Full Circle Vol. 1-A Long Forgotten Path Remembered

By Lance Collins

A memoir—I have felt my life is a series of scenes in a 1930s black-and-white silent film. Where the guy is not paying attention and walks off the top of the building, only to step onto a girder being carried by a crane. When I was young, I thought it was blind luck. When I did start paying attention to the details I discovered that the seemingly coincidental events were signposts along the path; taking me where I needed to be, not where I thought I should be. Just as how the most stupid thing I ever did—mounting a horse with an attitude problem one morning in Mexico, and then getting thrown from said horse—ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me.
But it took twenty years of debilitating pain for me to find that nugget of truth.
I chased the moments in between the signposts. The instances where I knew, I was in exactly the right place at the right time. They felt almost magical—perfect moments. They were fun and made me feel alive. You know, those crystal-clear instances when time downshifts into slow motion, and all of your senses become hyper-acute. When thinking comes to a standstill and colors become more vibrant. Sounds fine-tune to a pin drop, leaving me feeling comfortable inside my skin and one with life.
These happen in those few seconds when conscious awareness aligns with the moment, in the tiny spaces between thoughts when words just don't work. We all experience such moments, even if we don’t notice, some while scaling a mountain or making music, others, watching the sunset or a child’s face grinning with delight. They are as diverse as we are, revealing themselves uniquely to each of us. They leave us wondering: What just happened? What exactly was that?
My perfect moments happened consistently while skiing, surfing and being in nature. I followed the signposts, sometimes knowingly and occasionally without a clue, from the beaches of Southern California to the jungles of Venezuela and the back country of India and Thailand before ending up in the Himalayas. It was there that the how and why of those perfect moments became self-evident.
When I stepped into the Buddhist Kingdom of Ladakh, in the Himalayas of India, it marked the beginning of the end of a far longer journey along the path, one whose origin was not months, but eons and countless lifetimes back. It became apparent to me that to live and feel life in its entirety I must first be willing to feel it fully in the present moment. To do that, I had to heal myself of emotional hurts suffered not only in this lifetime but from other lifetimes as well. The burden was on me to clean up my past and be accountable for my actions. In this lifetime, as well as others, lost loves called for reuniting, shattered relationships needed mending, wounds wanting to heal, and broken promises demanded honoring. Simply put, I had unfinished business to tend to.
While what you read may seem like fiction, it’s a genuine tale. It’s my story, but it's not about me. It’s about universal and timeless lessons, learned through experience, our greatest teacher. By living through them, we uncover the gems of wisdom scattered like diamonds along the path—the insights that transform our lives. It’s about remembering who we are through our humanity and learning that things may appear one way on the surface, but be different underneath. It’s about things that were never part of the American Dream of the 1960s when grew up.
When the signposts led me back to sea level on the island of Bali, I secretly hoped the experiences initiated during those cracks in my perceptions would end, so that I could blame this whole series of thoughts and feelings on the altitude.
They didn't and I couldn't, and I realized the story had to be told.
It is my hope that when you read my tale, it will help you remember some forgotten feelings concerning your true nature, and perhaps inspire a long overdue revisit. So, I invite you to come along and enjoy my jour

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lance Collins
• Release date: Apr 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9786164063792

