Wasfia Nazreen On The Spirituality of Climbing The Seven Summits

30:17I mean, you became, from what I gather, like pretty close with him, yes. 20 plus years now, but a lot of, I mean, you know, Holiness was much more active before. Now he's almost 90. So he can't give that much time and I haven't seen him for a long time, but whatever mountain I'm on, even when I was on K2, I got a message that, you know, blessing was there. And every single mountain in life that I've climbed, holiness was behind it. So I have three more teachers that are in the Tibetan world. I'll mention their names just in case someone recognizes. So Dilgo Khenzir Mposhé, who's a very prominent teacher, Tibetan teacher.

31:03He was a lay practitioner. And I share this because I think a lot of people put Tibetans as like, oh, only a monk can do this or a nun can do this. What the teachings of Buddha is for all humans. And the fact that lay people can do it with, you can be a rock star and you can still reach enlightenment. I'm not, I mean, that's not a, that's a weird example. Might be a little harder, but yeah. Yeah, but I'm just saying that the techniques work for any human mind. Buddha was a scientist. He, you know, he was a medicine man. He figured out the mind and taught 84 ,000 techniques for different kind of mindsets.

31:42Right. So we were talking about Dilgokhin Sirampashe and he was Dalai Lama's teacher. So right now we have the next incarnation of Dilgokhin Sirampashe, who's slightly younger than me. But he shapeshifts between the previous and this one. but he so why I mention him is when His Holiness leaves this incarnation the Gokhin Suryum Pushe alongside several other Lamas will be holding the region because the teacher can identify the students so the next recognition of the 15 Dalai Lama if he chooses to come back which he will hopefully because you know the next one is going to be very complicated because Chinese government is going to choose their own Dalai Lama And Mongolia also is sort of involved in that discourse.

32:30I mean, it's God knows what kind of shit show is going to happen. I know. So someone's going to have to hold it down. So like this one, this amulet was made by Dilgokhen Sirim, which was my main protection for Ketu. But no, so just to say that there's, even if I don't have a direct talking relationship with him being so far away, our minds are always connected. I know that when, and he says that all the time, because in the first few years, I got very clingy to my teachers, you know, not having any kind of family role models. And then you get these like powerful teachers. So they were the whole time trying to send me away, you know.

33:08And this is one thing that as someone who's practiced or like during my college years, I've tried out every single faith just to like from Baha is to Christian mysticism to mystic Judaism and everything. I just wanted to learn. And what really appealed to me is like, there is no, or at least how Tibetan Buddhists teach it is like, ultimately, you are your own guru. Yes, we have a teacher guru, meaning teacher, teacher, student, teacher, student, oral tradition from Buddha's time. But ultimately, you'd learn from us and then find your own guru. the power is within you. Pretty much Star Wars, which was based out of Tibetans.

33:59George Lucas actually went and spent six months in Dharamsala and came up with Star Wars. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, Yoda is one of holiness's teacher. I'll send you the article. Oh really? That's interesting. It's not surprising though. You know the part in the Ewok village? Gunda. Yeah. If you hear it, it's rewind. how do you say it? Like Tibetan stalking? Oh, in reverse. Backwards, like played backwards. Wow. So it's like, it's encoded. Everything that you see in Star Wars was taken from the Tibetan pantheon, the oracles. There's a whole living tradition of oracles in Tibetan diaspora. They're the, what is the other one?

34:46And within the oracles, there are different kind of, like there's a female, There's only three living oracles right now. Back in Tibet's blooming time, there were so many flying oracles, all types of oracles. Have you met the oracle in Haramzala, the female one? That's a whole other realm. There are shapeshifters of all kinds. Maybe I did and I didn't know it. Maybe. Yeah.

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38:37I appreciate this idea that we're not to deify the guru, right? Like it's about empowerment and a transmission of teachings and wisdom, but not for the sake of advancing the interest of the guru, but in empowering the individual to, you know, go on their own journey with what's been transmitted to that person. Yeah, and that every individual have, like we all have our own specific karma. You know, I live in LA and often see bumper stickers that says karma is a bitch. But I feel like here people only talk about karma when it comes to negative stuff. but this too is karma the positive the negative the neutral karma the word means action and all actions start like so we have body speech and mind action things we do physically things we say through our speech and then things that arise in our mind the most important is what arise because the first two depends on what arrives in the mind and all of it from time immemorial since our souls have existed is being recorded in kind of like a database like iCloud or Google +, whatever you use, like infinite.

