"... the cue for me in science in a native desire for escape, an instinctive love of freedom and space, the whim of the dream and the dream that you meet away from the human consortium, when alone between earth and sky, today, here tomorrow in a new landscape every day, but rooted in new people everywhere on earth old ... "
(Giuseppe Tucci)
Joseph Tucci, the center
images below: nomadic pastoralists in the Himalayas, hermitage of Milarepa, Mount Kailash, Dvina Kailash a sacred image in the mask demonic Buddhist
Giuseppe Tucci, as some students of Eastern philosophy and literature will know, is considered one of the greatest scholars of Oriental languages \u200b\u200band cultures of our country, founder In 1933 the Italian Institute for Middle and the Far East and organizer of many expeditions to Tibet, Nepal, Pakistan and Afghanistan, from the 30s to 50s, who obtained numerous scientific achievements. The book I am about to present is not a scientific text as it gathers many travel articles which appeared in various magazines of the time. "The country of women from many husbands" (Blacks Pozza 2005) contains precisely those that were, as the curator of "articles, even full-bodied, accompanied by beautiful photographs of anything that would not have known if they remained in the archives (. ..) Read the first time I buzzed my head again for the title of "popular" used in Italy until a few years ago by the barons of academic power to boycott all forms of knowledge to pass through their (...) A unique pattern of learning, passion and vehemence visionary who had the pace of the caravan so loved by the professor: a slow, almost magical and wonderful approach to a antipodes of the Western world, which was unveiled valley after valley until the caravan had not reached the pitch ... "In fact in this book there is much talk of the mountain, caravan and travel to the discovery of remote landscapes and ancient cultures Himalayas. Nature and culture go hand in hand: in addition to reports of cultures, traditions, peoples encountered on his expeditions, there is also the description of nomadic life in contact with the wild and mysterious Tibetan highlands. Work not only to direct scholars in the history of Eastern philosophies, then, but a travel book that can stand in the library of any fan of the mountain, which is aware of the signs of man, and cultures that have developed between the people of "high altitude".
A book collects writings ranging from the 30s to the 50s, but perhaps it will be much more exciting than many recent books on modern expeditions of adventurers in 'Himalaya. Rather than make a synthesis, through my words, The contents of this interesting (and perhaps little known) book, excerpts from articles I will talk about reporting on it.
Evocative are the pages where Tucci focuses on the deeper meaning of life wandering along the tracks, as writing in 1956, nomadic life :
But when you have a caravan, it's different, you feel masters of the world (...) do not know where tomorrow's here today, where there is grass and water and where you enchant the beauty of the area, the more delight to the poet at the end of us, if we become torpid and unwary as the brutes, ever watchful and dreams. Only then will you find and enjoy the freedom, not that at all today and always speak in awe, because freedom means only sister living habits or bow to the will of the majority and force, or that consensus with the consensus, which means not in fact have his own: and there is no philosophy convoluted that I have ever convinced of the contrary, because freedom is the man who speaks with the stars and contemplate the mountains that start at dawn and then smiles reveal their strengths and weaknesses, or listen to the music of nature that have already moved the philosophers of ancient China ...
and yet the significance of solitude for the traveler:
You know that a lot of loneliness in the long run, the most intolerable and manages a traveler that I met hastened to take back almost dizzying in front of those chasms of silence and the desert. Not to me, indeed I say to you now that loneliness appeared to me the best counselor and friend, extinguished the mistrust, suspicion, warning that state of continuous, life subsidiary, for the defense requirements and supervision, make the ' cautious man: the great outdoors among the trees or rocks in the sun or the cold wonder of the moon, a man returns serenity InnoCare institution.
Return to the archetypes of nomadic life for Tucci was also due to the presence in those places, of humanity "different"
... the best memories of my life are those of my expeditions, perhaps because of the surprise findings is commisto this sense of return to the roots: and also find themselves in the midst of humanity simpler, sweeter, less willing or deceit offense if not sometimes, at first hostile, suspicious because of the alien, its ways, its intentions, its quirks and above its usual lack of respect for the traditions, cults, the gods her.
The man in the personality of Tibet was marked by the vastness of nature, placing it above him in an unreal, almost dream-like for the absolute predominance of landscapes that surround the man continuously , with its implications on cultural adaptation. Here's how Tucci talks about Tibet in the article "The country of women from many husbands "
Here we have the center of it all is the man, and everything speaks to us of the works of man: in the boldness of this titan who Demiurge has unleashed a tremendous battle against nature and its forces. There in Tibet is just the opposite: men are scarce, small communities, often nomadic, which have no adhesion to the earth and could not get it, so harsh and the weather is so reluctant to give. They bend to the will of nature and not the contrast, and if sometimes seek to remove certain aspects that are detrimental to them, do not use neither works nor to machines, but their formulas taught by saints and ascetics: those with drive, coerced and dominate the hidden powers that they imagine conscious governing natural events.
. .. Tibetans have undeniable virtues. Frugal and it seems almost impossible as one of the harshest climates on earth can live with what little they eat: barley flour mixed with water, a horrible mixture of infusion of tea, mixed with soda, butter and salt, and, d ' winter, a bit 'of dried apricots imported from Ladak or less high from the provinces: meat and even vegetables rarely .
Tucci in his reports do not idealize the religious life of Tibet, which at that time, according to the knowledge of the scholar, but he lost the glory of the mystical and spiritual riches of the past.
The monastic life, the great monasteries are no longer the center of spiritual life as they once were: the religious sense of life, the mystical passion, the thrill of faith are becoming things rare even in the monastic schools of Tibet: Making the monk is a convenient way to solve the problem of life. The convents are high: in the winter there is hot, the effort is small and the priest is respected and feared .
