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Helen Tworkov, in her recent book, Lotus Girl, recounts how she spent some months in Kathmandu and Pokhara, Nepal in the mid-1960s. She found herself among Tibetan refugees who had made a perilous journey across the Himalayas to escape the Chinese invasion of their homeland. Less than half had survived the journey. What impressed Helen most about the refugees was their ability to experience joy even in the midst of their suffering. They were able to see the light inside the dark.

Yunmen taught, “Everybody has a light inside. Sometimes it’s dark, dark, hidden and hard to see. What is this light?”

“What is that light?”, asked Yunmen.
He answered himself, “Kitchen pantry and temple gate.”

Twenty years after Helen’s travels I found myself in Kathmandu, also experiencing that light, as a blessing from the Hindu goddess of fortune.

In the mid 80s I was hired by a large publisher of books and magazines to return to Japan, where I had lived for four years as a correspondent covering business news for magazines like International Plastics and BusinessWeek. Expected in Tokyo on the first of November, I decided to take three weeks beforehand to trek in Nepal.

Kathmandu was a densely packed, low-rise city built of brick and mud an painted in earth tones. It was also exceedingly poor. I was a little ashamed of my revulsion at the poverty: streets lined with garbage, town squares littered with human waste and the occasional dead animal. It was a relief for me to escape the misery of the city for a climb into the grand purity of the Himalayas.

In the trekking permit office, I was lucky to join up with a small group from Seattle to hike the backside of the Annapurna range, a range of imposing peaks five miles high. In the first ten days we made good time, but after crossing the 5,000-meter Thorong-La Pass, I realized that if I were to make my October 28 airplane departure to Tokyo via Bangkok—the beginning of my new career and life—I would have to go ahead alone.

Fearful of losing my job if I were late, I hiked for the three days from pre-dawn dark to sunset, covering much of the hundred miles from Muktinath to Pokhara in flip flops to allow my boot-shod feet to heal.

On the morning of the fourth day, I entered the dusty bus station at Pokhara, ready to jump on a bus for the six-hour ride to Kathmandu. Nothing. No buses. No attendants. Someone said the bus station was closed for an extended holiday.

Exhausted, discouraged, and now sure I would be late for my job, I threw my pack on the front steps of the station and sat down. A few minutes later a young man with a cheap Indian-made camera approached and asked if I would fix it for him. Its shutter was stuck, which I easily unjammed. Handing it back to him I asked, “Now, can you find me a ride to Kathmandu?” A half hour later, I was favored to be bumping eastward along the Prithvi Highway in a beat-up Toyota Celica, with three Brahmins squished in the back and me sharing the front with a young driver pining for his girlfriend in Kathmandu. We were mostly silent during the long drive and arrived on the outskirts of Kathmandu in the dark.

Entering the city, all electric street and house lights were extinguished, but every window was glowing with the warm light of oil lamps. It was the first night of the Hindu Festival of Light, Diwali, which honors Lakshmi, the mother of the universe and goddess of good fortune. This festival celebrates the victory of light over dark. The flickering oil lamps helped me find my way back from the third to the first world of schedules, jobs, and industry. Yet it’s still important for me to ask: “What is that light?”

—Jon Joseph

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Jon Joseph Roshi, Director of San Mateo Zen Community