Regardless of your beliefs, prayer flags inspire spiritual significance. The five colours represent each of the five essential elements of life: yellow for earth, green for wood, red for fire, white for iron, and blue for water.
These prayer flags are placed on high points of land and structures all over the Himalaya to harmonize our energy with that of the world around us. On special Buddhist days of the year, the locals replace them with new ones in life’s endless circle of renewal.
The patterns on them are prayers or symbols of good luck or positive energy. One design is the ‘wind horse,’ the word for wind also means ‘life force’ – both in ourselves and the environment.
Thus, on an outer level, the prayer is sent skyward by the wind, but on an inner level, the galloping steed amplifies our life force. The horse is often accompanied by protective animals, either real or mythical – a bird, the garuda (representing wisdom), a dragon (power), a snow lion (fearless joy) and a tiger (confidence). These four creatures represent some of the qualities of a human being with a strong life force.
The beliefs embrace tiers of explanations with deeper and deeper meanings, but all these rituals and objects of everyday life — ceremonies, prayer flags, and mani stones — acknowledge some greater power.
To quote Tibetan writer Thubten Jigme Norbu:1
“You find prayer flags on hills, mountains, by lakes and always on the crest of passes. It does not really matter whether these spirits exist. What matters is that through these stories we have come to believe that everywhere, all around us, at all times, there is some power that is greater than ourselves.”
1 Thubten Jigme Norbu and Colin Turnbull, Tibet: Its History, Religion, and People, Penguin Books, 1968. Pg. 32.
Prayer flags, Nammo BuddhaUpper MustangLhamogang ritual, changing prayer flags, Tengboche MonasteryTengboche Ama Dablam near Khumjung
Most everyone has heard of the Sherpas through the literature of mountaineering. This awesome reputation however, focuses on a single vocation rather than on the Sherpas’ rich cultural heritage.
The Sherpas originated as several families who migrated from eastern Tibet and settled uninhabited valleys in the Himalaya about 400 years ago. Their name “Sher-pa” reflects those origins: “east-people”. This small group of families brought with them the rich traditions, religion and literature of Tibetan Buddhism.
The Sherpas built their houses on any landform flat enough for agriculture, such as the ancient hanging terrace of Phortse, the glacial trough of Khunde and Khumjung, and the bowl-like valley of Namche. Their villages face south for more favorable growing conditions, and lie between 7,000 and 15,000 feet above sea level. Most Sherpas have a home in one of the main villages of Khumjung, Khunde, Thamechok, Namche, Pangboche, and Phortse, but often stay seasonally in huts at the high pastures.
Hard Livelihoods
Here, the cold climate allows the Sherpas to cultivate only one harvest a year from their rock-strewn fields. To survive in this formidable environment, the Sherpas have always engaged in another livelihood whether trading across the Himalaya or migrating in search of employment.
For much of the late 1800s and early 1900s, Sherpas migrated in search of employment to British-ruled Darjeeling. Sherpa men first worked as high altitude porters on British attempts to scale the great peaks of Sikkim in 1907, and have worked on every major Himalayan mountaineering expedition since then. Mountaineers praised the Sherpas’ friendliness, loyalty and dependability. Eric Shipton was a British “explorer” of the Himalaya in the 1930s-1950s. He described the Sherpas:
“It is the temperament and character of the Sherpas that have justified their renown and won them such a large place in the hearts of the Western travelers and explorers who have known them. Their most enduring characteristic is their extraordinary gaiety of spirit. More than any other people I know they have the gift of laughter.”
Sherpa Village Life
Surviving in these mountain settlements requires community effort
Community norms and rules traditionally regulated everything from the collection of fuel wood and leaf-litter, to the movement of the yak herds, to the performance of cultural rituals and festivals. Members of the community are still elected to three positions that manage agriculture and grazing, forest use, and cultural life. They have the authority to impose fines on villagers who break the traditional rules, called the “dhi.”
Sherpas raise yaks and grow potatoes as their staple products
In the valleys of Khumbu, the summer monsoon lasts from June to September. During this quiet but productive season people carry out their chores of herding and farming. Farming is not easy on these mountains, but all, including businessmen, own plots of land on which they grow potatoes, buckwheat or barley to feed their families.
Most fields for cultivating food crops are at relatively lower elevations of about 3300 meters near the main Sherpa villages. During the cool winter, herds of yaks are grazed on nearby hillsides; when the summer comes, the yaks are taken up to high valleys where the rains have changed the dry mountainsides to rich, green pastures.
Sherpa families use these valleys as summer pastures for their yak (male) and nak (female) herds. Pheriche, Dingboche, Lobuche, and Gokyo were established as their summer huts and hay fields. The shaggy bovines provide dairy products, wool, and transportation. Sherpas call the male crossbreeds dzopchioks; they are sterile and are used as pack animals, especially on trips down to the warmer elevations that the high-altitude yaks can’t tolerate. Female crosses are called dzooms. They produce milk that is almost as rich as a nak’s, and in greater amounts.
Changes in Sherpa Livelihoods
From Trading across the Himalaya to Global Tourism
As a people, the Sherpas have historically responded and adapted to changes brought by the outside world. In the mid-1800s, the Nepali government granted the Sherpas a trade monopoly by prohibiting anyone but a Khumbu Sherpa from crossing the Nangpa La, the 19,000 ft pass into Tibet. Many Sherpa families benefited to some degree from the bartering that took place in either Tibet or the border towns of India.
