like this came as a gift...
Perhaps deeply inside I was asking for some turn for the better in the way things are...
So it was more of a pilgrimage than any trip I have taken.
Visiting temples and "power places" in the land where native people still believe mountains and lakes to posses unimaginable great powers over humans...A land where there are god-like spirits to be made tame by offerings made by the pilgrims...Having seen the vast expanses of the majestic land is Tibet I can't help seeing the "logic" in this expressed reverence for Nature...One is simply dwarfed among the vast expance of endless land, high mountains and mountains...
At least before the Han Chinese came with tanks, buldozers and railways to "tame" the land...

Hm, I actually don't even know from where to start relating my trip's experiences and observations...A couple of recent comments encouraged me to try to share some of it here. I will try to do my best and somehow organize things in my head and heart and make it somehow post-able.
There are too many things that have stirred my deep thoughts and deeply impressed me. Personal, spiritual, political, ethnical, social...
I took many pictures, but only very few are digital since I'm very 'oldfashioned' and use still obstinately film and a completely manualy operated camera...
I have a feeling for some very good shots, but that remains to be seen when I manage to develop them...For now, I have 25 films in my fridge...

Apart from taking many pictures and enjoying nature, undoubdedly I saw many things that stirred my deep reflexion on many issues...
The intimidating military armed patrols all over Lhasa and Tibet, the control, the obvious colonization process that is underway, the extreme poverty, the problems of modernization, the destruction and rebuilding, the overwhelming landscape that has moulded this land's people culture...This trip gave raise to many questions and many musings...
I will try my best to put at least some of them in some kind of order and share them here as a series of posts...

It was a good trip. Very rich in experiences and observations. As nearer to a "spiritual trip" as I have been.
I'm asking myself - in what capacity was I - a traveler, a researcher, a photographer, a pilgrim, or merely just a tourist?!
Perhaps a bit of all.

Somehow on some level deeply I probably hope to have "gained" enough merit with all the homage that I paid to Buddha images and altars, the offered kataks (katak, or "hada" in Chinese pronuncion,is a white Tibetan silken/flaxen scarves used as offering objects at temples, etc.), with all the khorras (khorra is circumambulation, or walking around an object of reverence)around statues and temples...enough to turn the wheel of my life in a new positive direction and stop the sorrow of loss and the feeling of lack of motivation...
I don't know if this very close to religious experience will have this result. But if nothing else I got a new name. A Tibetan name. For more than 8 years I had a Chinese name and many people that I have met for the last years knew me as my Chinese self.
I got asked a few times if I'm a Buddhist. I answered affirmatively. I'm not religious, but yes, my worldview is undoubtedly Buddhist. I see no contradiction. In many ways I'm a practicing Buddhist, without being a religious follower, without believing in prayers and rituals, without feeling affiliation to a community of others, there are many things in my way of life, in my understanding and ideas that make me such. So if I have to label myself I would not mind terribly labelling myself as a Buddhist.
It's not a matter of religious faith, it's a matter of accepting as true some (or most) of the explanations of human existence that Buddhist idea offers.
At the same time although I feel very remote from the Tibetan Buddhism, and hardly know anything deeply about it, each time during my travels the experiences in Tibetan Buddhist temples have brought me the closest to a religious experience...

During this trip I got a new name. I see this now as standing out with a special significance.
My new name is Chödröl, which translated means Dharma Tara, Tara of the Teaching. Tara (or especially as i am told the White Tara which my new name implies, is a female Buddha painted in white, a peaceful image in many Tibetan murals and statues)...I was given this name by the nuns in the Sakya nunnery in Southern Tibet. They were very kind and hospitable and I feel very honored to be given this name by them...

So with a new name I hope I can have a chance for a new, fresh start.
I wish I had enough wisdom to see trough all the sorrow and the things that make me sad even now...Just enough to be able to take a breath and look around myself clearly with hope...
Having experienced the physical shortness of air and oxygen in the high altitudes of Tibet I realize that I have almost stopped 'breathing' during the past couple of years...
I need to start anew somehow.
With a new name, a name full of positive power, I hope I will somehow manage to turn the Wheel...