Lance Collins

For Lance Collins, life was simple and idyllic growing up in the suburbs of Southern California in the 1960s. His family moved to Venezuela In 1972, where he ended up living the better part of the next seven years experiencing a much larger world of possibilities. He guided tours to Angel Falls in the jungle of Venezuela, rubbed elbows with the financial elite of Caracas in public relations, and assisted the US embassy mission. At the age of 24, a horseback riding accident in Mexico catapulted Lance into his career as a holistic health practitioner. Decades of debilitating back pain taught him much about the mind/body connection, not widely considered in the practice of modern medicine. Scouring the United States looking for someone to help him out of pain, he found healers that became mentors. They taught him that miracles are not miracles, but are often a higher form of understanding and knowledge, prompting him to become a certified holistic health practitioner from the San Diego School of Healing Arts in 1995. Over the next ten years, Lance developed a successful practice in San Diego, California. His long list of clients included horses and Thai forest monks. The surf-turned-healer realized that there was still more to learn about the human condition and the connection between emotions, thoughts, and physical discomfort; a subject that Buddha discussed in detail 2500 years ago. In his quest to delve deeper into experiencing that understanding, Lance moved to Thailand in 2007. He discovered he was on the right continent, but in the wrong country. His intuition led him to the Himalayas of India, and Nepal, where his perception of what is possible expanded beyond anything he had previously imaged, including writing books. For the last nine years, Lance has been living in Southeast Asia continuing his bodywork practice, writing, and taking month long treks to remote areas.

Book preview

Ladakh, Northern India

Map No. 1

Nepal

Map No. 2

Prologue

I have often felt my life is a series of scenes in a 1930s black-and-white silent film. Where the guy is not paying attention and walks off the top of the building, only to step onto a girder being carried by a crane. His next nonchalant step is off the girder onto another building, but he never notices all the support he received to keep him from crashing to the ground. The audience laughs—they know that sometimes it is better not to know just how close you came to plunging off the edge. Life has worked that way for me, at least most of the time.

I’ve watched that scenario played out over and over. When I was a lot younger, I thought it was pure blind luck. I really didn’t care about what was going on behind the scenes. When I did start paying attention to the details I discovered that the seemingly coincidental events were signposts along the path; signposts taking me where I needed to be, not where I thought I should be. Just as how the most stupid thing I ever did—mounting a horse with a serious attitude problem one morning in Mexico, and then getting thrown from said horse—ended up being the best thing that ever happened to me.

But it took twenty years of debilitating pain for me to find that nugget of truth.

The signposts weren’t the only inexplicable happenings in my life. For years, I chased the moments in between the signposts, the instances where I knew I was in exactly the right place at the right time. When I was younger, they felt almost magical—perfect moments. They were fun and made me feel alive. You know, those crystal-clear instances when time downshifts into slow motion, and all of your senses become hyper-acute. When thinking comes to a standstill and colors become more vibrant. Sounds fine-tune to a pin drop, leaving me feeling comfortable inside my own skin and one with life.

These happen in those few seconds when conscious awareness aligns with the moment, in the tiny spaces between thoughts when words just don’t work. We all experience such moments, even if we don’t notice, some while scaling a mountain or making music, others, watching the sunset or a child’s face grinning with delight. They are as diverse as we are, revealing themselves uniquely to each of us. They leave us wondering: What just happened? What exactly was that?

My perfect moments happened consistently while skiing, surfing and being in nature. And so I followed the signposts, sometimes knowingly and at other times without a clue, from the beaches of Southern California to the jungles of Venezuela and the back country of India and Thailand before ending up in the Himalayas. It was there that the how and why of those perfect moments became self-evident; where I learned that experiencing them is not the ending but, in reality, a beginning.

I found that by accepting those flashes of perfection and the deeper meanings underlying them, I was able to experience my truest nature. And, perhaps we can all take those perfect moments and make them a way of being by letting go of the illusion that we control our lives…and trust life itself.

When I stepped into the Buddhist Kingdom of Ladakh, in the Himalayas of India, it marked the beginning of the end of a far longer journey along the path, one whose origin was not months, but eons and countless lifetimes back. It became clear to me that to truly live and feel life in its entirety I must first be willing to feel it fully in the present moment. To do that, I had to heal myself of emotional hurts suffered not only in this lifetime but from other lifetimes as well. The burden was on me to clean up my past and be accountable for my actions. In this lifetime, as well as others, lost loves called for reuniting, shattered relationships needed mending, wounds wanting to heal, and broken promises demanded honoring. Simply put, I had unfinished business to tend to.

