This post begins a many part series on The Evolution of Consciousness: Too Little Too Late. This is the first of three posts on Ladakh, a region in India just north of the Himalayan Mountains.
Ladakh
High on top of the Tibetan Plateau in the northern reaches of India lies a region called Ladakh, inhabited by a people who live as sustainably, cooperatively and happily as we could ever aspire, and who could indeed serve as an inspiration for the rest of the civilized world. They are the descendants of various nomadic groups who immigrated into this rocky, desert terrain over two thousand years ago and who have for centuries been culturally Mahayana Buddhists of the Tibetan traditions.[i] In 1994, my wife and I visited Ladakh during the month of June, when the snow lines were crawling up the Zanskar and Ladakh mountain ranges and their melt waters engorged the streams that fed the frothing headwaters of the Indus River. We had been inspired by tales told by travelers we had met during our year in Asia and by the stories of the linguist Helena Norberg-Hodge in her book Ancient Futures.
The town of Leh spreads out in the Moon Valley between the Zanskar and Ladadkh mountain ranges.
Norberg-Hodge wrote of the Ladahki society and its culture in a way that felt implausibly romantic. She wrote of a happy people living equitably and amply in a resource-scarce desert; of a kind people who sang to their work animals and shared the farm and village responsibilities with their neighbors in a kind of anarchistic communalism; whose ample three-story houses were simple, environmentally friendly, and comfortable; who incorporated into their everyday lives a respect for the Earth, for the individual, and for all life through an adherence to their religious and spiritual principles. Impossibly, here lived a civilized people who had formed a complex society that worked without degrading the environment or fomenting psychological anxiety and social tensions. Intrigued and somewhat skeptical, we felt that we must see this Shangri La for ourselves.
https://www.jimmynelson.com/people/ladakhi
We walked through the quiet streets of Leh, Ladakh’s one large town of ten thousand people, and we trekked through the mountain paths to remote villages not yet connected by the networks of road or wire or money. And in each village we entered, our guide would speak to the first person we met, who would greet us with a guileless smile and lead us to their home or that of their family’s. There we were given a room furnished only by a few thick wool Tibetan rugs upon which we slept.
A simple saw.
Because we didn’t speak their language, our impressions did suffer that important limitation. We did, however, speak with travelers along the way and with numerous Ladakhis, too—business people, doctors, monks, householders—who through their broken English unanimously confirmed our impressions. We had found ourselves among a people who were—despite their harsh environmental circumstances—modeling humanity’s potential relationship with the land and community. As the XIV Dalai Lama noted, “The author [Norberg-Hodge] is right to highlight the humane values of Ladakhi society, a deep-rooted respect of each other’s fundamental human needs and an acceptance of the natural limitations of the environment. This kind of responsible attitude is something we can all admire and learn from.”[ii]
The mud bricks are background left. The man mixing the mud is background right. The two women are tending to the children.
Many of the remote villages could be reached only by foot. We walked for hours on narrow mountain paths, ten to fourteen thousand feet above sea level, where bushes and other plants are scarce among the rock formations and weathered stones. Then unexpectedly we would crest a hill to view a valley far below, green with the late Spring growth and cut into the familiar geometries of farming. The houses did not come into view until we climbed down closer, as they blend into the surrounding earth. Three story houses, all of them. Every family has one. They build them as they need them, when a young couple moves in together, oftentimes. I spent an afternoon watching several families working together to build such a home, from stone and mud blocks shaped by a wooden mold. The houses are wood-framed, and yet, through generations of planting, more trees grow here than did a thousand years ago. As the adults raised a wall, an old woman tended the children. Farther away, a young man, clearly retarded, swept the streets of the village. Everyone seemed to enjoy a role in this village.
The houses blend with the background rock, from which their homes are made.
As we came upon the village of Temisganglate one afternoon, a group of the village men were fixing large flag stones into the path, lengthening the portion of the path to the village that would be hard-surfaced. Neither hired, nor governmental workers, nor members of a church or charity.It was, from what I understood, an act of communal anarchism. They worked at a leisurely pace with tools as sophisticated as a pick and shovel. Large stones were moved from one place to the next by a human chain. In that same moment, surely hundreds-of-thousands—if not millions—of men and women were lifting iron and cement weights in gyms around the world, paying hefty prices for the privilege. What an odd, estranged luxury in comparison.
Diane Schade feeding a dzo.