As we’ve settled into a new home during these COVID years, I’ve unpacked nearly all of the boxes of books I’ve had in storage. They’re now on the shelves, but most of them remain as unread as ever. In my meager attempt to change that trend, I’ve challenged myself to read as many of the Asian travelogues I’ve collected as possible. This photo-journalism piece about life among the Buddhists of Nepal was the first that caught my eye.

Hugh R. Downs (as far as I can tell) is not the Hugh Downs of broadcasting legendry, though I’m sure his name got some double-takes when this book was published in 1980. Instead, he’s an anthropologist and expert on Buddhist art and religion who lived in the tiny mountain villages of Nepal for at least three years before writing this book. While I anticipated discovering lots of general information about the monks and lamas of the Himalayan range in this book, I was pleasantly surprised also to read some of the deeper doctrines of Buddhism.

I have known a great many Buddhists over the years, especially in my travels. In fact, a large segment of my wife’s family remains nominally Buddhist and still practices a mixture of Buddhism and ancestor worship. One of the fascinating aspects of this book was Downs’ description of how Buddhism, when entering a new area, never seeks to overtake the local religions already present there. Instead, it adapts to the religions and shows through the local gods and customs how the main tenets of Buddhism had been there all along. His explanation goes far in helping me understand how the Buddhism I saw in Tibet was not the Buddhism I saw in Thailand nor in southern China nor in Laos—and yet, as different as those forms of the religion were, they still had common threads connecting them all together.

Of course, as a Christian, I can tell where those threads ultimately lead (or rather where they find their source), yet still this helps me understand what I see in real life. Christianity can be explained as behaving in a similar fashion on the world stage (a myriad of forms all with the common thread of “Jesus”), though I don’t believe this can be said of biblical Christianity. Perhaps orthodox Buddhists might say the same about the many tainted forms of their religion around the world, but something tells me they wouldn’t. Differentiation seems to be a virtue, just as “passing on” into the unknown consciousness like an echo of thunder is ostensibly where we’re all headed at death.

Downs breaks this book down into three sections, “Celebration,” “Vocation,” and “Return.” In “Celebration,” he introduces some of his contacts and describes monastery life for Buddhists. He focuses mainly on the reincarnated lama, Tulshig Rimpoche—and how reincarnation supposedly works—as well as a pictorial description of a mystery play with deep spiritual meaning.

In “Vocation,” he traces the historical roots of sacred painting by highlighting current painters endowed with the mystical skill. Most of these painters live in relative seclusion, and the pieces they create promise to provide spiritual insight to those who buy or otherwise acquire them.

In “Return,” Downs records the funeral of an elderly Buddhist and the steps the family and neighbors take to ensure that his consciousness returns to the great void in peace. The un-doctored photographs may prove disturbing to some, yet they offer a real sense of the pain that even Buddhists experience when souls leave these earthly shells.

I enjoyed in this book Downs’ three-element way of writing, with picture, commentary, and quotation. Virtually every set of pages includes all three for a well-rounded, educational look at a corner of the world that most humans will never see. Having traveled in Tibet and northern Yunnan Province in China myself, I found many of these scenes at least somewhat familiar, and it really helped me better understand the things that struck me back then as so completely foreign.

This book would be a great addition to any library on Eastern religions, and I think it could even be helpful for Christian missionaries looking to one day work among the people of the Himalayan ranges. I highly recommend it.

©2021 E.T.

Read More Travelogues from Asia:

• After You, Marco Polo by Jean Bowie Shor (1955)
• Mongolia by Silvio Micheli (1964)
• Chinese Journey by Jan Myrdal (1965)
• The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux (1975)
• Rhythms of a Himalayan Village by Hugh R. Downs (1980)
• Across China by Peter Jenkins (1986)
• Riding the Iron Rooster by Paul Theroux (1988)
• Seeing Vietnam by Susan Brownmiller (1994)
• Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China by Guy Delisle (2006)
• Burma Chronicles by Guy Delisle (2008)
• Why China Will Never Rule the World by Troy Parfitt (2011)
• Something Needs to Change by David Platt (2019)
• High by Erika Fatland (2020)