Published in the Epoch Journal by Epoch Press, Scotland, Fall 2021. Copyrighted.
Shambala: Mythical City of the Heart
The only journey is the one within. Rainer Maria Rilke
The entrance to the mythical city of Shambala is said to be near the Belukha Mountain in the Southern Siberian mountain range, while others believe it to be in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, or Uzbekistan. Some say it’s a journey rather than a place, life getting in the way of dreams, or a dream itself. Maybe it doesn’t really matter, but maybe it’s all that matters.
We’re not who we were a year ago or three or twenty years ago. You’re sitting on a roof with me and we’re sharing a chocolate bar, ladybugs on our knee. Maybe this is what God feels like: cozy and somewhat magical, feet dangling in mid-air. We look great, the two of us, and this moment is our lucky number, our Shambala.
It was so comfortable growing up with parents who gave everything love but few possessions; I learned to sleep well and dream deeply, to be satisfied with a set of encyclopedias and one school dress for the week and another for the weekend. Security was my pillow, and there were brothers and other children to ride a bike with, play baseball with, basketball. There were no cares on that path, but in what world does it stay that way?
Between the Himalayas and the Gobi Desert, the “Pure Land” is reachable through a gateway, legend tells us. The gateway is a bridge between worlds, a portal leading to another realm. In some accounts, the land is subterranean, called Agharta. In both cases, it’s a place that represents wisdom, love, and perfection.
The tiny white pills would make me thinner than the stick I already was. It was the age of Twiggy, and I, like so many other gals, aspired to that in those late teen years. An ex-junkie Vietnam-vet boyfriend I met while working a short stint in a factory got them for me, one or two a day, I can’t recall, maybe three. They sped me up, burned it off, muted my appetite, and eventually I could wear everything, the smallest clothes. 105 pounds. Five feet eleven inches tall. Mother noticed, as she always did, so I stopped. I stopped stepping on the scale hoping to see the numbers slide backward to 100. I chose a new path, another gateway.
Shambala is the “place of peace” in Sanskrit. It’s a path and a way. It’s a search and an arrival. A heaven without aging, pain or sorrow. Only the pure in heart shall see God, according to the Christian Scriptures, and only the pure in heart shall exist in Shambala. The mythologies overlap and let’s hope there’s truth in there somewhere.
It was the age of psychedelics. (Oh those flowers in my eyes.) Woodstock had passed, we were too young, but desire was strong, and curiosity stronger. It looked like a sliver of glass. You put it on your tongue, he told me. We made out on his sofa; I saw mice or maybe rats, scurry across the floor; there was darkness and demons that wouldn’t leave. “It’s the acid,” he said, when I lamented his flaccidness that night. I crawled up the stairs of my parents’ house before dawn. Out of control, the mind on a return trip from somewhere I would never go again, I cried out to something outside myself. The next day my mother said she heard me talking, and was I okay. I’m always okay, I told her. Lies. We choose a path and sometimes we get lost along the winding road, the door is shut, and the return is long.
According to Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the wisest and best of a group of religious dissidents established Shambala. It will eventually enthrone the last of 32 kings, the final one leading a charge against the great evils present on earth (in the year 2029, some prophecies say), a final battle and the beginning of a glorious utopia.
I can’t count the times he touched me and I dropped to my knees. But don’t make the mistake of thinking me easy; I simply had nothing to fear, no great ideal worth following. How do we get to that place? Let’s just say it’s simpler to burn it down than build it up. I still see the look on each of their faces, the glow of brandy and weed, my need for meaning and comfort.
No one knows more than a child taking first steps, a lover planting a first kiss, the innocence of a rainbow. So what do we hear at the wall at night, when the wind abrades the siding, and before a color-filled new day? We hear a fervent desire to move on (but it’s not that simple, is it?). We wish to love better, to grieve less, to not get weak.
In the end, what’s wrong with the simple truth of heaven? Call it Shambala or Utopia or, yes, Heaven. It has come to represent a search and a journey, the path we hope to discover if we just look hard enough and have the courage to follow the signposts. But please go softly, softly. We have to let ourselves feel it. We feel it like the burn of a cigarette on the back of our hand. We feel it like a torrent of tears running down our face. We feel it like water on a dry and cracked field. We feel it like home.
