The Last Barbarians by Michel Peissel

Author:Michel Peissel
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781627795685
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

8

BUBBLES ON WATER

I have always had a linear concept of my existence, the idea that wherever I stood I was connected by a path to my past, and that in relation to this trail of events, things lay to the left or right, north or south, backward or forward. Looking onto the horizon now, I had a feeling that this notion was dissolving around me, that the immensity of this great plateau was endless, shapeless, and all-encompassing.

In their concept of the creation of the world, the Tibetans tell how demigods were born on earth, but linked to the higher gods in heaven or to the summits of mountains by a sacred thread or ladder called a mu. As the world evolved the mu was broken, the thread cut (at first by accident), and so man was born, severed from the gods.

I suppose we all have some sort of mu, a mysterious thread that links us to nobler ideals and to our past. Here I felt totally disconnected and quite alone. We were in a land without towns or villages, a land whose population was elusive, ever-moving and changing camp, a world without signposts or fixed references, in which we had no place—we, who were out looking for a concept, something that did not exist, a nonplace, the point of extinction of the Mekong. We were in truth searching for an absence.

Once again I asked myself why. Why bother, why come out here so far, for what purpose? I had no valid answers. At first I had seen our venture as something akin to sport, something to be racked up as “an achievement.” Then I had seen it as a way of indulging my pride, a frivolous vanity. Now I saw our enterprise as utterly meaningless or, at best, as an alibi to roam where few ever had the chance to, with the added hope of discovering a little more about ourselves.

I am not a mystic—not anymore, anyway. Having been raised a Catholic, I used to believe with all my might in the teachings of the church. As a child I had learned not to let reason tamper with my faith. To believe, to have faith, is to stop the process of logic and analytical thinking. Faith is an act of will, a will to adhere to a belief regardless of everything. As a result I had been induced into a world of magic and miracles, of supernatural beings, of angels and saints; I never allowed my reason to interfere.

My faith was lost to me when I grew to appreciate tolerance in the company of Tibetans. My eyes opened and I saw how intolerance was all too often the result of blind faith.

Thus was my mu cut, my link with heaven severed as I realized that I was but a mortal and very much alone.

In a nihilist vein of Buddhism, the great Tibetan mystic and poet Mila Repa proclaimed that “one was born alone, one lived alone, and one died alone.”

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