39:58There's no unlimited capacity. But the Tibetan word for mind, for example, is not mind, it's mind continuum because the karma is every instant. I could be talking to you right now very pleasantly and have very negative thoughts about, oh, oh yeah, your t-shirt looks ugly. I'm creating negative karma even if I'm... And it's moment to moment and it's constantly being recorded. And when we die, our root mind, which remains in our heart chakra, so the brain is the cognitive mind and the soul's mind, which we call the root mind, is here. And only that, let's say it's like a chip that just, like a light chip that passes away with that information and then whichever body we go to, that's what's passed on.

40:50I don't know if it's karma or divine timing, but there's something interesting about the fact that you're here today right now. I mean, even the timing of it is extra fascinating to me because I am right now in a moment of reflection and sort of deep inner work that was catalyzed by my experience visiting the Dalai Lama six weeks ago. Oh, wow. And is also related to some of the inner work that you've done. So going to Dharamsala, spending time with him, having the opportunity to receive Darshan and his wisdom in a very structured kind of environment. Arthur Brooks was hosting it and he had a series of questions and a sort of arc of experience he wanted to take our group on.

41:41But as you know, the Dalai Lama doesn't necessarily play ball with that. Like he's gonna tell you what he wants to tell you or what he thinks that you need to hear or are capable of hearing. And over the course of these two days, pretty much without fail, his response to almost every question that was asked of him was the same. Like it was the same answer, which all track back to, you know, love and compassion, of course, but also this idea of the mother's love for the child. And I'm sure there's a version of that transmission that you've probably received many times. And I'm curious about not only on a higher level, like what you learned from all the time that you've spent with him and what you've taken away from that, but also how this relationship that you have with him has informed how you've navigated your own healing over the trauma of being abandoned by your mother.

42:41So when he says, when you're challenged to feel love or connect with love or to receive love or to give love, reflect upon the mother's love for a child, I'm sure when you, at least at that time, were in a position of reflecting on the mother's love for a child, all that would produce for you is pain. And it did. Yeah. So it's like, what am I supposed to do with that? Like basically it's the opposite of what he's trying to tell you because you have this experience that is blocking you from being able to kind of embrace that message. I remember his face when I snapped, like he said something very similar, like all women are mothers and mothers love, because he has had a beautiful mother loving relationship with his mother.

43:33His thing with his mom is like intense, right? So he shared that with me and he said, and this is before I actually told him that what happened to me. And I was, I could feel like, because I'm on Mars, my ruling planet is Mars, I'm fire. So it was my biggest thing that I had to get rid of, my anger. Like if you met me in my 20s and late 20s at least, I was a different being. I couldn't control the anger within me. Different version of anger, the whole spectrum. And then he was very shocked to hear after that. And he just went, you know, as these Tibetans do this all the time to express disapproval.

44:16And then, was it that meeting? No, it was a different meeting when he said, but your real mother is Mother Nature, no? And at that time, I had already gone back to Nepal to climb some like smaller mountains, which are in Nepal, 5 ,000, 6 ,000 meter peaks, which is also a blessing for me. Like I, by default, started in the Himalayas, which is unusual for other mountaineers, carry over at the end. Yeah, they go to the Himalayas after they put their time in with a lot of other mountains. But by default, I started there. So I realized on my own that nature, just being in this pilgrimage is, because climbing, because I learned from Tibetans and Sherpas, it's a very different approach how we climb a mountain.

45:05We never go without seeking permission from the mountains. But throughout those process of taking these long journeys in the mountains, I could see how I was healing. It was really like a healing pilgrimage for me, every single mountain. And so at one point he did instruct me to think of good memories from both my parents. And I really struggled at that time to think of anything good, positive with my mom. Now I can, but at that time I couldn't see anything. And then at that time he had, with my father, I had a lot of positive memories and I shared that. And then so he was, you know, just encouraging me to reflect on that during analytical meditation and really give birth to gratitude.

