A KORA OF KORAS

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Going Round in Circles
In the foothills of the Himalayas lies a sacred lake called Tso Pema; a jewel
sitting in a mountain bowl of hills. Above the lake is a large,150ft high, goldengilded,
brightly painted statue of Padmasambhava, his eyes wide open expressing
fierceness, compassion and delight. 1 Beneath his paradoxical gaze walk Tibetans
of all ages, moving clockwise round the waters night and day.
I arrived at four in the morning after an overnight bus from Delhi. It was early
spring, still cold, dark and quiet. From the Tibetan monasteries and small lanes
that surround the lake, monks and lay people streamed out onto the path that
circles the water, many of them holding a spinning prayer wheel 2 in their right
hand or fingering a mala of beads. Most looked straight ahead, absorbed in
practice, atoning for past deeds, accumulating merit for the future, reciting a
mantra, 3 a prayered description of Reality revealed over a thousand years ago,
attuning themselves to its meaning of the always, already Reality of Liberation,
sounding its purifying vibration through their bodies and out into the world; they
were engaged in a Kora, a circumnambulation of a sacred place, they were going
round in circles.