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‘Its the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashios which the herds so diligently follow.’

‘To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but to so love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.’

‘So much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle, throwing the stones over their heads behind them, and not seeing where they fell.’

‘Walden was pitched as an alternative to these alternatived. It was designed to leave a lot of life out, not only kids and family but everything that comes with them — competitive dinner parties, the struggle for promotion. Because when we buy or rent a house, when we work the job it takes to afford it, we’re striving not just for shelter but a whole range of ordinary ambitions.’

‘Walk Straight on Following Your Heart’s Desire.’

‘His foot was swollen out of shape and could bear no weight. What was to be done? Turning back was impossible, and so the mother wished to hurry to the nearest village for help. But this would be Po country, and the Popa inhabitans were famous as bandits, even cannibals.’

‘Alexandra soon found herself a guest of ordinary Tibetans while posing as a beggar. Already she had adopted certain habits of the country, such as blowing her nose with her vingers, sitting calmy on a dirt floor spotted with grease and spit, or whiping her soiled hands on her dress.’

‘The Tibetan books from which she copied were actually collections of block-printed single sheets. Nagarjuna’s most famous work, The Diamond Sutra, is contained in one hundred such volumes of a thousand pages each.’

‘One morning Alexandra awoke to find a few severed heads impaled on a wall in front of her door. Bandits, she was told, but their contorted faced looked no more guilty than those of the government soldiers. She heard that in warfare between Tibetans and Chinese troops that continued sporadically along the frontier, winners of a battle made a stew of the losers’ hearts — they ate them with rice.’

‘Traditionally, graduates of this course were tested on a frosty night with a hard wind blowing. They set cross-legged on the bank of an ice-encrusted river or lake while sheets were dipped in the water and one was draped over each man’s torso; using tumo, he was expected to dry it. By daybreak the succesful practioner might have dried as many as forty sheets.’

‘Tumo was the most vital practice of the anchorites, enabling them to survive brutal weather without fuel, of which there is little in the mountains, naked or clad only in a light shift. The transcendental yogi Milarepa, it’s foremost exponent, praised tumo as the best clothing.’ Tumo is a pracitce of breathing that generates body heat.

‘The Gomchen and Alexandra would sit together in silence in a darkened room, focused on the same object. The goal was en entirely unified mental state. Later, whilst camping in the wilds, Alexandra would record instances of the use of telepathy at great distances, of receiving messages the Tibetans termed “written on the wind”.

‘Before he arrived Chinese armies under the capable general Chao Erh-feng had invaded his country, looted and set fire to monestaries, melted sacred images for bullets, murdered hundreds of monks, and ripped up ancient books to sole the boots of their soldiers. They were planning a military road from Batang in Kham province to Lhasa. It was a preview of the pillage of Tibet in 1959 and afterward.’

‘Soon everyone became entranced by the wild, magnificent scenery. As the Army approached Lhasa and caught sight of the golden roofs of the Potala Palace, a race developed to be, in Macdonald’s words, “the first living European to set eyes on the Forbidden City of the Lamas.” On August 4 the British entered, tearing aside the veil of centuries.’

‘In ancient times the women of Tibet had ruled forts and whole provinces. In the late nineteenth century, W. W. Rockhill, the American ambassador to China, claimed that their legal and social position was superior not only to other asian women but also to women in Europe.’

‘In ancient times the women of Tibet had ruled forts and whole provinces. In the late nineteenth century, W. W. Rockhill, the American ambassador to China, claimed that their legal and social position was superior not only to other asian women but also to women in Europe.’

Sick dat mijn voorgaande boek zich voornamelijk afspeelde in de Bengaalse stad Calcutta, en dat Alexandra in dit huidige boek in 1912 hier naartoe verhuisd. Een soort ruil qua locaties want Tagore woonde toen in Alexandra’s voormalige woonstad Londen. Zo blijf ik toch nog een beetje in m’n vorige (wat ik nog uit moet lezen) boek.

‘These comings and goings were a river she could not fanthom. She was disturbed by the gestures of a fancy harlot to hoped-for customers at a café, themselves too drowned in absinthe to notice. Had humans descended from the moon to arrive at this?’

‘He wouldn’t have dreamed that in the belt strapped beneath her clothes she carried exquisite gold jewelry — the gift of a maharaja — which she kept on her in person. That she had stached an automatic pistol might have surprised him even more.’

‘The secret service had watched her, giving her the code name French Nun. By tracking her, they verified beyond doubt her travels across the vast Tibetan plateau — where they had tried to keep her from going.’

‘Skeptic, rational mystic, indefatigable traveler, and explorer — here was a woman who had gone to India and Tibet, lived there for fourteen years among a wide variety of types from maharajas to bandits to naljorpas (adepts), and returned to write intriguing but dispassionate accounts of what she had observed. Here was the world of Tibet before the Chinese occupation, indeed before the wheeled vehicle.

‘If we are just beginning to appreciate the role of Beat writers such as Karouac and Ginsberg in transmitting Buddhism to America, much of what they learned of Tibetan Buddhism stems from her. Alexandra and the Beats shared a love of the big, blue sky over and expanse of land undesecrated by man.’

‘In that time she led a youthful life as a student radical, had a career as an opera singer admired by Massenet, became a feminist journalist who flirted with Mussolini, tried conventional marriage at which she failed, journeyed to India, Tibet, China where she studied, traveled and wrote despite famine, plague and civil war, and where she was effortlessly at home.’

Na een keer over deze personage gelezen te hebben kon ik nu niet langer wachten om meer over haar te leren, om vervolgens ook te beginnen aan haar eigen boeken. Dus de Tagore short stories word even aan de kant gelegd, om ruimte te maken voor deze bio over de ontdekkingsreizigster die als eerste westerse vrouw een bezoek heeft gebracht aan de verboden stad Lhasa, te Tibet. Ze leefde van 1868 tot 1969.

‘If but one more wave had come, we would have been shed from out slender, seperate stems of existence and become one.’

‘We cling with both arms to false hope, refusing to believe the weightiest proofs against it, embracing it with all our strength. In the end it escapes, ripping out veins and draining our heart’s blood; until, regaining consciousness, we rush to fall into snares of delision all over again.’

‘Who belonged to whom in this world?’

‘All it can do is love with double intensity, because it owns so uncertainly.’