46:00Because this is a time when I forgot how to smile. Like I was dead inside. And holiness has done so much things for me, but one of the best things that he's done has made me realize that I can laugh even during my hardest struggles. And this freed me up. And I can't technically explain how he did it, but like the reason why I make fun of all my tragedies today with an open heart and it's because he showed it showed me the way um anyway so over the months I I you know I was going back and forth usually it was because of work but he would ask on how I was doing with those kind of meditation and I I kept telling him like nothing is coming up with my mom and then he just he just kneeled and politely said but she carried you in your in her womb for nine months no and as he was saying it I saw myself as a fetus like baby and so I went back and I would just try to it was tough at that time because my body was reacting but to really just even if so he told me to start at short times and then create a habit every day even if it's for a minute.

47:18So I went step by step thinking of myself as a baby in her womb, thanking her for everything. But it took years for me to really free from, you know, sending them gratitude for the life they've brought me in. Whereas right before that, before meeting Holly, it's like, why did you bring me into this life when you couldn't take care of me? And so it was just, again, polar opposite perspective. Do you feel like you've healed that wound? With my mom? Yeah. I feel so. She's still alive. When I reached the summit of Chamulungma, Everest, at the age of 29, she was the first person I called to thank. She didn't pick up.

48:04It was 6.26 a.m. to be fair. But, you know, just because not taking away anything from what she's done. I'm not saying it's okay what she's done. And there's a lot more into it, which the details of which will be in my memoir. But I am so happy she did what she did because if she hadn't left, it wouldn't have created the domino effect of series of events that I had to go through and not make me, I don't think I would be who I am today because if she hadn't left exactly how she left. Yeah, there is a perspective that she is perhaps your greatest teacher. Yeah. Yeah, and developing gratitude and appreciation for that in light of everything that happened and this story that has led to so much pain and hurt, right?

49:00To be able to transcend that is a beautiful thing. It's beautiful. And I kind of lived with that till I almost died in COVID and it reappeared and we can get into that later. Yeah, we're gonna work up to that. Meaning it flared up and you realized there was still work you had to do around that. No, because she came back into my life for a different reason. And yeah, it was a lot of things just came up. Things got messy. Yeah. Well, when I came down Everest, both sides of my family were fighting on who to take credit. And there's a specific point in Kumbu Icefall where I stood and I looked back towards the summit and because my satellite phone was beeping with all the news of what was happening in Bangladesh.

49:46My step-mom at that time was in the front page of every newspaper. So these people that essentially abandoned you were suddenly showing up to take credit for everything that you had done. Yeah. That's the comedy of the human condition. Had I known climbing one mountain would change so many things for me, then I would have probably strategized climbing that mountain much earlier. So, but no, it's not just parents. I had more relatives appear in my life that I hadn't even known of. Everyone came back into my life. And we can talk about that later. What is the essence of, you know, what you learned from your time with the Dalai Lama.

50:30Like if you could condense it down into a few pearls of wisdom that have been instructive, informative for you. Oh my God, this is so, I could write a whole book on that. But I would say transforming obstacles into opportunities, lesson number one, and the concepts of karma. Like once I, you know, my first teaching of karma started at the age of 21 and throughout my entire 20s, I would get a lot of, this is like a very young mind to comprehend such vast teachings, right? And a lot of the teachings that he gave me on karma in my 20s, I only absorbed it after moving to LA in my late 30s. And so, because when you're next to the teaching itself, not that I took it for granted, but it was so much in a very short time, It was so much that was passed on to me that I didn't really, I wasn't fully able to digest it, see it.

51:33Well, you have to sort of leave the metaphorical cave and go live your life. Exactly. And when things come up, that's when you have the opportunity to practice those ideas, right? Otherwise it's just theory. Yeah. If you stay in Dharamsala and immunize yourself from those kinds of life experiences. They sent me to the hub of samsara that is Los Angeles. I know you're here, right? It's all gonna come up, right? Plenty of opportunity to practice. I also, it did resurface a lot of things because for once I was out of, whether it's Bangladesh or the place that I got sick and becoming a national figure in Bangladesh, life got really messy for me.

