The Heart of the World

by Ian Baker

  PART FOUR: THE WATERFALL

  1 William Archer’s critically acclaimed play, The Green Goddess, was first performed in January 1921. It dramatizes the story of two Englishmen and an Englishwoman who crash-land in a fictional Himalayan kingdom lorded over by a highly cultivated, if barbarous, rajah who keeps them as virtual prisoners while lavishing them with every possible comfort. The play dramatizes the imperialist prejudices of the English in India during the height of the British Raj. The play was made into a silent film in 1923 and an early talkie in 1930.

  2 Twelve hundred years ago, Padmasambhava came to Terdom with his consort, Yeshe Tsogyal, to escape from Tibet’s scheming ministers. They sought refuge in a cave perched more than 17,000 feet above sea level on one of Terdrom’s towering limestone escarpments. Yeshe Tsogyal allegedly reached enlightenment there and the cave and the hot springs became focal points for a thriving retreat center for female Tibetan adepts. Several of them, such as Ani Rigsang, spent years in solitary meditation and were widely believed to have attained high levels of realization.

  3 . See Michael J. Harner, “The Sound of Rushing Water,” in Michael J. Harner, ed., Hallucinogens and Shamanism (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), and Michael J. Harner, The Jívaro: People of the Sacred Waterfalls (New York: Doubleday/Natural History Press 1972).

  4 Wade Davis, Light at the Edge of the World: A Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic), p. 86.

  5 Michael Tobias, Environmental Meditation (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1993), p. 188, and Melvin Konner, The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints in the Human Spirit (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1982).

  6 The prospectus for Walker’s “Riddle of the Tsangpo Gorges Expedition” began as follows: In 1924, Captain F. Kingdon Ward trekked through most of the 200-mile Tsangpo Gorge, accompanied by The Earl Cawdor, eight female Tibetan porters, and a guru named Walrus. His description of the part he could not reach, between the 24,000 foot peaks of Gyala Pelri and Namcha Barwa, reads in part: “There is a legend current amongst the Tibetans, and said to be recorded in certain sacred books kept in the monastery at Pemakochung, that between the Rainbow Fall and the confluence, there are no less than seventy-five of these falls, each presided over by a spirit—whether benevolent or malicious is not stated. Supposing that to be more or less true, and supposing each fall or rapid to be only twenty-feet high, the difference of height is easily accounted for.”

  This account lays to rest the rumor of a huge waterfall deep within the mountains, and only about five miles of the river’s route remain un-traveled . . . A small highly skilled and highly mobile team of white-water kayakers and canoeists propose to complete Captain Ward’s interrupted traverse.

  7 In China, the Taoist master Li Bai (701-61), active during China’s golden age of poetry in the Tang Dynasty, produced two highly influential poems about waterfalls. The poems describe standing beneath the waterfalls on Mount Lu and listening to their sounds and observing their textures. These two poems became icons for waterfalls throughout east Asia, influencing art and poetry in Korea and Japan and signifying places of mental and spiritual escape where one could go, at least temporarily, before reentering civic life. In Japan, poetry and literature invoked indigenous scenic and religious sites as in the twelfth-century novel Tale of Ise, which describes a journey to a series of waterfalls and established a pilgrimage ideal of going to sites previously visited by monks, hermits, poets, and artists in order to re-create their original experiences.

  8 In a treaty signed jointly by the United States and Canada in 1950, the two nations agreed to reserve sufficient amounts of water for flow over Niagara Falls to preserve their scenic value. The agreement provided for a minimum daytime flow during tourist season of 100,000 cubic feet per second and a minimum of 50,000 at all other times. All water in excess of these amounts, estimated to average about 13,000 cubic feet per second, was made available for diversion for power generation, to be divided equally between the United States and Canada.

  9 Riding on the back of a pregnant tigress representing the volatility and potential of every moment and wielding a vajra in one hand and a deadly scorpion in the other, Dorje Drolo is invoked in situations where reason and logic hold no sway over obstructive elements. Padmasambhava is said to have manifested in this radical form to tame the Tibetan borderlands and to transform religious practices based on fear and superstition into ones dedicated to cultivating wisdom and compassion.