While what you read may seem like fiction, it’s a true tale. It’s my story, but it’s not about me. It’s about universal and timeless lessons, learned through experience, our greatest teacher. By living through them, we uncover the gems of wisdom scattered like diamonds along the path—the insights that transform our lives. It’s about remembering who we really are through our humanity and learning that things may appear one way on the surface, but be different underneath. The account conveys that there is much more to love than we have been led to believe. It’s definitely about the things that were never part of the American Dream of the 1960s when I was growing up.

I am, however, a reluctant writer. If someone had told me ten years ago I would be writing a book; I would have laughed, thinking, Ya, right buddy. What planet are you on? And on top of having to learn how to write, I would have to sacrifice the illusion of personal privacy. But sometimes, something happens, or a string of somethings, which have such an impact that it leaves you in a different place from where you started. When the signposts led me back to sea level on the island of Bali, I secretly hoped the experiences initiated during those cracks in my perceptions would end, so that I could blame this whole series of thoughts and feelings on the altitude.

They didn’t and I couldn’t. From somewhere deep down inside came an undeniable knowing that the story needed to be told and I couldn’t escape it. No matter how hard I tried.

It is my hope that when you read my tale, it will help you remember some forgotten feelings concerning your true nature, and perhaps inspire a long overdue revisit. So, I invite you to come along and enjoy my journey—a story about what’s possible.

Lance Collins

Chiang Rai

Thailand

February 2016

"Three things cannot be long hidden:

the sun, the moon, and the truth."

—Buddha

Chapter 1

The journey begins

When I climbed into the beat-up bus that ferried my travel buddy and me between the New Delhi airport terminal, and the plane waiting to take us to Leh, the capital of Ladakh, I had no idea it would end up with me stumbling haphazardly into a deeper understanding of why we are here…yeah, you read it right, the meaning of life. Believe me, this is not what I was expecting.

This was the first journey for both Master Lim and me to the Himalayas. I thought we were going for a couple of months of trekking, but that turned out to be a naïve assumption. It was late April in 2008. Most mountain passes on the road to Ladakh were still closed from the winter snows, and the lower valleys were beginning to thaw.

Ladakh lies in a neighborhood where folks seem to bicker a lot, usually with guns. Its location, just east of Kashmir bordering both Pakistan and China, makes it a military hotspot for India. It had been closed to foreigners altogether until the late 1970s when the travel ban was lifted, and the first tourists arrived in Leh.

Those tourists found a self-sufficient people, mostly Buddhist but with a small Muslim population, living together in agricultural villages tending their goats, sheep, yaks and horses. The farmers were experts at diverting water from melting glaciers into stone-edged terraced fields to grow barley, wheat, and vegetables interspersed with groves of poplar trees. Gradually, guesthouses opened, up and a few tour companies started to operate. It remained an exotic and off-the-beaten-trail destination—a land of extremes, where summer days are intensely hot, and nights are freezing almost year-round. A land of high mountain passes, closed by the snow pack during the long winters, leaving Ladakh accessible only by air half of the year.

I’d been planning this trip for six months and was chomping at the bit to get on the plane, but the beefed up security measures meant that before any passengers were allowed to board, we had to re-identify our luggage, conveniently spread across the tarmac. Meanwhile, humorless military officers brandishing AK-47s, Enfields, and WWII era British Sten guns tried to reassure themselves we weren’t terrorists by grimly eyeing us from top to bottom.

My pal and I got stares, not only from the soldiers but also from the other passengers. We were odd traveling companions: my fifty-something-year-old, blue-eyed, six-foot American frame in camouflage pants and a surfer shirt; Master Lim, my ageless, considerably shorter, Thai companion of ten years, in bark-colored Thai forest monk’s robes. We were both bald, so we had that in common. And deep down, we were more alike than I cared to admit back then.