Shambala: Mythical City of the Heart
The only journey is the one within. Rainer Maria Rilke
The entrance to the mythical city of Shambala is said to be near the Belukha Mountain in the Southern Siberian mountain range, while others believe it to be in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, or Uzbekistan. Some say it’s a journey rather than a place, life getting in the way of dreams, or a dream itself. Maybe it doesn’t really matter, but maybe it’s all that matters.
We’re not who we were a year ago or three or twenty years ago. You’re sitting on a roof with me and we’re sharing a chocolate bar, ladybugs on our knee. Maybe this is what God feels like: cozy and somewhat magical, feet dangling in mid-air. We look great, the two of us, and this moment is our lucky number, our Shambala.
It was so comfortable growing up with parents who gave everything love but few possessions; I learned to sleep well and dream deeply, to be satisfied with a set of encyclopedias and one school dress for the week and another for the weekend. Security was my pillow, and there were brothers and other children to ride a bike with, play baseball with, basketball. There were no cares on that path, but in what world does it stay that way?
Between the Himalayas and the Gobi Desert, the “Pure Land” is reachable through a gateway, legend tells us. The gateway is a bridge between worlds, a portal leading to another realm. In some accounts, the land is subterranean, called Agharta. In both cases, it’s a place that represents wisdom, love, and perfection.
The tiny white pills would make me thinner than the stick I already was. It was the age of Twiggy, and I, like so many other gals, aspired to that in those late teen years. An ex-junkie Vietnam-vet boyfriend I met while working a short stint in a factory got them for me, one or two a day, I can’t recall, maybe three. They sped me up, burned it off, muted my appetite, and eventually I could wear everything, the smallest clothes. 105 pounds. Five feet eleven inches tall. Mother noticed, as she always did, so I stopped. I stopped stepping on the scale hoping to see the numbers slide backward to 100. I chose a new path, another gateway.
Shambala is the “place of peace” in Sanskrit. It’s a path and a way. It’s a search and an arrival. A heaven without aging, pain or sorrow. Only the pure in heart shall see God, according to the Christian Scriptures, and only the pure in heart shall exist in Shambala. The mythologies overlap and let’s hope there’s truth in there somewhere.
It was the age of psychedelics. (Oh those flowers in my eyes.) Woodstock had passed, we were too young, but desire was strong, and curiosity stronger. It looked like a sliver of glass. You put it on your tongue, he told me. We made out on his sofa; I saw mice or maybe rats, scurry across the floor; there was darkness and demons that wouldn’t leave. “It’s the acid,” he said, when I lamented his flaccidness that night. I crawled up the stairs of my parents’ house before dawn. Out of control, the mind on a return trip from somewhere I would never go again, I cried out to something outside myself. The next day my mother said she heard me talking, and was I okay. I’m always okay, I told her. Lies. We choose a path and sometimes we get lost along the winding road, the door is shut, and the return is long.
According to Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the wisest and best of a group of religious dissidents established Shambala. It will eventually enthrone the last of 32 kings, the final one leading a charge against the great evils present on earth (in the year 2029, some prophecies say), a final battle and the beginning of a glorious utopia.
I can’t count the times he touched me and I dropped to my knees. But don’t make the mistake of thinking me easy; I simply had nothing to fear, no great ideal worth following. How do we get to that place? Let’s just say it’s simpler to burn it down than build it up. I still see the look on each of their faces, the glow of brandy and weed, my need for meaning and comfort.
No one knows more than a child taking first steps, a lover planting a first kiss, the innocence of a rainbow. So what do we hear at the wall at night, when the wind abrades the siding, and before a color-filled new day? We hear a fervent desire to move on (but it’s not that simple, is it?). We wish to love better, to grieve less, to not get weak.
In the end, what’s wrong with the simple truth of heaven? Call it Shambala or Utopia or, yes, Heaven. It has come to represent a search and a journey, the path we hope to discover if we just look hard enough and have the courage to follow the signposts. But please go softly, softly. We have to let ourselves feel it. We feel it like the burn of a cigarette on the back of our hand. We feel it like a torrent of tears running down our face. We feel it like water on a dry and cracked field. We feel it like home.