Namche was been the main trading centre since 1905. Prior to that, it was simply a place where traders from Khumjung stored their trading goods between the seasons when they could cross the pass to Tibet and when they could travel to the lowlands. The trade to Tibet was drastically reduced after it was taken over by the People’s Republic of China in the late 1950s.
At present a few Tibetan and Sherpa traders cross the pass in both directions. They can be seen at the weekly market along with lowland Nepali traders. The weekly market is not a Sherpa tradition; it was started in the mid-1960s by an army officer stationed in Namche to meet the needs of the growing population of Nepali civil servants.
The Sacred Valley
For centuries, the Khumbu Valley has been a sanctuary
To the first Sherpas, the Khumbu Valley was unique and special as a “beyul”, a sacred valley that was set aside by Guru Rinpoche, the founder of Buddhism, to be a refuge in times of trouble.
When the Sherpas came here about 400 years ago, they were escaping political changes in eastern Tibet. They may also have been migrating at a time of climate change. The Abbot of Tengboche monastery tells of the Sherpas coming at a time when “the glaciers were much bigger, and Khumbu was covered with snow.
Hence, their first settlements were down near Lukla. As the snow and ice gradually melted, people gradually founded villages at Khumjung and Pangboche.”
At that time, the rivers had no bridges, the cliffs had no steps; there were no footpaths, no dwellings, no fields of grain, no woven cloth, no cows to milk. These first settlers transformed the landscape into agricultural fields and pastures for cattle.
However, people may have been visiting the valley well before the arrival of the Sherpa people. In fact, oral traditions hint that Rai shepherds may have been using the Khumbu’s high pastures well before the Sherpa, and old ruins in the valley are said to the remains of Rai shepherd’s huts.
Prayer Flags Over Tin Roofs
The Sherpa religion came through the oldest sect of Tibetan Buddhism, the Nyingmapa, which was established about 1,240 years ago. The Sherpa history and teachings are recorded in Tibetan script and their language is a dialect derived from Buddhist books. Traditionally, these books were stored in each village’s temple where lay ministers, lamas, would conduct ceremonies and teach religion to the local people.
The power of nature is embodied in protective gods. For example, Jomolungma resides on Mt. Everest. Qualities such as wisdom and compassion are also visualized as deities to help one concentrate while meditating. Prayers to them may influence important events and daily activities. Weddings, funerals and births are accompanied by pujahs of offerings and prayers.
Anyone may build a religious monument or object and so gain spiritual merit. The thoughtful offerings of those who made them are multiplied by each flutter of the prayer flag in the breeze, each turn of the wheel, each traveler’s respectful gesture.
MANI STONES are found near paths, temples, villages and homes. They may be carved with a single mantra (chant) or a complete prayers to the god of compassion.
PRAYERS FLAGS are on roofs or mountain passes, strung across rivers and paths, or on tall poles. The five colours of prayer flags signify the elements; yellow, earth; red, fire; green, wood; blue, sky and water; and white, iron.
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Sagarmatha – Jomolungma – Everest
This mountain of many names has always attracted pilgrims, whether Tibetans honoring a peak they believe is the abode of a deity, or climbers and trekkers fascinated by the highest point on earth. Sagarmatha is the name given by the Nepali government in the 1970s and the name Everest was given by the British in India.
“Jomolungma is the name of the mountain. Jomo Miyo Lang Sangma is the name of the resident female deity. She is a mother goddess and one of the five sisters of long life, so many pilgrims used to go to see her in Tibet. Now, people, from all over the world, come to see Jomolungma, from Khumbu.”
“Jomo Miyo Lang Sangma rides on a red tiger. This goddess is very pretty; she is orange and bright looking. She wears a garland of flowers around her head and robes of many colors. In Jomo Miyo Lang Sangma’s right hand is a long bowl of food and in her left a mongoose that spits wealth.” – The Abbot and Reincarnate Lama of Tengboche Monastery
Tengboche Monastery has been the heart of Sherpa culture since 1916
The Sherpas only started to establish celibate monasteries in the early 1900s. Tengboche was the first celibate monastery in Solu-Khumbu and is a community of about 30 tawas (monks) under the leadership of the Abbot, Tengboche Rinpoche (Reincarnate Lama).
Construction of the monastery’s gompa (temple) started in 1916 and lasted three years. The gompa has been destroyed twice, by an earthquake and a fire. The 1990s reconstruction of the gompa attracted the support of Sherpa and international communities to this once isolated monastery
Tengboche is also known for the masked dances that celebrate the completion of ten days of prayers for the good of all beings. For the Sherpas who come from many villages to attend, Mani Rimdu is a relatively recent tradition that started at the opening of Tengboche monastery in 1919.
It is performed at Tengboche monastery in the ninth month of the Sherpa calendar, which usually falls in November and at the Thame monastery in the fourth month.
There are 16 dances performed at Mani Rimdu. Tengboche Rinpoche explained the dances: “Certain movements, sounds, smells, and sight can awaken our psyche and stimulate the states of awareness we describe as gods. The dances are meditations that portray the gods and generate merit for everyone.”
Outer Changes and Inner Stability
The coming of tourists to the Khumbu Valley has brought outside changes and opportunities
Since the Nepali government first allowed westerners to visit the kingdom in the 1950s, the coming of tourists from around the world to see the highest mountain has brought a variety of changes both enhancing the livelihoods of the Sherpa people and affecting other cultural and natural aspects of Khumbu.