Meeting a remarkable man

As Master Lim searched for his bags in the pre-dawn twilight, I noticed a Buddhist monk in deep red robes, standing fifteen feet away. He had his back to me, but I had an overwhelming urge to meet this guy. It was weird, the nanosecond I felt this urge, the monk turned around, looked me squarely in the eye and smiled. I sensed he was looking deeply into me, and, as I was immediately flooded with a feeling of warm familiarity, I guess he liked what he saw.

These physical sensations—a sort of emotional welling up—were not entirely new. I’d been hanging around Thai Buddhist monks for a decade; they operate on a different frequency. If you want to meet a group of human beings who know how to live and converse in ways that I could not have even imagined, these are the guys. It’s a way of being and interacting that goes beyond words. Much is done through feeling.

At first, that wave of feeling left me wondering what in the heck just happened. Emotions weren’t a big part of my operating system before I started hanging around with Thai monks. Okay, there was pissed off, frustrated…and maybe more than a bit of belligerent. But after falling off that damn horse and into my career as a holistic health practitioner, I’d been forced to deal with my feelings and even learned to be a little more…sensitive.

The only way out is through

The horseback riding accident messed me up. For years, all I wanted was to get out of the searing pain that cut to the core of my soul. But to truly get out of pain, I discovered you have to go into it. When you go into it, that’s where you begin to get answers. Then more questions arise, demanding more answers. Sometimes, it can drive you nuts. But if you can hang in there and stay the course, this leads not only to getting out of physical pain but to a freedom of body, heart and soul that defies description. That, my friends, is exactly how it works. And unfortunately, I learned it the hard way.

I also learned to pay attention to the odd sensations that didn’t seem to come from me, like the vibe I was getting from this monk at the airport. As I walked up the stairs to the red and white Kingfisher Airbus, time slowed down and then stopped. I paused before entering the cabin, soaking in that freeze-frame moment. New Delhi was already a sweltering sauna when the sun crept over the horizon. The tarmac dissolved into a shimmer, and the airport buildings moved from gray tones to full color in the dawn light. It was a perfect moment suspended in my mind. This is exactly where I need to be.

I’d noticed the monk from the tarmac sitting in the front of the plane. When we reached cruising altitude and the seatbelt sign was turned off, I pestered Master Lim.

I have a strong feeling you need to go up and say hello.

I knew full well I was asking a lot of my buddy. Thai monks are sensitive, not wanting to impose their will on others. Bad form, to say the least.

I nudged him gently: Come on, it’s okay. He won’t mind.

Are you sure?

No man, you’re a monk. He’ll go for it!

While Master Lim made a social call, I replayed the seemingly random incidents that led up to this flight to a place I’d never even heard of six months earlier when I moved to Thailand.

Synchronicity strikes

Within a 24-hour period during the first week of my arrival to the land once known as Siam, a series of synchronistic events occurred, too blatant to be ignored. A book about Ladakh was given to me by a monk friend, I’d been told by a total stranger that he’d had a vision of me in Ladakh and then, when I saw pictures of this ancient land on the Internet, I realized it was the right thing, the only thing to do. I had to go there. A couple of months later when I told Master Lim of my plans, he eagerly asked if he could join me. That sealed the deal.

Image No. 3

Half an hour later, a grinning Master Lim came bouncing down the aisle, glowing like a firefly. His name is Professor Norbu. He has just finished his PhD in Buddhist studies in Varanasi, and he wants to host us for tea at his institute after we get settled in Leh.

We haven’t even landed and we’re already connected to the monk world of Ladakh. Cool. A chance meeting?

I gazed out the plane’s window, taking in the Himalayan sunrise. All I could do was shake my head and laugh. The Airbus banked sharply as it approached the military airstrip on the edge of the Indus River, near Leh. When I stepped through the cabin door, my lungs filled with thin, way-below-freezing mountain air. My first glimpse of Ladakh was of jagged snowcapped peaks surrounding me as far as I could see. On this bright sunny spring day at almost 12,000 feet, I felt, strangely, home.