  10 Women sometimes use bear skins for their traditional goshung; children typically wear ones fashioned from the skin of monkeys. Men usually wear ones made from the hides of the red goral, a small short-horned antelope.

  11 See also G.I. Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson (New York: Arkana, 1992) and David Hykes’s Harmonic Humi Masters.

  12 The earth’s oldest waterfalls originated far earlier, during the late Tertiary period (65,000,000 to 2,500,000 years ago), when episodes of uplift raised the great plateaus and escarpments of Africa and South America. Tisisat Falls at the headwaters of the Blue Nile on the Ethiopian Plateau and Angel Falls in Venezuela both formed as a result of this pre-Pleistocene upward movement of the earth’s crust.

  13 More than twice as wide and twice as deep as Niagara Falls, Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River on the Zambia-Zimbabwe border plunges over a sheer precipice to a maximum depth of 355 feet with a mean discharge of 38,000 cubic feet feet per second. A characteristic veil of mist overhangs the falls, for which local tribes named it Mosi-oa-Tunya, the Smoke that Thunders. The waters at its base churn and foam in a deep pool known as the Boiling Pot, 420 feet beneath the Falls Bridge that was constructed in 1905 as part of the projected Cape to Cairo Railway line that was intended to traverse the entirety of British-held territory on the African continent. At the time the British explorer David Livingstone became the first white man to see the falls on November 16, 1855, several river islands near the brink of the falls were being used by local chieftains to offer libations and other sacrifices to the gods below. Livingstone noted several additional sites at the falls where the Tonga people performed sacred rites. He himself likened the rising mists to a flight of angels. Livingstone named the falls after Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, and his discovery opened the area to European hunters, missionaries, and sportsmen. In 1900, with the signing of a treaty with the local chieftain by the British South Africa Company, European settlers began arriving from the south and a railway line was brought to the falls by 1904, the year of Younghusband’s mission to Lhasa. The Falls Bridge was completed in 1905 and a township established that was duly named Livingstone.

  14 In Henry Morshead’s Report on an Exploration on the North East Frontier 1913 (Dehra Dun: Office of the Trigonometrical Survey, 1914), he wrote that: “It is noteworthy that the falls of 30 feet on the Tsangpo at Pemakochung are higher than anything hitherto recorded on the big rivers of Tibet and the Himalaya; indeed the only other known instance on a large Himalayan river is the 20 feet fall on the Indus near Bunji.” After Kingdon Ward and Lord Cawdor’s journey in 1924, the highest documented drop on any major Himalayan river was the 30- to 40-foot falls at Neygyap, ten miles downriver from Rainbow Falls. For comparison it is worth noting that the Hidden Falls of Dorje Pagmo is roughly 50 feet lower than Niagara (162 feet), but neither are anywhere close to being the world’s highest. The highest is Angel Falls on the Rio Caroní in Venezuela which falls 3,212 feet. Second is Yosemite Falls in California, which drops 2,425 feet. Third highest is Marsdalsfossen in Eikesdal, Norway, with a 1,696-foot drop, 974 feet of it uninterrupted. Of all countries, Norway has the greatest number of high waterfalls, including Kile Foss at 1,841 feet and Vettis Foss in Mørkedola at 1,218 feet. The next highest European waterfall is Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, with a drop of 623 feet.

 
15 The text further states: “The mind’s innate indwelling luminosity is vividly clear without distinctions between nighttime and daytime. . . . The tigle, the luminous nuclei (residing in the body) manifest spontaneously without exertion. This is the measure indicating experiential mastery (of this practice).”