Tourism has grown to be the main source of livelihood for the Sherpas. Since 1983 to 2019, the number of trekkers coming each year grew from 4,000 to 55,000. The number of hotels in Namche grew from 5 to 100. It was only since 1995, that families started constructing buildings to be used as hotels on the north facing area of the village.
Certain families and communities have had opportunities for education, loans, travel, and prosperity. Others struggle with the inflation created by the growing demand for food brought by the annual increase in tourists. Yet, the tourism economy of Khumbu sustains households as far away as ten-days-walk to the south east.
In Sherpa agriculture, potatoes are still dug by hand, and the traditional rules still regulate the annual herding of yaks.
Changes in the Khumbu Valley include the bridges and trails. Infrastructure growth has occurred in villages along major trekking routes with changes in traditional building materials. The Lukla airstrip was built in 1964 to facilitate the construction of the hospital in Khunde by the Himalayan Trust. In 2019, over 55,000 passengers flew in or out of Lukla, and hotels and services have been developed to serve them. Benefits include the places where the national park plantations have transformed bare hillsides to small forests.
While contact with outsiders has brought modern amenities, the Abbot of Tengboche monastery considers the changes in Khumbu: “There are outward changes in our dress, houses, occupations and opportunities. However, contact with westerners has not necessarily changed the Sherpa culture in terms of ‘inside’ culture – in what they believe and celebrate. Sherpas, young and old, all do pujahs for naming children, weddings and funerals. We celebrate Dumje, the Sherpa new year, and other festivals. What is most important to us remains.”Part 3: The Wheel of Life
Sherpa religious and cultural rituals are generally unchanged for the important events of life: birth, marriage and death
The “inside culture” of the Sherpas – how they mark life’s and the year’s important passages – remain relatively unchanged despite the obvious changes to “outside” aspects such as houses, clothes, and educational and economic opportunities.
Many households and communities will schedule important activities whether travel, rituals, weddings, and funeral rites on auspicious days of the week, lunar month, and year.
The genealogy of the Sherpa follows clans that descend through one’s father. Tradition stipulates that one cannot marry within one’s own clan. Marriage with someone from one’s mother’s clan is permissible, if the couple is not related within three generations. Sherpas still strictly adhere to these proscriptions.
Sherpa Weddings
Wedding traditions are still followed very strictly in Khumbu and with minor modifications among Sherpas living in Kathmandu or even abroad. There are several stages to a Sherpa wedding. Sodene is the asking or the engagement. Demchang is the establishment of a proper agreement. Trichang sets the year and month of the final ceremony; Pechang is the consultation that sets the actual date. Zendi is the final ceremony where the woman comes to live with the man. The bride’s family gives presents and property that is her inheritance from them.
Sherpa Funerals
The Sherpa funeral rituals are strictly adhered to whether the deceased resided in Khumbu or Kathmandu. When a person dies, lamas are called immediately to perform rituals to try to generate good, positive energy for the deceased. There are many different customs, but, usually, the body is kept for three days then cremated. The remnants of the fire mixed with clay and are made into tsatsa that are left in a chorten or under a large rock at the end of 49 days.
Every seven days after the death, special prayers are offered in the home of the deceased. Within three or four weeks, the prayers called Shitro are done for three to fifteen days, depending on the finances of the family. Every evening the family places an offering of tsampa on the fire’s hot coals for the spirit of the deceased. The Bar-do for 49 days after the death is the time and space between lives, by the end of which the person’s next life is determined and they may be reborn.
Special rituals are performed for high lamas and rinpoches, and the body is cremated in a special chamber.
These photographs are of the cremation of Dhui Rinpoche, a very important teacher who passed away in 1989 at the age of 86. On the day of his cremation, his body was carried up the mountainside to a prominent ridge.
His funeral was a celebration of an accomplished lifetime. Over seven hundred people came from as far away as six days walk. His body was placed in the stone monument to be cremated as an offering.
Dumje Festival – A celebration of community spirit
The Sherpa year revolves around the main festival of Dumje celebrated in each village at the beginning of the monsoon in late June or early July. Dumje began as a way to unite the newly settled villages after the Sherpas arrived in Khumbu.
Each year, eight households in a village have a turn, which comes about every sixteen years, to sponsor the festival. Each sponsor provides food for the festivities according to their means. Though this huge financial obligation may cause less affluent families to borrow substantial sums of money from lenders, most families see Dumje sponsorship as a worthy community involvement.
While in the past men from the village who had some religious training would prepare for the rituals, now the village invites and hires specialists, monks from the monastery to come and help prepare for the celebration. Also whereas in the old days, the most learned of the lay lamas (ministers) would officiate and lead the prayers, now the heads of the local monasteries would come to a village.
“We pray together, we dance together and we eat together. What is important now, at Dumje, is that we are all here cooperating together”
The men of the village gather for prayers to Khumbila start the festival. They put up new prayer flags, share chang (rice beer), do traditional Sherpa line dances, and throw tsampa (barley flour) for good luck.
The cowboy hats were adopted as fashionable wear by Tibetans and Sherpas after members of a 1905 British expedition to Tibet wore Stetsons.)
The heavy wooden door creaks open on to a small verandah encircled by potted orange marigolds. Inside a small house, the Rinpoche of Tengboche sits cross legged on a wide bench at the end of a room full of photographs and books.
Wrapped in a heavy maroon robe, Rinpoche gestures for me to take a seat next to an elderly Sherpa man on a bench beneath large windows.