Image No. 4

Chapter 2

An eery homecoming

The military presence at Leh airport was even more intense than in New Delhi. Driving through the parking lot in our SUV taxi felt like a tour of inspection with armored personnel carriers, army lorries and security checkpoints everywhere. But just beyond was a panorama of desolate beauty, reminiscent of Southern California. The subtle earth tones of the mountains in Ladakh were strikingly similar to the Anza Borrego Desert, although the thin air reminded me that we were at an elevation a whole lot higher.

I’d spent years in the backcountry of the American Southwest. Exploring Anasazi ruins and in my visits to both the Hopi and Pueblo nations, I’d marveled at how well their dwellings blended in with the environment. By the look of many of the earthen brick buildings in Leh, the locals in Ladakh had a similar sense of their surroundings.

Within fifteen minutes, Master Lim and I were at Sia-La Guesthouse, off the main road in one of the quieter neighborhoods of Leh. We were greeted by a handsome, smiling couple: Zarina and Nabi, the owners of the guesthouse. The four of us were soon sitting on cushions on the kitchen floor, chatting and drinking tea.

Image No. 5

Our hosts, in their early forties with a son and daughter in their late teens, were part of the small but long-standing Ladakhi Muslim community. Nabi was a finance officer for an NGO in Leh while Zarina ran the six-room guesthouse, cooking most of the meals herself.

The guesthouse was cozy and solidly built, with tree-trunk beams in some of the rooms, thick walls to keep out the cold, and red-framed windows to let in the light. It dawned on me that before it became a guesthouse, it had been their home—the tidy stacks of pots and pans in the kitchen had been cooking family meals for a long time. The living/dining area next door had low-lying cushions, couches, and ornate tables. Everything had its place and there was a place for everything.

Master Lim and I were the only guests, well ahead of the tourist season. Many businesses in town were still closed, waiting for the winter thaw. Though our conversation was mostly small talk, there was an underlying connection and feeling of sincerity. None of us wanted the gathering to end; it was to be the first of many enjoyable conversations on their kitchen floor as the Sia-La would be our home away from home whenever we came back to Leh over the next six months.

As we sat, Master Lim looked pale and sounded short of breath.

Master Lim, are you okay? I asked.

Never mind. Never mind. Just a little tired.

Zarina didn’t think twice. Master Lim. This is quite normal, she said in her songbird Ladakhi accent. It is because of high altitude. After rest, people feel much better. In her gracious way, she was giving him permission to admit to his true condition.

Perhaps bed rest would be good for me, he relented.

Before he’d even finished the sentence, Nabi was off the floor and getting the key to the room.

I’d been taking a homeopathic altitude sickness remedy for several days and was feeling great. While Master Lim went upstairs to rest, I headed out to explore Leh.

The ‘land of high passes’ beckons

As I put on my boots, my mind went back several weeks earlier to San Diego. I’d been on the Internet looking for guesthouses in Leh when I happened on the website for Sia-La. A stirring inside prompted me to ask for a reservation. Even before reading the reply, a warm wave of kindness flooded through me. My intuition had been saying, Yes. Sia-La was the right place for us to stay.

Outside, the spring thaw was still weeks away. The small creeks that wound their way through the town were frozen solid. The gentle quiet of the streets was deepened by the thick snow line a few hundred yards from town.

Image No. 6

Walking alone through intermittent snow flurries in the early-morning stillness, I passed two-storied, whitewashed homes with black trim and brick-red painted windows. The roofs were a thatch of some kind, well suited for protection from the cold. Yaks, goats, and a few small horses grazed in the pastures surrounding each home. This semi-rural part of Leh was minutes away from downtown.

I felt small and insignificant as I moved further out into the vast emptiness of the land. Gazing over the valley and the Indus River below, I had an undeniable feeling of familiarity with what stretched before me, a persistent déjà vu of coming home.