  16 His Holiness explained that practitioners of the Yoga of the Five Elements meditate successively on the natural sounds of water, earth, fire, wind, and space, allowing them to permeate their consciousness and guide them toward an experience of what he called the Subtle Mind of Clear Light. By cultivating subtler levels of sensory awareness, the practitioner recognizes in the flowing sounds of the elements the nature of mind itself—an unbroken flow of empty radiance. By contemplating Buddha Nature in the roar of falling water, His Holiness asserted, the mind no longer grasps at phenomena, but allows them to pass through consciousness without obstruction—like water flowing over the edge of a falls. Above the waterfall on the Lukhang mural, a yogi lies on his knees and places his head against the earth. His Holiness referred to a Tantra called The Illuminating Lamp that instructs the adept to crouch down above a turbulent waterfall and, with “the gaze of an elephant,” direct awareness into the heart of the water. “When you listen continuously to the sound of water,” the Tantra states, “the supreme unborn essence will fully emerge. . . . You will come to understand the flow of the mind in future, present and past.” Quoted in full in David Germano’s “The Elements, Insanity, and Lettered Subjectivity,” in Donald S. Lopez, Jr., ed., Religions of Tibet in Practice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 328-31.

  “These are not outdated practices,” His Holiness stated. “They can help the mind to disengage from obscuring emotions and cognitive processes and to develop an inner condition of joy and compassion. The destructive emotions of fear, anger, and greed and the subtle grasping that stems from not recognizing our true nature veils reality itself and leads to great problems throughout the world. These practices pictured on the Lukhang walls are just different methods that Dzogchen has developed to use the circumstances of one’s life to overcome disturbing mental tendencies and develop spiritually. It’s not that you have to go to a waterfall, but if you’re near one it can be very useful.”

  17 During an audience with the Dalai Lama I asked him why the mind fails to recognize this fundamental unity. “Disturbing emotions have always been part of the human condition,” His Holiness answered, “but it is not our essence. When the world is too preoccupied by the external, these impulses grow. They can poison the mind and lead to hatred and oppression. But that destructiveness is not beyond our control. If we reflect on the origin of these destructive feelings, we see that much of the sorrow and helpless anger in our lives is caused not by external events but by the arising of disturbing emotions. The best antidote is to develop mindfulness and awareness of how these impulses arise.” A search for an understanding of human existence beyond the parameters of science and reason had led me into the world of Tibetan Buddhism. But for the past fifteen years, the Dalai Lama had also found inspiration in the work of neuroscientists, cosmologists, and quantum physicists, who explore reality through experimentation, measurement, and logical deduction. These scientists, in turn, had often discovered new ways of approaching their own disciplines through Buddhism’s insights into cognition, consciousness, and intention. His Holiness steered our discourse toward what he had learned in this interface between Buddhism and Western science.

  “Buddhist teachings stress the importance of understanding reality; they are not based on inflexible beliefs. For 2,500 years Buddhists have investigated the workings of the mind and carried out what could be called ‘experiments’ to overcome our tendencies toward destructive emotions and to cultivate positive ones. The Buddhist practices for cultivating compassion, equanimity, and mindfulness have deepened our understanding of consciousness and emotions. Beyond any kind of religious faith, they can help one achieve greater peace and equanimity, the foundation for any deeper spiritual development.”

  His Holiness went on to describe how scientists he had met used imaging devices to show what actually takes place inside the brain. Neuroscientists had revealed that meditation strengthens the neurological circuits that calm the portion of the brain that triggers fear and aggression, His Holiness asserted. Other experiments had used electroencephalographs to measure the brain waves of meditating monks and shown that they had increased activity in those centers of the brain associated with positive emotions such as love and joy.

  “You don’t have to become a Buddhist or adopt any particular religious faith to develop these qualities,” His Holiness said. “Everybody has the potential to lead a peaceful, meaningful life. The key point is mindfulness, a state of alertness in which the mind does not get caught up in thoughts or sensations, but lets them come and go, like watching the flow of a river.

  “If we only search outwardly and materially for fulfillment,” his Holiness continued, “the world will be filled with frustration and discontent. If we look inside and outside simultaneously . . . without walls or divisions of any kind, our eyes may open to a world such as we have not yet imagined.”

  He pointed to another image from the Lukhang wall—a painting of one of Padmasambhava’s disciples from the eighth century who incarnated 1,000 years later as Dudrul Dorje, the great Pemako Terton. Kyuchung Lotsawa’s mastery of yogic powers had enabled him to speak the language of birds, His Holiness asserted. The image showed a beaming monk soaring through the sky, holding on to the tail feathers of two luminously painted birds.

