Join clinical psychologist Tracey Allysson in a talk about her book, Dying & Living in the Arms of Love; One Woman’s Journey around Mount Kailash, at Brooks Memorial Library on Wednesday, April 30, 7 PM in the meeting room on the 2nd floor. Alysson circumambulates Mt. Kailash through prostrations and records her life-altering sojourn at the center of the spiritual universe. Tracey Alysson has a Ph.D. and is a clinical psychologist with a passion for the spiritual in human experience and the human in spiritual experience, records her pilgrimage to Tibet in her book.
Alysson’s work is an autobiographical travel book reminiscent of Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer’s bestseller “Seven Years in Tibet.”“I was not aware that circumambulating Mt. Kailash is called khora, and that a very small number of pilgrims will do khora with prostrations,” Alysson recollects. “It was from within my heart that there arose a fierce longing and devotion to go to Kailash, to lie on the land of Tibet with my heart open wide.
”Rising magnificently in the wilderness of Western Tibet, Mt. Kailash is one of three sacred mountains in Tibet. Its shape is unmistakable: a symmetrical cone marked with striations and graced with perpetual snows. Four rivers emanate from it, nourishing the entire region. Mt. Kailash is the center of the spiritual universe, and is sacred to four religions: Buddhism, Hinduism, Bon, and Jainism. Alysson’s book covers her khora around this scared mountain in response to a calling from within. Most pilgrims walk the 34-mile circuit in 3 days. Alysson prostrated the 34 miles in 28 consecutive days. She is probably the first Westerner to circumambulate Mt. Kailash through prostrations.
She begins her khora at Tarboche, site of important Tibetan religious festivals, dressed in leather apron and hand clogs to protect her body and clothes from the constant contact with the rugged, mountainous terrain. The trail climbs from an altitude of 14,500 feet at Tarboche to 18,500 feet at Drolma La Pass, a treacherous area where several people die each year because of the altitude and temperature. It then continues back down to 14,500 feet at Darchen, a small town at the base of Mt. Kailash, before finally completing the circuit around the mountain at Tarboche where Alysson began. She meets pilgrims from all over the world, encounters wild dogs, breathtaking landscapes, and the loss of all points of orientation, all familiarity of self or place, as she prostrates, often alone day after day, through the wilderness of the Tibetan high plateau.
It is said that circumambulating Kailash dissolves a year of karma. She learned that it also dissolves one’s life, leaving one naked and grateful in the arms of love. Readers inclined to similar spiritual quests, or to exploration of the few untouched places on our planet, or to the experience of Tibet as it struggles with the invasion of the Chinese culture, will find Dying & Living in the Arms of Love a great inspiration and testament to the greatest longings of the human spirit.
Location Meeting Room. Contact Jerry Carbone, 802-254-5290, ext 101