52:20And I couldn't heal in that environment. So for me to take this distance and also finding so many different practitioners or healers in this city, like that was life changing for me. So I know that even though I struggled the first few years of being here in terms of work and finding my community and just like, it's a huge city, you know, like it's hard to fit in here from a place. Like I always lived in small towns, Katmundo, you know, the entire city I know by heart. Dharamsala, it's not even a small town. It's what would you call it? I don't know. You call it a village. Yeah, I mean, it's a tiny place.

53:01I'm used to that kind of place. So that's why I live in Venice, because I know the two mile by two mile route. That kind of is my... And it is kind of its own thing. Yeah. Yeah. But it's a bubble. and I realize every time I leave LA, how bougie and how pampered we are in this world. This is so question. For sure. I mean, there's no question about it. When you're in Dharamshala, I mean, if you go anywhere in India, I mean, it's such a mind fuck because it's like traveling to a different planet, you know, as somebody who's lived in Los Angeles for a long time and you can't help, but have a different perspective on, you know, just how much we have and also how different our relationship is with spirituality and perhaps like what's most important.

53:55Because when you spend time with people who have nothing and are more joyful than most of the people that you encounter in the Western world, you can't help but, you know, sort of begin to deconstruct like, you know, the priorities of life. I was also like, it was eye-opening for me to see how many people who I used to look up, whether they're A-listers or like big names, they're really suffering, man. Like people are really suffering in this town. And I still don't understand why you have so much money. Everything, basically, everyone has so much resources here, but still, so I can be so unhappy.

54:36Well, they're trying to stuff the God-shaped hole with all of those things. And the more you do it and it doesn't like deliver on that implicit promise, the more suffering you're gonna reap upon yourself, right? Until you have a reckoning and you decide that you're gonna approach your life differently. And that's an affliction of the Western way of doing things and all of the messaging that, you know, we kind of absorb every single day, as long as we can remember, that tells us that the path to happiness is built on this path of accumulation and, you know, power, property, and prestige. And this is a town where there's a lot of people that have a lot of those things, but what they're missing is any kind of...

55:27relationship with faith and spirituality, relationship with other human beings that they care about. Like all of these things that we know are integral to living a meaningful, happy life, but they become deprioritized for the sake of these other kind of goals. And that's what's producing all of the pain and suffering, I think, for too many people. And it's just writ large in this town because of just the nature of the business here, et cetera. When you're in Dharamshala though, you're nestled up against the Himalayas. You can see these snow-capped mountains. It's quite beautiful. But what you might not immediately understand or appreciate is that those are just, that's just the first range.

56:15Like these are tiny foothills. Like the real Himalayan peaks are like two ranges behind that that you can't even see. And those mountains that you see from the village, you're like, wow, those are huge mountains. those are nothing compared to the mountains that you've climbed. And the culture just is, you said like climbers and mountaineers have to work their way up to climbing the Himalayas, but people in Northern India, they're just out on those mountains all the time. So it's not surprising that you found it sort of natural to begin there and did it through joining those people. Yeah, every time in Nepal, Have you been to Nepal yet?

56:57No. You gotta go. I've only been to India that one time. Wow. Well, Nepal's next because that's a whole level of like so much spirituality just in one place and it's buzzing. I think you're gonna love it. And also you need to go to Everest at some point. I don't know if I need to do that. There's too many people up there already. We go on a season when that shit show is not happening. I never take people up there anymore during spring season. Anyway, but when I was going to Nepal, because Tibetan, the second biggest, largest refugee community is based in Nepal, because that's another route to come in from Tibet.

57:37All my colleagues that I was working with happened to be just outdoorsy mountain people. So it literally was like, hey, like over the weekend, you go for a pub, dirt drink. We didn't have that back then. Let's go to the mountain. So it was just, I was friends with Sherpa people. but Sherpa originally, like Sherpa means coming from the East, implying East of Tibet. So technically their Tibetan origin that migrated over 15th and 16th century to this side of the mountain. So Everest, which is a British dude's name. Yeah, you mentioned the Tibetan name for it. Can you say that again? Chomulungma. And that means?

