“A true pilgrimage lifts the traveler out of his everyday self into a realm beyond ego. When it returns his self back to him, all of life has become a single, endless pilgrimage.”
Kerry Moran, The Sacred Mountain of Tibet
In the time since I have returned to the USA, I have not been through a single day in which I did not think about some aspect of this journey. At a superficial level I have reentered life in America, buying my food at Safeway and writing computer software for a living, but the way in which I perceive the world around me has changed. Sometimes, when I listen to friends complain about a meal in a restaurant that is not cooked “just so” or get worried about a credit card bill that they forgot to pay, I just smile to myself as these matters seem meaningless in the larger scheme of things. There was a certain clarity of life and purpose during my travels in Tibet that often seems to be difficult to find in the normal hectic life of the USA.
Meanwhile when I pass Native Americans seated on the sidewalk outside a Montana bar listening to Indian chants and songs on a boom box, I say a prayer for my Tibetan friends and hope that a kinder fate awaits them.
Ray Kreisel
Missoula, Montana – 1996
Please feel free to contact me about any comments, corrections or questions.
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email: raykreisel@yahoo.com
webpage: http://www.kreisels.com/ray