(Leah and I recently returned from a three week trip to India and Nepal. This is the fifth of about 10 daily posts I will do, sharing photos and journal notes I made as we traveled.)
For the thirty years I worked as a newspaper photojournalist, it was kind of part of my skill set to photograph huge gatherings of humanity -- thousands and thousands of people at big-time sporting events, or political rallies, or whatever -- but not get too overwhelmed by the experience. A certain level of almost Zen-like detachment was necessary when I covered high-energy events involving huge throngs of people.
To do my job as a journalist, I had to be an observer and a documentarian, but not a participant.
After all the years I spent in and around crowds, it takes a lot to blow me away, to make me take the camera away from my eye, to look around and take in a scene, and say to myself: “Wow!... this is freaking amazing!”
Kalachakra wowed me today.
There are supposedly 150,000 people here, mostly Tibetans I’d guess, and yet, even though they are a part of a huge mass of people, individually they have been warm and friendly. I came here guessing that the Dalai Lama’s Kalachakra teaching was going to be An Experience To Remember, and yes, yes, yes, An Experience is what we’re having.
When the Dalai Lama, the spiritual teacher of Tibet, took the stage, whatever “detachment” I thought I had mastered, quickly vanished. I’ve read some of the Dalai Lama’s writings and listened to many of his podcasts. He often summarizes Tibetan Buddhism by saying, “My religion is kindness,” and I could see and feel that kindness and compassion, personified, as I photographed him.
Being here in this high desert environment and in this crowd is intense and draining, but I feel very fortunate to be part of this.