The Sherpas are renowned through the literature of adventure, for their work as high-altitude porters and guides on mountaineering expeditions. However, this reputation focuses on one occupation, rather than on the Sherpas’ rich cultural heritage.
The museum was mostly about what the Abbot of Tengboche calls the Sherpas’ “inner culture” and the importance of ceremonies that link their spiritual and physical lives. The preparation of the museum took time because it was essential to first know the people and the many dimensions of their culture in order to accurately and concisely depict it.
Rinpoche is the Abbot of Tengboche monastery in the Khumbu valley. The Sherpas regard him as the reincarnate of the monastery’s founder. Everyone calls him by his title, Tengboche Rinpoche, and rarely by his given name, Ngawang Tenzing Zangbu. Tibetan Buddhists reserve the title Rinpoche for special teachers and their reincarnates. The Buddhist people of the Himalaya revere thousands of rinpoches in Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, and India.
Rinpoche realized that there were many misinterpretations and misunderstandings about Sherpa culture. To promote understanding of the culture, he has built a museum to first inform foreign visitors. However, his more crucial audience is young Sherpas, who will see visitors taking an “interest in our culture, and then take pride in our heritage.”
My work is to interpret his discussions to offer explanations of Sherpa culture to which people can relate. The work involves researching the information, taking photographs, planning the displays, coordinating translations of texts into Nepali or Tibetan, fabricating the displays, and then putting it all together in the museum building.
Rinpoche’s guest is a village elder, Khonjo Chombi, who is renowned for his knowledge of old Sherpa stories, songs, and traditions. Sherpas acknowledge him as a guardian of their culture.
The late Khonju Chombi Sherpa, 1985
“Please, show Khonjo Chombi through the museum,” he asks.
Khonjo Chombi has provided much of the information and inspiration for the museum’s display texts. He has also advised most foreign researchers of the Sherpas, the first and best known of whom was the anthropologist Christoph von Furer- Haimendorf, who first came to Khumbu in the mid-1950s.
Cultural Centre and Tengboche Monastery, 1988
Inside the museum, Khonjo Chombi inspects the historical photographs Haimendorf donated. He names each person in the photographs. “Here is Ngawang Dorje, Thakto Kalden, Passang Rinchen; they have all passed away. There I am thirty years ago; Haimendorf took that photo. There I am last year; you took that photo.” He smiles.
The panel text introducing the Sherpas has generated controversy. It reads: “The Sherpas started migrating from Tibet to these secluded valleys 600 years ago.” A couple of foreign anthropologists insist that the Sherpas’ entry into Khumbu from Tibet was about 450 years ago and that 600 years ago is wrong.
Rinpoche and Khonjo Chombi say these modern interpretations do not consider the first Sherpa, Phachhen, who discovered Khumbu 600 years ago. We used the 600- year date, since the purpose of the museum is to tell the Sherpas’ story from their own point of view.
A mural in Tibetan script outlining the Sherpa clans covers the end wall of the museum. The position of each name shows when the clan either arrived from Tibet or separated from a larger group. Khonjo Chombi points out his clan name, Thakdopa.
The father’s lineage determines one’s clan membership. Four main clans originally came from Kham, in eastern Tibet, to Solu-Khumbu. Each clan gave rise to several brother clans. Continuous migration has brought many new clans into the area.
Other displays describe traditional clothing, household goods, jewelry, and crafts using looms and spindles. One panel shows monks printing prayer flags on a wooden block and a stone carver chiseling a prayer stone.
Khonjo Chombi asks, “You have a photo of Au’Kinzum chipping away to make mani stones. Why isn’t there a photo of old Phurwa carving a wood block?”
“For three years I tried to persuade Phurwa to let me photograph him working, but he would not even describe how he makes the blocks. So all that we have is photographs of monks printing prayer flags on the blocks.
“Last month, Phurwa was at Tengboche doing carpentry work while we were setting up the museum. He visited the museum every day to see the new displays. The day this display with the stone carver went up, Phurwa asked why I had not photographed him carving the wood blocks. I told him how I’d tried many times. The next day he brought that huge old wooden tea cup as a gift for the museum.”
Carver of prayers into stone
Khonjo Chombi laughs, and then grows serious. “No matter how much you explained, it was hard for many people to imagine what the ‘museum’ would be. This is the first museum old Phurwa has ever seen. But, we have a bigger problem. These craftsmen’s sons have not learned to carve wooden blocks or mani stones. When these men are gone, no one in Khumbu will make these religious things.”
“Can only sons learn these crafts?”
“No, anyone could learn their crafts, but before we followed our father’s occupation. I learned trading and politics from my father. My sons run a trekking business. Our occupations are changing, but I hope someone will keep making wood blocks and mani stones.”
The second floor has displays about Sherpa religion. Balancing the many levels of explanation was a challenge when writing the display texts. Spirituality, metaphysics, and pragmatism all have a place in layers of meanings in the Sherpas’ practice of Mahayana Buddhism.
While compiling information for the museum, I often found that conversations encompassed aspects of philosophy, psychology, and spirituality. Often the subjects we discussed wandered to the questions we seek to answer with religion or science: What happens after death? What is our relationship to nature? To our symbols in the environment?
Over the years, my questions turned from the intellectual to the intuitive. I experienced the culture rather than question it. Life with the Sherpas revealed different ways of seeing the world. It peeled away my preconceived notions so that I appreciated the significance of rituals, traditions, and symbols.
