Peter Boardman

“Pemba and the other Sherpas began to prepare a ritual, with a meaning sunk deep in time. The pattern of the earliest rituals has always been for man to make an offering and, by giving, to achieve a receptive and aware state so as to become part of the interplay between himself, the earth and sky and the gods. When Buddhism came to Tibet in the seventh century, it was absorbed by the resident animist faith of many gods – the B’on religion. Today, the Sherpa religion, Tibetan Lamaism, is a thick mixture of the old animism, manifesting itself in mysticism, magic and demonolatry, overlaid by a layer of Buddhism. The earliest myth of the founding of Tibetan civilisation, concerns the building of the Samyang monastery, the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet. The people, so the tale goes, worked very hard every day building the monastery, but every night evil demons came and destroyed their work. The people were making no progress at all, so they asked the Guru Rimpoche what to do. The Guru said it was no wonder they were having trouble, they weren’t making the gods happy, only spending a lot of money. When he taught them how to perform an offering ritual, the gods helped the people build the monastery, not only keeping away the demons, but also carrying the heavy things and working while the people slept, so that the building was completed in a very short time.”
― Peter Boardman, Sacred Summits: Kangchenjunga, the Carstensz Pyramid, and Gauri Sankar

“No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it always is because these dogmas or goals are in doubt …”
― Peter Boardman, The Shining Mountain