Razor-sharp peaks cut into a brilliant blue sky, the color enhanced by the thinness of the air. Tiny villages nestled along the river valleys. Threads of vibrant green fields intertwined with the earth tones of rocky outcroppings and barren ravines. Clearly the Ladakhis felt a symbiotic relationship with their environment. I had a sense that the signposts pointing to Ladakh were pointing as much to the people as the place.

If you want to see pre-Chinese Tibetan culture, I’d heard, you had to go to Ladakh, where the architecture, food, language and social structure are similar. So it wasn’t a complete surprise to see Leh’s ancient palace modeled after Lhasa’s Potala Palace. Like much of Leh, the palace was built from mud bricks and mortar with poplar wood rafters. Above the palace stood an ancient fort and gompa, or monastery, with hundreds of tattered prayer flags beckoning to me like old friends. I knew that I’d be spending time with them soon.

I barely slept that night, eager to explore the countryside but the altitude change hit Master Lim harder than expected. The next morning he still looked pretty frazzled. I was concerned about his health. Zarina explained it was a common response to altitude sickness. Master Lim had always been a spiritual ace in my eyes, but physical strength was not his strong suit.

***

We’d first met ten years before at Wat Sunnataram, a Thai Buddhist monastery just outside San Diego. Master Lim had lived there since his arrival from Thailand several years earlier. He was sitting at the kitchen table, and I was drawn to sit next to him. It was his gentleness that struck me the most. I don’t remember the topic of conversation, only that I had a strong feeling I needed to get to know him. He would become an important person in my life.

Master Lim often singled me out when I went to visit the monastery. I could drop the one of the guys persona and be myself. We’d sit and chat, sometimes of the dharma, the sacred teachings of Buddha. Sometimes he’d show me a meditation technique, or teach me a new mudra—a hand position for meditation. We could often be found late at night in the chanting hall, an extremely patient Master Lim teaching me. Place this finger here and your thumb there, now rest your hand on your knee. The motions were simple, but it took time to master them.

At other times, there was simple small talk. We were both healers, but he’d been doing it much longer than I. He showed me ways to move energy and use it in my healing practice, making some of the techniques I’d learned through years of training obsolete.

We began to work together healing people in the main chanting hall. I did my therapeutic thing. He did his energetic thing, and we got good results. All it took was a look from him and I’d get a sense of what to do next as if he were prompting me with his mind. It happened naturally, without any effort on my part. I expect it was the trust I had in him, from the moment I met him.

Because of his gentleness, soft-spoken manner, and sincerity, he was a favorite among the Thai women for all kinds of advice. As he scanned each of his devotees, sensing their concerns, his presence became sharply focused. When Master Lim listened, he heard with his heart. It was his nature, cultivated by his devotion to the dharma, the teachings of Buddha.

We quickly became close, passing through the barriers between monk and layperson, turning into friends who enjoyed each other’s company. Being around him was good for me. I had never met anyone quite like him. I had more than a few rough edges and his gentleness was contagious; it had a quieting effect on me. I had no idea then that he would be my travel buddy in the Himalayas ten years later.

***

A few days after our arrival in Leh, Master Lim bounced back and was ready to travel. For our first foray, we hired a jeep and driver and headed to Hemis and Tak Tok Gompa, an hour out of Leh. Over the course of visiting hundreds of monasteries with my Thai monks, I began to sense the ‘energetic pulse’ of the monastery which I sensed was a reflection of the devotion of the monks, the depth of their dharma practice. A spiritually active monastery with a dialed in abbot leading the way, has a clarity to it, an uplifting zing that resonates through my entire body, kind of a low-voltage buzz.

My first encounter with Ladakhi Buddhism was disappointing. The energetic pulse at Hemis Gompa was weak. It felt almost hollow and empty. I later learned that Hemis Gompa was one of the largest landowners in Ladakh, a success story on the material plane, but from my perspective, lacking something on the spiritual.