On the display about Tengboche monastery, Khonjo Chombi inspects photographs of Rinpoche through the years, beginning as a teenager when the first Westerners explored the southern approach to Everest. Other photographs show him in present day activities. He remarks, “Rinpoche has worked hard to uphold our traditions.”
Khonjo Chombi examines a mannequin dressed as a traditional village lama. “Some lamas are married and some are celibate thawas [monks]. Not all monks are lamas. The married lama in this photo has a family. He studied with his father and other teachers so that he can perform the village ceremonies.”
Khonjo Chombi in completed museum, 1988
He sees a bone trumpet, a kagling, in the mannequin’s hand. I explain, “We did not have an old kagling; had only a new copper one. Two weeks ago, a monk returned from the post office in Nauche with a battered envelope. The address was to ‘Tengboche Monastery, near Mount Everest, Nepal’. There was no letter or return address but the stamp was from Germany. Inside was this old-style kagling made of bone. We’ll never know where it came from, but it came just in time for the museum opening.”
Khonjo Chombi continues around the museum. Suddenly he sings an old Sherpa folk song and dancing. Soon an audience of monks and foreign trekkers surrounds Khonjo Chombi. As we applaud, he smiles. His songs and dance become the museum’s real opening celebration.
I will always be grateful to Tengboche Rinpoche for the opportunity to work with him on the Sherpa Cultural Center for several years. Sherpa friends introduced me to a new way of seeing the world through everyday life. Whether monk or shepherd, they know who they are and what they believe as “Sherpa people”.
Living in another culture forced me to think about how it works, to confront the ironies and inconsistencies of a different way of being. Soon, I realized that one layer of meaning reveals more queries within. The more one understands, the more one realizes all there is to question and explore.
Looking at other cultures as different from our own, we split the whole into parts. We analyze what we see happening and ask why. For people of the other culture, it is their way of life. We examine the oddity of different traditions and customs rather than the inner purposes that might bring us into an understanding of the culture. We end up looking at how the “other” culture differs from our culture rather than at our commonness in the wholeness of humankind.
While working on the museum, I saw and questioned the ironies of my own culture and gained a new way of looking at myself and at my own way of life. I was moved by what I saw and experienced. I became a believer in the value of inner culture that manifests itself in everything we do — in small actions in everyday life, in our interactions with everyone we meet, and in what we think and say.
I came to see that while outside cultures divide us, inner cultures, the core of all religions and beliefs, can bring us together.
This opportunity enriched my life, for which I will always be grateful.
“If the avalanche had been about an hour later, I would have been right there and so would have been about a hundred more people,” says Pemba. “I was just about to leave base camp!”
Twenty years ago, Pemba had often been the cook on treks I was leading. Since about 1998, he has worked as a high altitude cook on Everest expeditions.
“I prefer expeditions to trekking because I make more money. Otherwise, my wife and I have just a small potato field and this little teashop. Without the expedition money, we could not afford to buy rice and staples at the market – everything has become so expensive!”
Besides, he adds, there are now very few jobs as cooks on treks since most trekkers stay in the many hotels and lodges that have sprung up along the trekking routes. In the decades prior to 2000, trekking groups stayed in tents with own cook and kitchen crew, guiding staff, and porters. With many groups coming with just a guide and porters, the jobs with trekking groups dwindled.
It was about the same that commercial expeditions started on Everest. With several expeditions attempting Everest each season, the demand for expedition workers boomed. At least 400 Nepalis of various ethnic groups, especially some Sherpas, work as high altitude climbers, guides, cooks, porters, and kitchen staff each season.
It is an occupational option, often taken by those Sherpas from poor families living away from the main trekking routes. They just do not have the capital or opportunity to start a hotel, or the education to work in another profession. One Sherpa from a poor family said he was in a fix when his wife demanded that he stop working on expeditions. Luckily for him, an uncle offered a small piece of land and a loan to start a hotel on a newly popular trekking route.
However, for many like Pemba, they may feel that they have fewer options to make money other than expeditions. “I could work in a hotel and one of my bosses at the company said that he would help me to get special training as a chef. But, I would have to work twelve months a year to make the same as I earn in three months on an expedition.”
His wife adds, “Those three months… the whole time I have a knot in my stomach and ask anyone coming down if they have seen Pemba.”
He admits that it is a risky way to make a living. I ask if he has attended the Khumbu Climbing School held each winter to train Sherpas and Nepalis in technical climbing safety. “No, I’ve not gone because I only go through the icefall twice each expedition, once up to Camp 2 and once down.”
Pemba leaves the kitchen for a moment, returning with a small red pouch. “These amulets, relics, and blessing cords from the lamas are all very potent. I have all of them blessed again each year by the lama in Pangboche as I go up for an expedition. I wear it under my clothes the entire time I am on the mountain.”
When I ask if he will go on an expedition again next year, he says, “Of course I will go, how else will I buy food in the market. But it is true, that it would be a lot less risk to my life to go get a job cooking in a hotel.”
On this anniversary of the first ascent to the summit of Everest, let’s pause a moment to remember why men from the Sherpa ethnic group in Nepal first went off to work on expeditions.
Kancha Sherpa is the last surviving member of that 1953 expedition, perhaps because he was very young when he went off to Darjeeling in search of expedition work. Kancha told me his story in December 2009 in Namche.
“When I was a kid we were so poor, we had no mattresses just yak skins and the wooden plank for a pillow. We used to walk to Kathmandu in 8 days, carrying tsampa cause we had no money to stay in hotels.