  18 Similar apparitions occur regularly at other sacred sites such as Mount Ermei Shan in China’s Szechuan province, where devout pilgrims have actually thrown themselves from the summit in hopes of merging with the Buddha-essence. The same phenomena also occurs in the Alps, where the luminous spheres were previously associated with heavenly angels.

  19 As catalysts of illumination, dakinis penetrate reified parts of the psyche, areas that have remained dark and hidden, and offer new life in the full, unbounded flow of existence. When Lelung Shepe Dorje traveled through the Tsangpo gorges in 1729, he too experienced the dakinis’ nocturnal songs. He also wrote of hearing the spontaneous sounds of musical instruments and of a “sweet smelling fragrance that spreads all around.” He also described the “resplendent terror” brought about by Pemako’s hazardous terrain: a condition in which one is perfectly at ease amid perilous circumstances and in which “the experience of simultaneous bliss and emptiness ignites one’s stream of consciousness.” The Buddhist Tantras assert that dakinis dwell equally in the outer phenomenal world as well as in the subtle energy channels of the adept’s body. When duly acknowledged, they sever the cords of positivist thinking that constrain perception and open doors to realms of scintillating interdependence, beyond the boundaries of self-limiting desires. Milton had suggested as much at the end of Paradise Lost when he wrote of our mythic progenitors. Having lost their cherished dream of a confined garden, “the whole earth now lay before them.”

  The dream songs of the dakinis—half heard, half imagined, totally unverifiable—had opened us to the ungraspable mysteries of the gap, the innermost landscapes of the heart that open when we abandon efforts to edit experience and flow fearlessly into the mysterious heart of things. There are no doors because there is, in essence, no inside or outside, only what quantum physicists describes as an all-pervading wholeness in flowing movement.

  20 In the early nineteenth century, Keats had described something similar as the key to all achievement in art and life: “. . . when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”

  21 Fred Allan Wolf, quoted in Richard Leviton’s, “Through the Shaman’s Doorway” (Yoga Journal, July/August 1992).

  22 A month after our return from the falls the National Ge
ographic Society issued a press release that acknowledged that “for hundreds of years the Monpa hunters who inhabit the lower Tsangpo gorge have guarded the area [of the falls] from outsiders. For them it is both a place of pilgrimage and a sacred hunting ground. . . . Monpa hunters guided the team into the innermost gorge in pursuit of an answer to the century-old riddle of the falls’ existence.” Certainly, the Hidden Falls of Dorje Pagmo was not a true discovery in the outer sense. Just as Arab slave and ivory traders had reached the sources of the Nile long before Sir Richard Francis Burton, John Hanning Speke, or Samuel Baker, there was nothing new in our discovery except the waterfall’s height and its subsequent position in the annals of Western exploration.

  Controversies that emerged on our return revealed the darker currents of exploration: the ego-driven agendas, jealousies, and competition in the effort to put oneself—as opposed to new landscapes—on the map. (For more on this subject, see Michael McRae’s The Siege of Shangri-La: The Quest for Tibet’s Secret Hidden Paradise [New York: Broadway Books, 2002].) By appropriating remote geographies, explorers brought knowledge of distant lands to their own societies and paved the way for trade in goods and ideas. But even at its best, exploration has often been no more than a veiled attempt to conquer and control.

  The accounts of our expedition in the international press prompted a response in the China Daily on January 29, 2000. The headline chinese explorers get to the falls first brought attention to a previously unreported account of a Chinese military helicopter that had flown over the gorge in 1987 and photographed the area of the hidden falls. But the report acknowledged that no Chinese ever reached the “core section” of the gorge on foot until late 1998—after our expedition. As the China Daily article stated: Although Chinese scientists are surely not short of bravery, rigour and a desire for perfection, they sometimes may be slow to communicate their findings. . . . Although the report on the Society-funded expedition was certainly newsworthy, the area has been no mystery to Chinese explorers. “The four Americans might be the first group of Westerners to catch sight of the waterfall,”Yang Yichou, a geologist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and one of the four organizers of the expedition, told China Daily in an interview. “But we Chinese were the first to make the actual discovery of the waterfall,”