Kailash & Eden in A Circle of Light
If Eden is the memory of a beginning we lost, perhaps Kailash is the memory of a sacred center we still walk around.
To circle Kailash is to walk the perimeter of paradise, with the knowledge that some holiness is too whole to enter.
Only to behold.
A poetic meditation
They say Eden once held the heart of the world…
where rivers ran like veins of gold
and the breath of God stirred the leaves.
A garden not just of trees,
but of origin.
Wholeness.
Union.
Until it slipped from our grasp
like a dream we woke from too soon.
But perhaps… not all was lost.
Far across time and terrain,
a mountain rises:
Kailash.
White-crowned, still,
untouched not by inaccessibility,
but by reverence.
Four rivers flow from its feet,
like Eden once did:
life radiating in all directions,
as if the world itself
were exhaling from a single, sacred lung.
No one climbs Kailash.
Not because they cannot.
But because they must not.
It is a summit made not for the soles of feet,
but for the soul’s unfolding.
To circle it is to bow without kneeling,
to worship without words.
It does not demand entry…
only that you keep walking,
inward, outward,
around the silence
that speaks louder than thunder.
Kailash is not Eden reborn.
But it is a remembrance.
A mirror.
A whisper that the garden still exists:
not to be re-entered,
but to be encircled,
guarded not by angels with flaming swords,
but by the stillness of snow,
and the refusal to be possessed.
And so we walk.
Not toward the center,
but around it.
Not to reclaim paradise,
but to remember
that the sacred was never meant to be seized…
only seen,
and circled
with reverent steps.
Here are meaningful quotes from each of the four traditions that honour the landscape, humility, and the sacred interplay of human and nature … perfect reflections for our journey around Mount Kailash.
Hinduism
“Ether, air, fire, water, earth, planets, all creatures, directions, trees and plants, rivers and seas. They are all organs of God’s body. Remembering this a devotee respects all species.”
patheos.com+1
This quote invites us to see the mountain, the rivers, the air, the pilgrims … all as sacred expressions of divinity. In our story, the four companions are not separate from the land; they’re part of the body of the sacred.
Buddhism
“Reverence, humility, contentment, gratitude and hearing the good Dhamma, this is the best good‑luck.” . Gautama Buddha
A-Z Quotes+1
Here is the echo of what the mountain teaches: humility in the face of vastness, gratitude for every breath, the inward turning that whispers the outer journey is secondary to the inner one.
Jainism
“Parasparopagraho Jīvānām : Souls render service to one another.”
Wikipedia+1
In the solitude of the kora, each companion swims in the current of all living beings. The mountain, the rocks, the rivers, their own hearts … all joined in this web of reciprocity. The mountain doesn’t serve them; they serve the mountain and the mystery it holds.
Bon
While a direct quote proved elusive in translation, the tradition of the Bon religion (indigenous to the Tibetan Plateau) teaches that mountains are sacred seats of spiritual power and that nature is animated with presence and depth. World Pilgrimage Guide+1
So we can reflect in the spirit of Bon:
“In every ridge and river the world speaks. To listen is to honour its stillness.”
Circled with reverent steps…
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A poetic guide and creator, adept in finding and explaining poems across cultures.