“We carried loads to Tibet. There were three people who traded Nepali paper to Tibet to use in the prayer wheels. We earned Rs.5 to carry 30 kg loads for the 4-day trip to Kyabrak, just over the Nangpala. The Tibetans would pay us in salt – 8 pathis (30 kg) that we carried back to Khumbu in three days. Then we carried four pathis at a time to Kharikhola where we got three parts of corn for one of salt – so we could not take too much salt at once to be able to carry the corn back to Namche.
“Then we dried and ground the corn to eat. Then we started the whole circuit all again. The paper was made in Karikhola and they brought it here to sell. There was thick and thin paper for the inside of prayer wheels and pecha (religious books). At the age of 13-15, I would go 11 times a year over the pass. We were walking on snow for about an hour at the top of the pass.
“I first went to climb in 1953. Three friends and I decided to go to Darjeeling to see if we could get work on an expedition. While my mother was out with everyone dancing in a potato field, I hid some corn flour in one of her shirts. My friends each had Rs.15 and 20, but I had none so I took the corn for us to eat. We left at night and got to Chaunrikharka at day light -looking over our shoulders to see if our families were coming for us.
“It took four days of walking over the hills to get to Darjeeling. We met a woman from Thame village there, carrying a load of vegetables. We asked her where Tenzing’s house was. She took us to his little house. He asked who our fathers were and since he knew my father, he took me in to work while my friends found work elsewhere. Tenzing liked my work cleaning and getting firewood so he said he would take me to Everest in a month. I was so happy, I carried even more firewood.
“Then I worked on expeditions until 1973, when my wife asked me to stop as so many friends had been killed. I liked the expeditions cause I got clothes and money.
“During these years, 1953-73, I would also earn more money by buying western watches in Calcutta with loans, and selling them in Tibet. One time in Shakya, I was caught by the Chinese army, who took all my watches and money. We were stuck inside the jail for a week without any water. My older brother was in jail in Lhasa because they did not know who was Tibetan or Sherpa. I had a letter written and showed our Nepali passports. Eventually, we got back here.
“Afterwards, I started working trekking. Since I can only write my name, Kancha (Tenzing’s little daughter taught me in 1953), I’d keep accounts on trek with my beads and have someone who could write make notes.
“Now, we earn money here and don’t have to go away. The kids whose parents have earned well with hotels all have good educations. Now, the Tibetans all come here to trade and earn money. Now, I’m an old man doing my prayers.”
Life with the Sherpas revealed different ways of seeing the world. It peeled away my preconceived notions. I have come to see that while outside cultures divide us, inner cultures, the core of all religions and beliefs, can bring us together.
Arriving at the ridge crest, each Sherpa companion murmured a prayer and placed a small stone from the path on the cairn with prayer flags. I followed suit, relieved that our trekking group had traveled this path safely.
Further along, we paused and turned out backs as wind and dust blasted across the pastures. We hid our faces in our jackets. Seeing only the ground before me, a premonition — an impact on the back of my head and a sudden sense of nothingness.
I reacted by taking two steps forward. In that instant a thick plank, blown off a nearby hut, hit the back of my ankle. Stunned, I realized that had I not moved, the plank would have struck my head.
This event was my first real experience with the Sherpa perception of place, of the power of these mountains.
Mountain scenery first attracted me to the Himalaya, but the warm, friendly people became my enduring connection. From 1983 to 1989, I had the opportunity and privilege to live and work with Sherpa people in the Khumbu Valley of east Nepal near Mount Everest, helping to create a museum of Sherpa culture at Tengboche monastery.
The Sherpas are renowned through the literature of adventure, where they have earned an international reputation for their work on mountaineering expeditions, especially on Everest. However, this reputation focuses on an occupation, rather than the Sherpas’ rich cultural heritage.
The museum described mostly what the Abbot of Tengboche calls the Sherpas’ “inner culture” and the importance of ceremonies that link their spiritual and physical lives. The preparation of the museum took time because it was essential to first know the people and the many dimensions of their culture in order to accurately and concisely depict it.
While compiling information for the museum, I often found that conversations encompassed aspects of philosophy, psychology, and spirituality. Often the subjects we discussed wandered to the questions we seek to answer with religion or science: How did the earth begin? What happens after death? What is our relationship to nature? To our symbols in the environment?
Conversations encompassed the metaphysical and the everyday.
Over the years, my questions turned from the intellectual to the intuitive. I began to experience the culture rather than question it. Life with the Sherpas revealed different ways of seeing the world. It peeled away my preconceived notions so that I began to appreciate the significance of rituals, traditions, and symbols. In the process, I was changed.
Sherpa friends introduced me to a new way of seeing the world through everyday life. Whether monk or shepherd, they know who they are and what they believe as “Sherpa people”. I saw an acceptance of mystery and of questions we just cannot answer.
Living in another culture forced me to think about how it works, to confront the ironies and inconsistencies of a different way of being. Soon, I realized that one layer of meaning reveals more queries within. The more one starts to understand, the more one realizes all there is to question and explore.
Looking at other cultures as different from our own, we split the whole into parts. We analyze what we see happening and ask why. For people of the other culture, it is their way of life.
We examine the oddity of different traditions and customs rather than the inner purposes that might bring us into an understanding of the culture. We end up looking at how the “other” culture is different from our culture rather than at our commonness in the wholeness of humankind.
While working on the museum, I started to see and question the ironies of my own culture and gained a new way of looking at myself and at my own way of life. I was moved by what I saw and experienced.
