An edition of Fosco Mariani “Secret Tibet” with debossed Mani mantras.
I stumbled across this passage a few years ago in Fosco Mariani’s “Secret Tibet” (1951) – one of the great accounts of travel in Tibet before the Chinese occupation. Very beautifully and without recall to superstition, it encapsulates the vedic idea of the individual human’s spirit as a fragment of the larger universal consciousness; I think it would make an excellent reading for a funeral.
Running water reminds one strangely of human life. It first emerges so thin and small and devoid of strength. In its infancy it runs sparkling through meadows, among flowers and shining stones. Then the waters gain in weight and vigour and rush downhill; their youth is bold and happy, a time of singing and dancing in the sun, celebrating noisy marriages with tributaries, forming crazy little waterfalls and exultant little lakes. All is joy and high spirits. But gradually the slope diminishes, and the stream grows and becomes a river; youth turns into manhood. Its course is now more regular; it no longer runs crazily, but has become sensible and strong. It is less beautiful, but has become useful to agriculture and industry. What makes it attractive now is its calm, serene maturity. Enthusiasm, love, passion, beauty, have given way to quiet, useful purposefulness. At last it imperceptibly approaches the estuary; the lagoon-like expanses, the sadness and sweetness of old age. Then it once more mixes with the original waters.
Fosco Mariani: “Secret Tibet” p287-288