58:20It's the mother goddess of the universe. It's a very feminine entity. That's a much better name. Yeah. And the goddess is called Mio Lang Sangma. And she's the goddess of inexhaustible giving. Only if you respect her and go abide by her tradition. And there's, I forget how many centuries ago this text was acquired. But it's a text or the prayer that bows, like humbles everything in her feet. So we do this puja or a ritual, prayer ritual in base camp before approaching the mountain, asking for her forgiveness first, saying, confessing that we're about to step on you for a long period of time. So we even bring in our crampons and ice sacks, all kinds of objects that we're going to take up, ask for forgiveness beforehand for hurting her, promising that we're never going to leave trash or not hurt her in any way.

59:23And there's a series of things and, you know, the chanting goes on for hours and hours and you just keep repeating. And then the local lama looks for signs, positive signs from her. There are many ways to decipher it, whether it's a raven sitting on the flagpole or something, things like that. And only after those approvals come, we have a celebration and that's basically - And the green light to go. Wow, that's very cool. And we did - And that's passed down - Centuries. Yeah, through the Sherpa lineage. Yeah. Yeah. No Sherpa will approach any mountain without a puja. even if the client doesn't want to do it.

1:00:04So in K2, which is in Pakistan, in a very predominantly Muslim society, there is no culture of doing this kind of puja, but we still did it. I did it. I took in, like I said, I had two of my main teachers supporting the whole climb of K2. And we re... So K2, again, thanks to the British, the dudes came in and was like, Rename K1, K2, K3, K4, G1, G2. So creative. Very creative. What's the original name of K2? It's called Choguri, King of All Mountains. So it's a masculine entity. And God, is he a masculine entity? He's freaking like just brutal. The whole time I thought like there was a God sitting on the summit and saying, oh, you wanna come to the top?

1:00:53Let me just throw you a rock and see if you can prove me. Anyway, so we did a puja asking for forgiveness from Choguri. And that puja was attended by people from all faiths, including local Muslim people, which are the Balti people in Pakistan. All that to say is like, so I'm very grateful that my introduction to climbing was that. Before I came out into the world and went into, you know, every other continent where I climbed with Westerners and other people. But it's very hard for me to approach a mountain without the rituals. Like it's just, we call it the approach, how you approach a mountain.

1:01:34Because, you know, also we function in a very, if I may say, white cis dude. Like predominantly it's all male and the energy is very different. Yeah. And meanwhile, none of the Sherpas are appropriately sort of, you know, credited with just how extraordinary they are. Like we're in Hollywood. The Sherpas are sort of the stuntmen of the climbing world, right? Like they do all these incredible things and they're just sort of overlooked because they're in service to somebody else who gets all the credit. But these guys are going up and down these mountains like all the time. Not just that, they're carrying the load.

1:02:15They're overlooked. Of course, I mean, the whole history of mountaineering is like colonizers, it was a very colonial approach. we are going to conquer the British and the Italy fighting, different countries fighting to get to the top of mountains. Who's going to take credit? The first successful ascent that happened, it's called the British Expedition, even though the person who climbed, two person who climbed, two people, Tenzing Norgay, Nepali, he had four times gone up to that level. And that's why he was so important in the British Expedition. Before Hillary. Before Hillary. And Hillary was, Sir Edmund Hillary, He was one of the most kindest human beings.

1:02:58You know, I've never had the luck to meet him, but I know his, I just actually returned from a trip recently with Peter Hiller, his son. We were guiding in Antarctica. They're one of the most humblest families I know in the mountaineering tradition. They've done so much good for the region. Aside from him, like there's, and he's always given credit to Tenzing Norgay. But Tenzing Norgay, till his death, didn't get credited. His grants, you know, three generations have passed by. Pretty much 70 years after his ascent, there's finally a movie being made about a person who's died. And so that just shows how far behind we are in terms of giving these people credit.

