S1E11 - China's Heaven & Hell: Mystic Tibet - Part 4/5

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Perched at 4,400 meters above sea level, my second journey into Tibet began at Daocheng Airport—the highest commercial airport on earth. The breathtaking landscape transformed before my eyes as we drove through mountain passes where all four seasons appeared within a single journey, the scenery shifting dramatically with each change in elevation.

My destination was Larongar Buddhist Academy, a hidden spiritual fortress housing an astonishing 30,000 monks. Their homes—fragile wooden shacks clinging to mountainsides—stretched as far as the eye could see, creating a vast patchwork of simple dwellings where dedicated practitioners lived with almost nothing. Inside these tiny shelters, monks slept, meditated, and prepared simple meals with minimal possessions and limited electricity.

The most profound experience came when participating in the ritual of walking 108 circles around a sacred structure—a six-hour journey of spiritual cleansing. As I walked, I witnessed something few outsiders ever see: a family carrying their deceased child, wrapped like a mummy, completing the same circles as final blessings before a sky burial. This ancient practice, where bodies are left for vultures to consume, revealed a cultural approach to death entirely unlike Western traditions, born of both necessity in a frozen landscape and a different spiritual understanding of the body's purpose after death.

What stays with me most isn't the unfamiliar funeral customs or the harsh living conditions, but the remarkable contentment I observed everywhere. The anxiety that defines modern urban existence seemed absent here. People smiled genuinely, crime was nearly nonexistent, and a profound sense of peace pervaded everything. Walking those circles in the thin mountain air, alongside grieving families and devoted monks, I glimpsed a different way of understanding our brief time on earth—one that continues to challenge my perspective years later.

Have you ever wondered how differently cultures approach life's most fundamental experiences? Share your thoughts or questions about this journey into one of Buddhism's most sacred and secluded communities.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to Asian Uncle.
Last episode I was talkingabout my experiences in Tibet
for the first time and what Ihad to endure and what things
that I learned and, mostimportant, the first time seeing
polyandry in front of my eyes.
It was something different.
My second trip was also goingto be very unexpected and you'll

(00:24):
soon know why.
This time I didn't fly into theairport.
I flew in the last time BecauseLB told me that one of the
roads was now open, so I wouldfly into this airport called
Daocheng, and Daocheng Airport,like Yading Airport, are all
very high in elevation, so thetop three, I believe, in the

(00:44):
world are Daocheng that's thenumber one, 4,400 meters above
sea level, and number two is inBudan.
And third would be the airportthat I landed in last time.
This time I was more prepared.
I didn't feel I was as altitudesick as I was the first time

(01:11):
Much better, the car ride wasmuch shorter and the roads were
slightly better, and I waswondering why we didn't fly in
here last time, but apparentlythey just opened up the roads,
so I didn't know if I wanted totalk about this, but there's a
lot of roads in there that onlymilitary vehicles can go through
.
A lot of people have told methat it's because they can hide
weapons, they can hide a lot ofthings that they don't want

(01:32):
satellites to see underneaththese mountains.
And, of course, there's a lotof mining that goes on, because
Tibet is rich in resources,given that they also developed a
lot of roads, infrastructure,to facilitate all this.
Apparently, flying into Daocheng, we could take this long tunnel

(01:54):
down to where Elbi's temple was, which is where we're going to
meet him.
My wife was with me this timeand also I tagged along another
friend of mine.
It was great.
I had company, the weather wasgreat.
So one thing about Tibet,because the elevation is so high

(02:16):
, when you're driving in thoseconditions, you could see the
four seasons and you could seethe weather changing as you go
up in the mountaintop, as youpass, you can see the four
seasons and you could see theweather changing as you go up to
the mountaintop, as you pass,you can see autumn, you can see
summer, you can see fall.
It's great.
Wherever you went, it felt likeit was never the same.

(02:37):
The weather was never the same,the scenery was never the same.
It was simply amazing.
But this time, going back, wedidn't stay at the temple for
too long, I believe only one ortwo days.
We just got adjusted to thealtitude.
Everybody else did too.
But Elby wanted me, or us, tosee something different.
He wanted to take me to aBuddhist academy called Larongar

(03:02):
.
It is the largest of its kindin the world.
30,000 monks reside there.
This place, it's well known now, but back then not many people
have heard of it, especially inthe West.
It's in the middle of nowhereAgain.
It's hidden in deep of themountains and it was not a

(03:23):
tourist spot.
The facility that these monkslived in was stretched, as far
as I could see, up a long entiremountainside.
It was just filled withunstable wooden shacks from the
lowland all the way up on allsides, and that's where the

(03:51):
monks lived.
It was definitely a fire hazard.
These were just wooden boardsput together and I went into one
of them.
I remember the nanny, the aupair, that took care of my
daughter.
Well, years later she would bestudying here and I did go into
her house and I did eat somefood that she cooked.
She was a great cook, by theway.
It was very small.
There was enough space for herbed.