I became a believer in the value of inner culture that manifests itself in everything we do — in small actions in everyday life, in our interactions with everyone we meet, and in what we think and say.
I have come to see that while outside cultures divide us, inner cultures, the core of all religions and beliefs, can bring us together.
Tengboche holds a special place in the hearts and minds of both Sherpas and world visitors. On a ridge in the heart of the Khumbu valley, it is more than just a monastery. The scene of the monastery surrounded by snow-clad peaks, realizes many people’s notions of Shangri-La, of a sacred place beyond our daily existence.
Despite Tengboche’s fame, the Sherpas only founded celibate monasteries relatively recently. For about four centuries, they practised their faith in hermitages and each village’s gonda (temple) under the direction of married lamas (teachers) who performed the rituals required by the community.
Lama Sangwa Dorje footprints in stone, Tengboche
In 1914, the Abbot of Rongbuk monastery on the north side of Everest in Tibet told a devout Sherpa, Lama Gulu, to establish a celibate monastery in the Khumbu. Lama Gulu went home to Khumbu and discussed the request with other Sherpas. They proposed several sites, including a remote ridge called Tengboche. Lama Gulu returned for advice to Rongbuk, where the abbot replied, “At Tengboche, at the edge of the flat area, where Lama Sangwa Dorje left footprints in stone.”
Tengboche monks reading Buddhist books in Namche gompa
Sherpas from many villages worked for three years to build a gonda for Tengboche monastery. They completed it in 1919 and the Abbot of Rongbuk came for the opening celebrations. His presence attracted Sherpas from several days’ walk away. Thus, Tengboche became a focal point for Sherpa religious activities and the larger community of Khumbu.
In 1932, an earthquake destroyed the monastery’s main temple. Lama Gulu was not injured but passed away that night. The monks of Tengboche went to Tibet to visit the Rongbuk Abbot, who told them to rebuild the gonda. He donated some money to start the reconstruction.
Six years later, a young child from Nauche was brought to the Rongbuk Abbot, who recognized him as the reincarnation of Lama Gulu.
That child grew up to be Tengboche Rinpoche, the abbot of Tengboche monastery in the Khumbu valley. The Sherpas regard him as the reincarnate of the monastery’s founder. Everyone calls him by his title, Tengboche Rinpoche, and rarely by his given name, Ngawang Tenzing Zangbu.
Tibetan Buddhists reserve the title Rinpoche for special teachers and their reincarnates. The Buddhist people of the Himalaya revere thousands of rinpoches in Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, and India.
When asked about the changes in the Khumbu valley, Tengboche Rinpoche has replied:
“There are outward changes in appearances: some of our dress, houses, occupations, and opportunities.
“However, our Sherpa ceremonies and traditions — how we name children, assist the dead, get married, and celebrate a year’s passage — all this remains intact. What is most important to us remains. The coming of foreign visitors to Khumbu has not changed our inner culture.”
Prayer flags flutter at a notch in a jagged, rocky ridge. Our group of Sherpas and foreign trekkers has trekked carefully down the narrow track made slippery by snow, ice, and mud.
At the pass is a cairn with prayer flags, a labtsa. Each Sherpa companion places a small stone from the path onto the cairn, giving thanks that our trekking group has safely finished this part of our journey. I follow suit.
Further down the trail, we turn our backs to gusts of wind. In the fury of blowing dust, we hide our faces inside our jackets. Though I see only the ground before me, a vision fills my mind — a hard impact on the back of my head, and then a sudden void.
I react by taking two steps forward…
In that instant, a thick board blown off a nearby hut hits the back of my ankle. Shocked, I feel the pain in my ankle ebbing with the realization that the board would have struck my head if I had not stepped forward.
After the incident, Sherpa friends explain my premonition. “Khumbila, our local mountain god, protects all of us in this Khumbu valley. He may have sent the vision to help you move from harm’s way.”
Two weeks later, I ask Tengboche Rinpoche about the suggestion that the incident was protection from Khumbila. He is quiet for several minutes, and then says, “Yes, Khumbila helped you by bringing that insight. This means of protection works forthe Sherpas because we understand the power of this place. Although you are not Sherpa, you have lived here long enough.”
For years, I have heard of Khumbila, the spiritual guardian of Khumbu, but I have never really understood how he protected the valley’s inhabitants. Wondering about recent disasters, I ask, “How about the giant flood last year? Where was Khumbila then?”
“The flood reminded us to cherish our land. It was going to happen, but very few people were killed. Perhaps Khumbila’s influence held the flood until a day when many people were at a festival high in the yak pastures. Imagine if the flood had happened in October when the trails by the river would have been crowded with Sherpas, porters, and trekkers. Khumbila protected us from that disaster.
Khumbila, the protector of the Khumbu valley
“Khumbila cannot protect everyone from everything. His protection depends on karma, the impending consequences of our behaviour. If your work here was without merit, if you had not been open to our Sherpa way of seeing the world, you may not have been able to see the vision Khumbila offered.”
As a Westerner, I had tried at first to intellectually understand this other way of seeing the world. Being with people with different perceptions and assumptions, I gradually learned to perceive and accept other cultures and ways of life. The total immersion in Sherpa culture led not to a rejection of my culture, but to a realization that other ways of being work for people in different geographic situations.
The people of the Himalaya believe the mountain peaks, ridges, passes, fields and homes are the abodes of deities representing the power of the place. The prayer flags, ceremonies, and little rituals of everyday life in these places acknowledge some greater power.