1:03:41But the other thing I wanted to say is like, yes, we don't give them credit. But as an audience, every spring season, when we hear of, if I may use the term, Tom, Dick and Harry climbing up the mountain, fucking ask who the fuck took you up there? What are their names? Don't just say 50 Sherpas went up. It's like cattles, you know. Tenzing Sherpa went up. Sonam Sherpa went up. Give them credit. It doesn't take away from it. My friend, you know, between two brothers, they have, I think, 56 total summits of Everest alone. Just one mountain. Kamirita Sherpa, the younger one, he just broke his own record of climbing the mountain 30 times.

1:04:24Wow. No human in the world has done that. Imagine a white man doing that. He would be plastered. Yeah, it'd be such a big deal. And this guy does it. It's like, oh, well, that's what they do. Nobody knows the person's name or anything. But this is, whose fault is it? Who doesn't give the credit? I mean, I myself within National Geographic has been fighting for this for almost 10 plus years now. It only started changing from 2018 when we did our first, I don't know if you've seen National Geographic magazine, the one, sorry for our racist coverage. We did one cover, but that took a lot of work.

1:05:04And then BLM happened and all this talk started happening. It's the Westerners who hasn't been crediting the Shepa people, you know, majority. I'm not saying all of them. But so it's, and as an audience, now that the world is so open, we can always ask, who's the one who's led you up there? Who was carrying your oxygen? Who was your base camp manager? The freaking base camp, which is almost one hour to one and a half hours of walking, like it's almost like a little village. That itself is on a moving chunk of glacier. And I have footages that happen of, you know, what happens before clients go in.

1:05:42It's built on the back of Sherpa people. It's really hard work to make a freaking base camp out of a moving glacier. So that itself is made by Sherpa people. So when Westerners come in and say, oh, I did this climb unsupported. Hell no, there's no fucking way you could. Even if you spend half a day in base camp, which is not usual, it's way longer, you've taken support. So, yeah. Sorry, this aggravates me a lot. And listen, like a lot of work remains, you know, to tell those stories. And they're incredible stories.

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1:08:01Of all the mountains that you've climbed, seven summits, I mean, I have to think that K2 was the most challenging and difficult. Well, all the mountains in life that I've climbed, the seven summits happened when, it was also a different time in my life. Yeah, I mean, that was 2012 to 2015. Yeah, well, I finished. So the first five of the seven, including Everest, I did back to back in one and a half years, just like I was going like crazy till I ended up with a frostbite in Denali. And this finger, which was cut up to here, it literally grew back. You can go to Siddharth Sinai and see my nails, how this case study, they call it a miracle case study.

1:08:46Anyway, we can talk about that later. Your finger grew back? Yes. Like a lizard? Really? I mean, it was cut off? This part was cut off. This all grew back. Including like the nail? The part with the nail and all of that. So nail was chopped off. I have pictures of in case you don't believe me. So this is again - You re-grew your finger. No, this is the best blessed by his holiness. I've worn this since I have had - What is that an emerald, an opal? Emerald. An emerald, yeah. Wow. Turquoise and what was the other one you just said? Opal. Yeah, it's beautiful. And that's on the finger that grew back.

1:09:26Yeah. So the finger grew back because it was super powered through the ring and the energy of the Dalai Lama. And nine surgeries. Yeah, and Cedars-Sinai, the best of Western medicine. All cooperating to regrow a finger. But you know, like when you get a frostbite, let's say if you get it in January, there every chance that you could be amputated in August, like you don't know how it's gonna develop. So the first choice that a doctor gave me was like, Like we can chop it off right now so that because it was already damaged up to here. But it's going to. And then he was giving me options of the different types of, what do you call them?

1:10:06Like bionic, different ways I could have a prosthetic finger. And I looked at him and I said, do you have like a wolverine claw? Because I thought he was joking. And he looked at me and said, Vasfi, this is really serious. Like you can damage the rest of your hand if you don't measure it properly. The other way is to live it out, go through the pain. It's going to be intense pain, but we can, you know, because it was like microscopic level, you know, they had to do it in slices. It's kind of like the opposite of burn injury. So they didn't want to chop off different parts, like, because some cells were damaged and some weren't.