A shift in energy

As we drove through the Sakti Valley to Tak Tok Gompa, we both felt a shift in the energy of the surrounding area. We parked at what seemed to be an abandoned monastery but found a monk with a set of keys. We climbed several flights of steps, passed through a courtyard, then more steps. We came to the locked door to the cave around which the monastery had been built. The monk unlocked the door, and Master Lim’s face lit up with excitement. With child-like enthusiasm, he blurted, This is the right place for us.

I agree. This place feels…pristine. Do you remember when I used the word pristine a couple of years ago? It was hard for me to find a way to describe the feelings that I meant by the word?

Image No. 7

Master Lim nodded.

This is what I meant, the feeling of this cave.

My monk friend knew there was something very cool going on here. I knew the abbot was someone I wanted to meet.

The cave wasn’t deep, perhaps forty feet, and just as wide. It was brimming with Buddhist paraphernalia. Khata, white silk prayer scarves, now covered with dust and soot from oil-burning candles, were hanging everywhere. The roof was jet black from soot. Photographs, trinkets, amulets, and small statues of who-knows-which deities were displayed in glass cases along the back of the cave. One female statue had hundreds of arms protruding like a fan. Another, a monk with a no-nonsense look on his face, drew my attention. He felt familiar.

Before coming to Ladakh, I’d made a conscious decision not to read anything regarding the teachings or iconography of Mahayana Buddhism. I didn’t want to be stuck in intellectual stuff—preconceived ideas might have gotten in the way of feeling and sensing. I did find out that a Buddhist monk from India had discovered the cave over a thousand years ago. He meditated there and declared it a sacred place.

As we were leaving, a figure emerged from one of the cottages on the grounds of the gompa. He headed toward us waving and calling. Somehow, it was no surprise to see Professor Norbu from the Kingfisher flight.

Hallo. Hallo. Good you come. My monastery. I am abbot. Please have tea and biscuit with me. Please, please, please.

He wasn’t going to take no for an answer, and we had no intention of disappointing him.

One moment, he said, holding his finger up for us to wait.

He returned a few minutes later with a blanket, cups, biscuits, and a thermos. He laid the blanket on the grass beneath a tree, gestured for us to sit down, and proceeded to serve tea. He pointed to a house, half-mile away across the fields.

My home. My father home. His father. Hundred years. Maybe thousand. This my valley. These my people. I monk all my life.

Master Lim leaned in closer, totally taken with Professor Norbu’s story.

Tak Tok Gompa here long time. Gompa of Sakti Valley people.

The professor expressed his joy of living in every action, from serving tea, to running for more biscuits or telling tales of his life. And Master Lim commanded his full attention. His eyes shone with excitement as a new question concerning Thai Buddhism formed in his mind. I backed out and watched the two of them as they chatted away like old friends who had recently been reacquainted. As we lingered over tea, the sun passed over the mountains, casting shadows that crept across the horses, yaks, and fields of Sakti Valley, and I found myself remembering.

***

I’d spent hours as a youngster engrossed in books on war: battle strategy; details of uniforms and especially weapons: catapults, crossbows, mace and chain, guns and swords. When I poured over a picture of a chain mail tunic from medieval Europe, I yearned to feel the metal. I felt and sensed things from long gone empires and the battles to defend them. I knew the compelling sensations that surfaced when I looked at books and paintings of ancient times were real. There was a connection between those long ago conflicts and me.

When I was twelve I read a book on reincarnation, and something opened up inside of me. I felt a physical shift in my head and with it a massive change in my thinking. As the pieces began to fall into place in my mind; I understood that I remembered past lives through the history books. The possibility of reincarnation was totally outside of my Episcopalian upbringing.

The book confirmed my feelings that all the pat explanations handed to me about death were off the mark. By the time I was seven or eight, I realized that most people were afraid of dying. Grown-ups didn’t want to talk, but I knew there was more to living than being a mere blip that drops off the radar screen of life when we die. To me, death was like the ending of a book, but there would be sequels, many of them. When I ran to tell my parents of