The Sherpas’ lives embrace extremes: folk belief and a profound spirituality, loneliness and social obligation, deprivation and abundance. The existence of one extreme doesn’t rule out the possibility of its opposite.
For the Sherpas, Khumbila is the short name of the Khumbu-yul-lha, “Khumbu country- god”. He is the protector of the land, people, and religion of the Khumbu. He is shown riding a great white horse and carrying a tall banner. Rinpoche says, “Khumbila wears the traditional turban-like headgear that men wore in the old days.
When I was a boy, the mountain had a ring of snow, like the headdress, at its summit.”
Rinpoche tells how the Sherpas’ ancestors brought books from Tibet describing the mountain and a valley that would be a refuge for people fleeing trouble in Tibet. At the centre of this valley is the mountain Khumbila, the abode of the protector deity.
Sherpas and Tibetans also believe that Everest is the abode of the goddess Jomo Miyo Langsangma. This lovely resident of the earth’s highest place is one of the five Long-Life Sisters inhabiting peaks of the Himalaya. Tengboche Rinpoche describes her:
Jomo Miyo Langsangma resides on Everest.
She is the goddess of humans and rides a red tiger. Miyo Langsangma is very pretty. Her skin is orange and bright, flowers wreathe her head, and she wears many colours of silk cloth. She holds a long bowl of food in her right hand and a mongoose that spits out wealth in her left.”
Legends say this goddess distributes wealth and good fortune. In modern times, expeditions and treks to Everest have brought affluence to many Sherpas. At the start of each expedition, Sherpa crews perform rituals to appease the goddess before entering her abode.
The Khumbu Icefall above Everest Base Camp
The Tengboche monks are conscious that the ridge where the monastery sits is the abode of a minor female deity, a lhamo. This day is the annual ritual at the cairn on the ridge to honour the goddess of this place.
The ridge above Tengboche is 3,000 feet higher than the main Khumbu villages and surrounded by mountains. It rises from forestedslopes to a jagged summit plastered with finely fluted snow. At a low crest of the ridge is a large cairn with prayer flags. This lhapso is a monument acknowledging the power there.
Today, the monks are preparing new flags to place on the lhapso. In the gonda courtyard, two monks are printing flags. The first monk brushes ink onto a wooden block etched with the reverse image of a religious image. He positions a piece of cotton on the block and holds it in place while the other monk runs a roller over the cloth. The image prints onto the fabric. Two older monks stitch the flags onto long bamboo sticks.
Two young monks bound back into the courtyard after the twenty-minute trip up and down the mountainside to deliver flags to the lhapso site.
Each boy grips another armload of bamboo poles against his chest, gingerly balancing the sticks twice as tall as themselves. As they scuffle up the hill, they are careful not to desecrate the flags by letting them touch the ground.
Monks carry low tables, cushions, ritual instruments, and Thermoses of tea up the ridge. They arrange the cushions and tables along the edge of the forest. A middle-aged monk places sculptures of tsampa (barley flour) and butter, called torma, on a ledge on the cairn. The flat ground by the lhapso becomes an outdoor temple.
This lhapso is a stone and plaster cairn six feet high. Standing on top, the prayer leader removes old flags and carefully pushes the new flags’ bamboo poles into its earthen top. Other monks pile the old flags and green juniper boughs onto a smouldering fire. Fragrant smoke billows from the juniper. It signals that the ceremony is ready to start. Half an hour later all the monks finally arrive at the site.
The monks sit facing Khumbila to the west, across the gorge from Tengboche. Behind them, large yellow rhododendron blooms cover the trees. The monks blow horns, clatter cymbals, and chant prayers to the deity of the ridge, who personifies the power of this place.
In the ceremony, Rinpoche recites the prayers with intense concentration. Afterwards, he describes the prayers: “The prayers connect the spiritual with the physical. Our thoughts connect with the power of nature. We restore the harmony between us, nature, and spiritual beings.”
Creating harmony with the environment through prayers at TengbocheIt is not easy living in these mountains. On the narrow trails or in the fields, the immense power of the land can harm or kill. Sherpas do not tame nature; they accommodate this power that is beyond their control. Ceremonies to harmonize humans and nature give people a way to understand their environment.
Sherpas explain the power of their environment through a view that everything exists in two forms: the physical and the spiritual. They may see a god either as a real personality living on a mountaintop or as a symbol of nature’s power.
Their beliefs embrace tiers of explanations with deeper and deeper meanings, but all these rituals and objects of everyday life — the ceremonies, prayer flags, and Mani stones — acknowledge some greater power.
To quote Tibetan writer Thubten Jigme Norbu: “You find prayer flags on hills, mountains, by lakes and always on the crest of passes. It does not really matter whether these spirits exist. What matters is that through these stories we have come to believe that everywhere, all around us, at all times, there is some power that is greater than ourselves.”
Some power greater than ourselves — glaciers on Nuptse
The ritual on the mountainside draws to a close, as the monks’ prayers and horns merge with the whistle of the wind. Smouldering juniper incense mingles with wispy clouds condensing around the mountainside. Smoke from juniper incense mingles with clouds above Tengboche.
As chants and wind seem to merge the metaphysical and the everyday, I appreciate that moment when a metaphysical being might have intervened in my everyday life.
1 Thubten Jigme Norbu and Colin Turnbull, Tibet: Its History, Religion, and People, Penguin Books, 1968. Pg. 32.
From ‘Gaiety of Spirit: The Sherpas of Everest’ copyright: Frances Klatzel 2009
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