1:10:46Anyway, so all that to say that when that frostbite thing happened, Karmapa, who I don't know if you know of him, but he's another very prominent teacher in Tibetan Buddhism. But he's very like, he's not angry, but when he talks, it's very like it pierces through all your lives. Like you're just like, ah. So he just looked at me and he said, you're doing it too fast. and as he was saying it, I realized, wow, you're right. Like I was just going, going, banging, banging, banging. Yeah, without... Not really living through the journey. And so the frostbite happened, it basically stopped me for almost a year because I couldn't, the recovery was nine months.

1:11:32So I couldn't go back to cold zone with that finger. But during that time, I really, you know, I know, by this time my whole life had changed, you know, cause after Everest everything had changed and I was a national figure, which brought in more harm than good being a single woman and, you know, doing what I'm doing in a country like Bangladesh isn't, you know, fame isn't the best thing for us. I'm not completely - What do you mean specifically? I mean, you become this national, you go from, you know, somebody nobody's ever heard of to literally becoming like your country's biggest national hero, right?

1:12:07Yeah, I mean - Yes, is that true or no? Well, yeah, I mean, I did Kili, Kilimanjaro, Akonkago, and then Everest. So that was the timeline. Akonkagoa, which is the highest mountain of South America, is also the highest mountain outside the Himalayas. That got a lot of coverage because I somehow timed it on the victory day of Bangladesh. So the whole campaign of climbing the seven summits was done to celebrate 40 years of Bangladesh's women's progress. And Akonkago was in December and Everest started in March. So when I started going for Everest, there was a lot of publicity about it because it was Everest.

1:12:49But I also knew that nobody believed in me. Like everyone wanted me to fail. And there was a lot. There was so much media pressure, but I really didn't want that. I wanted to just have my own spiritual time and climb the mountain. A lot of other shit shows happen. And then when I came down and there's a specific point in Kumbu Icefall when the cell reception and the, you know, I was checking news. So when you're coming down, you got to be as quick as possible because this is already monsoon season coming. So everything's starting to melt. So from, you know, the crevices that have ladders, for example, those ladders fall in.

1:13:27So there are a lot of rerouting has to happen. So you want to make sure that you have enough energy, food, everything to come down very fast. So we came down, summited on 26th May, came down by 28th, me and Nima Sharpa, who was my brother, who's passed away, and my climbing teacher. And so we came down and in that cell reception, the first 50 messages was like, your so-and-so is on the front page claiming to be your mother. Your so-and-so, like, no. And I remember looking at the news, like, can you imagine coming down 29 ,029 feet, hypoxic, you're still, you're hungry. You just went through like avalanches and this whole three months long expedition.

1:14:07And the first news is like your two sides of your family is fighting. And I, at that point, I look back, you can't really see the summit, but kind of tours the summit. I look back and I was like, should I just go back? Because I don't want to deal with this right now. And from that time, when I came back to Bangladesh, I mean, in the VIP section, there was my father's side was one side. You know, every, there were two village, like two, sorry, there were two buses full of people that came from my village. So even though we live in the city, we all come from particular villages. And my dad's village is one of the most conservative part of Bangladesh.

1:14:49And these people have all like my pictures on their crown, buses and drums. And just like before I was, because I got into a lot of trouble as an activist and I was bringing shame for my village. A lot happened with the Chinese government. That's a whole nother story. But so my village people actually didn't recognize me at that time. They were ashamed because intelligence went into the villages looking for me, Bangladeshi intelligence. And now the same people traveled all the way from my village to the capital in buses with food. And they brought pajeros to take me and like everyone was there.

1:15:29And, you know, in the pictures, you see me smiling because that's, and I had to be Wasphia out there. But internally, that was probably one of the lowest moment in my life. Like externally, I'm having to be wassy and as green, da-da-da-da-da. But internally, having my parents come back, everyone who came back to my life, yes, it was great. But I also knew the reason was wrong. I knew why they came back. And so that kind of, yeah, I didn't realize how big it was going to, like, I didn't think it out. and also because I think it was a lot of people doubted me and it was kind of like a slap on their face.