(04:11):
She could meditate on the edgeof her bed, sleep on it.
She had a little table that'sabout it a little stove where
she used the little canister forthe gas.
Of course, there was limitedelectricity Only in the main
temple was there electricity,but there was water and there
were public bathrooms that youcould use.

(04:32):
Nonetheless, it was a big firehazard and it did catch fire a
couple of times, although nobodyever got hurt.
Surprisingly, nothing reallyout of the ordinary so far.
Main temple bunch of monks.
And as we followed LB, westarted making our way up
towards this higher, even higherhill, and it was starting to

(04:57):
get dark, but not yet, of course.
And once we got there I foundthat this place was huge.
It wasn't a place, it was justa circular structure, and it
took three minutes to walk onecircle around the structure.
And let's say you're walkingclockwise.
On your right side it wouldjust be filled with little small

(05:21):
rooms that were locked and ifyou looked inside there would be
Buddhist statues and all theseornaments inside.
Very nice, the place wasdecorated with bright colors and
at night the lights would shine.
So LB told me, and my wife andthe others, that it was
customary for us to walk 108circles around the structure,

(05:46):
kind of as a way to cleanse oursins.
Think of it as repenting right.
So we did, and three minutesper circle.
It took us roughly six hours.
We didn't walk it the entire,like that night.
I did maybe two, three hoursthat night and then I finished
the rest the next day.
It was grueling Walking threehours a day.

(06:08):
It sucked.
This didn't include all thewalking we did otherwise, but
that wasn't what got to me.
What got to me is, while I waswalking, I couldn't help but see
some people carrying whatlooked like a corpse.
It was a corpse, it was a body,but it wasn't that obvious, and

(06:30):
so I slowed down as it passedme and what it did, I saw it
wrapped like a mummy in cloth,and I was almost certain it was
just a child.
It was half the size of anadult, wrapped literally like a
mummy.
I'm not even joking.
And I remember on my way updriving to the academy, I did

(06:53):
pass by something similar.
It was a brick hut with nodoors.
Why did I notice that?
Because all the other houseswere built with just wood boards
and this one in particular waspiled up with bricks and inside
there were just I didn't know itwas bodies at the time, but it

(07:16):
was just stacked up with thesame material, one on top of
another.
It looked a little bit likebodies, but I wasn't sure.
Lb told me later on that indeedthat's where they store their
bodies, and the reason why I sawthem carrying the kid with the
child is because they wanted tomake their final blessings.

(07:36):
They took the child in theirarms and then they walked around
that ornament 108 times.
At first it did send somechills down my back knowing that
there was a body next to mewalking the same circle and we
would spend the next couple ofhours together.
But I do give a huge or a lotof respect to the Tibetans for

(08:02):
the way they honor the deceased,for the way they respect the
deceased, for the way theyrespect the deceased.
Little did I know the next dayI would see something even more
grotesque.
I'm going to preface this bysaying that I was very honored
to be one of the few people tosee this in person, up close,

(08:22):
before they stopped touristsfrom visiting this site, not the
temple itself, but the burialsite.
Tibetans didn't have a traditionof ground burial like us, or
cremation, because cremation wasonly reserved for the holy

(08:42):
beings.
The rest what happens?
Sky burial?
Most of them have even heard ofit and it's a very unique way
of burying somebody.
It's a funeral practice wherethe bodies of the deceased are
left out in the open todecompose and be eaten by the
animals Mainly well,specifically, vultures.

(09:05):
As insane as it sounds, itturns out that, because the land
in Tibet, the land structure inTibet, is pretty much frozen
80% of the year.
So the ground is hard as rock,making ground burial nearly
impossible.
Cremation, therefore, isreserved only for the holy monks
, like LB or anyone else that isseen as quote-unquote

(09:29):
enlightened or enlightenedbeings, beings of higher
presence or enlightened beings,beings of higher presence.
Their remains or ashes are keptin the monastery for worship,
because those monks that arecremated are also seen as
Buddhas as well.
They're beings of compassion,not God as how we understand it

(09:50):
to be.
I couldn't help, of course, tobe mesmerized and sucked in by
that culture.
Despite such primitive livingconditions and standards, they
always seem to keep a smile ontheir face, or at least nothing
seemed to really bother them.

(10:10):
The anxiety that we have livingin the city, the anxiety as a
society we struggle with todayit doesn't seem to exist there.
When people were courteoustowards one another, you would
pick up hitchhikers, without adoubt.
Crime rate was so low therethat the cops were mainly used

(10:31):
to harass the monks.
It was a nice place to be, tokind of detach yourself from the
world.
Anyways, I went to sleep atnight in the cold, even though I
didn't get much rest.
We lived up at the hotel hosteljust right under that structure

(10:53):
I was talking about before,when I walked around 108 times.
The place was dirty, the sheetswere thin and smelled bad.
The elevation definitely keptme up.
I was hungry and thoughts ofthat dead boy in the mummy,
wrapped like a mummy still, kindof sent chills to my back.