Today we can enjoy a leisurely car drive to this amazing monastery and village – Dhankar Gompa, and move on within minutes in the summer months. But think about how this kind of living was all the hundreds of years prior to any road or motorized vehicles!
Winters as cold as can be – centuries without any climate change to ease the cold. Winters are still bone chillingly cold at these altitudes and life is very simple. The road is closed throughout the winter months, ensuring isolation until the early summer.
So why go through all the hardship and build a monastery up here on the edge of cliffs high above the valley?
If you are a true seeker, one that is only concerned with the inner world. One that has no other wish but finding and expressing the eternal light within.
One that has no desire for anything but remembering the true nature and the source from where we are all rooted.
Where will you go?
Will you go to the cities, where myriads upon myriads of impulses drive you away from truth and the eternal?
Will your heart sing in the noise of the masses and the hunger for immediate satisfaction of the body and mind?
Will your heart sing when the heavy burden of tradition and expectations from past and current generations has already decided who you are and should be?
When your heart is burdened with inability to express its true nature and there is no contentment, no joy, no gratefulness of existence.
An urgency to follow the inner light grows with each heartbeat.
One day there will be no choice but to find that special place here on earth where there is room to be at one with the universe.
What better place than this?
Centuries ago individuals sought spiritual guidance in several monasteries, or lived out their lives in just one.
Some monasteries even had enlightened individuals – those that had experienced the ultimate explosion of light and shared this overflow through either leading the monastery or simply being available.
Elevation: 3874 meters
Last updated on 7 October 2021