The religious life of Tibet Tucci seems to coincide with the great traditions of mysticism, materializzatesi in temples and religious buildings, scattered across those barren lands, which were once great centers of spiritual life. As documented Tucci, still had not completely disappeared but the events of the ancient and original asceticism:
still alive, out of the temples, hermitages, in small, remote hermitages in the mountains, people which is walled in a cave for twelve years and does nothing but meditate, take out from your body capabilities and forces that seem miraculous to us, subject to the mechanism of breathing miraculous stunts that lead to strange domains of physiological functions and development of unsuspected (...) conscious life is just living in these figures, not yet undermined, the great soul of Tibet, that its sacred sense of things, the intuition of the fundamental unity of being and thinking, work and of knowing who made it one of the most deeply religious nations of the earth.
M to, to return to its meaning had (has) the nature and mountain cultures of the Himalayas, it is appropriate to quote some excerpts taken from the most beautiful pages of the book, those relating to one of the most famous mountains of 'Himalayan chain, the Kailash, a beautiful pyramid of 6600 meters, is sacred to Hindus and to buhddisti, known in Tibet as Karinpocè, "Gem of the ice." E 'to remember as the history of story, the experience of Reinhold Messner made about this mountain (and recounted in his 13 mirrors of my soul): the great climber decided to scale it, but then realized that the mountain inviolate was sacred to the people of the Himalayas, so Messner is "satisfied" to participate in the journey of the ring circuit of the mountain, along with the caravans of pilgrims. With humility and wisdom of the great hero of all the eight thousand of the earth went around the mountain along with the pilgrims and the lake Marasarovar participating even from foreign and Western, with a climb perhaps most important: the interior elevation . For Tucci:
the cult of the mountain is a fundamental element in the religions of all races Himalayan: and it is natural, just because mountaineers are most sensitive to the ineffable beauty of these mountains that touch the sky, and I fear the dangers, and know the terrifying majesty when the storm rages on the cliffs, the thunder and screams of a yoke in the yoke, and lightning burst spiers never violated by man.
So Tucci describes his encounter with the charming Kailash:
of mountains I've seen and I have a lot of climbing, I ought to be believed when I say that Kailash has on anyone who sees it for the first time horizon impression of superb beauty that can not be forgotten. It is understood that the Indian pilgrims, who flocked from the plains through the rugged Himalayan mountain ranges, bend the knees at the first sight of this mountain and celebrated as the abode of their gods.
In this guide ( The Kailash ) Tucci writes pages of rare beauty, both in the description of the nature of the place of pilgrimage in the moments ...
The diamond cone of Mount Kailash is discovered for the first time by a steep ridge that separates Lake Manosarovar by raksasa-tal: you see the sparkle of the summit under a sky of turquoise superb, almost lonely sentry between a slow wave of other giants who flee to the north in an indefinite series of pinnacles and peaks. Visible points of amolti Manosarovar in Barka appears in all its glory: Barka is a house in the middle camps of nomads and shepherds on the plain that stretches like a vast wasteland boundless, and a thick undergrowth, near the lakes and rivers, green pastures give this expanse, which expands to almost five feet high in the midst of rocky deserts and wild ravines, a look of serene pasture ours.
The track goes up a ridge that reaches 5800 meters and, after the goddess of salvation which is holy, is known as the "Dolmala" (Dolma Pass). Heaps of stones piled on the pilgrims planted the poles, has put on top of a rope and the rope hung streamers of colored cloth on which are printed with inks blacks or reds, formulas and prayers. The wind stirs, and those who have flags hanging on the rope as if he were reciting the prayers for each breath of air we breathe. The rise of this long and bitter road is also a symbol: a symbol of the discipline of life, which prepares the Beatitudes of nirvana. (...) In the spirit of these people, which has deep religious meaning and the reasoning inherent in symbols, in the ascent of the sacred mountain is repeated almost the drama of life. And only when the Dolma Pass is achieved with this belief, the ascent becomes difficult purification of the soul.
The size of the book is not merely the records of the explorations of Tucci, since most of the various reports focus on topics such as the sacred art of Tibet and the sense of the same religion and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, but they can be complex subjects, albeit weakly for the layman, with the ability to penetrate popular scholar. Here, for example as Tucci sheds light on the profound meaning of the Tibetan sacred images:
But take heart, ask the monks, read the scriptures and see the images fade, dissolve and those of this religion which you seemed exaggerated a polidemonismo empty by magic of his idols, the phantasmagoria of holy figures disappear as the mists of the night at the first light of dawn, and the polychrome of dancing monsters disappear in a vacuum colorless and dull. The gods then there are more, or orgiastic quest'olimpo dismal gives way to a religion without gods, even without God, to a serene contemplation of the void, the revelation of a light implacable, unmoved, dazzling splendor in which everything is motionless lost and dissolved like salt in water. And you find yourself alone, you're all that, because you are that light, not more inoperative person with his limitations, his daily suffering and hope, but your irreducible individuality in its quintessential purity. When religion dissolves well as the man is still less that the dream of a shadow as the moon image flickering on the water surface. The Tibetan live and die in the certainty that the truth is not in the things he sees in those who frighten and disturb, the charm and illusion, but in that anything that breathes like an icy breath every aspect of the world. And if you ask him what's in the bottom of this mystery of the universe, I always answer: tompagnì , emptiness, nothing, everyone from the priest at the caravan, by the prince to the peasant. Even the gods can therefore be made of butter, so that the emptiness of becoming whole drag and remove (...) We must get there little by little, for a scale that has many steps, and steps are these gods, these images, these symbols in the first moments of our education spiritual take for true and real, and then, gradually sharpen our naked purity, we'll fire away like butter.
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