1:16:08Like I told you I'm gonna do it and I'm gonna do it and I did it. Because people in my life speak a lot. They are not, everyone is a doer. We generally - They talk a lot of shit. Yeah. Yeah. And then - Do you find that, is that motivating for you? No. When you hear that, you sort of think, well, I'll show them or - No, I think my personality, I'm a doer. I come from the karma family or I'm ruled by Mars. I don't know if you're familiar with the Vedic astrology. My wife is very familiar, but you'll have to fill in my gaps. Yeah, if you give me your birth time, I can figure it out for you. But it was very important for me to understand what planet I'm ruled by, which is basically, it's called the Ascendant Lord or your Lagna Lord.

1:17:00So I am ruled by Mars. It's the energy of pioneers, athletes, doers. Everything should have happened two days ago. That kind of energy. But the fully embodied positive part of being ruled by Mars is the commander-in-chief who doesn't fight himself or themselves. They sit back, send off warriors to fight, which I didn't know before. I was the wounded. I was functioning from a wounded warrior stage. And my progression has been to learn how to be a skillful warrior, which I don't think I've been there yet, but I'm learning and I'm getting there. So I don't fight anymore. I don't do my activism anymore like how I would have in my 30s or 20s.

1:17:44And I think 40 was a major turning point also of realization thanks to Los Angeles. In other words, this wounded warrior incarnation of the Mars energy, in your case, would be one that was fueled in part by this pain body over the abandonment, right? Like this latent anger that gets translated into action. So that being sort of an impetus to these challenges that have like served you well and given you this platform and all the good kind of things that have come from that, but recognizing that there's still healing to be done so that you can ascend into a more of a commander in chief energy. Like that's a cool way of thinking about it.

1:18:35What do people misunderstand about Everest? We all see the photos of the train of people going up to the top now and how it's, you know, littered with, you know, what people leave behind there. Yeah, like I know that you, I mean, I mean, you like had to kind of walk past dead people, right? That you had spent time with in base camp. Yeah. But it's easy to make presumptions or conjure an idea of what that experience is because so many people have done it and they talk about it and we see these videos and these photographs, but where are our kind of assumptions about that wrong? wrong. I would say you don't need$180 ,000 to climb Everest.

1:19:25First of all, do not pay these Western companies to take you for that much money or even locals. There are local people. And end of the day, it's the local people who's doing the work. So you might as well better off going with a local company with Sherpas, giving them credit and paying way less. So when I did Everest, for example, I did it all like in a very small team. I knew I was going to climb with Nima. I hired everything separately because I already knew the cost structure of what happens. The permit is$13 ,000. That's the main chunk of money. Every single person going past base camp, whether you make it to camp one or two has to pay$13 ,000.

1:20:06That goes straight to the pockets of politicians or locals, but it doesn't go to the locals of the region. It goes to Kathmandu. So Most foreign companies, I would, let's say even if they charge you$180 ,000 or$20 ,000 or whatever number, the maximum that would go to a Sherpa person, which is pretty much their whole year's earning,$6 ,000 maximum. And each of these Sherpa, mostly males, have number of children to feed, you know, and they're the main bread earners. So I would just say structure it in a way. I think everyone needs to, yes, there is the commercialization of it, but Sherpa people do need that money.

1:21:01That's their living. So I don't think we can change, we can, you know, at one point, everyone's like, just barricade Everest, don't let any more people in. No, this is always going to be attracting people. We cannot stop that. This is the highest summit of the world. but we can bring in regulation, right? But the stuff that you see out here in the news, I will say that does happen, but that's only a very small time on the mountain. I can show you two hours of presentation of how remote and silent of this mountain is in different parts of the year. So before I used, when I used to guide for Everest Base Camp, I've now moved everything to fall season.

1:21:44Like I only take clients towards the end of the year. There's not a one person on the trail. And it's so nice and pleasant. Weather is much better. Then how come that's not the crowded time? It's not a corporate in the media. Because the weather season up on the top part of the mountain, May is really the perfect time. Fall season can be cold up there. So a lot of, very few, if anyone is climbing the mountain at that time, it would be like the rough Europeans trying to do cool stuff like in a two-person team. So it's only in a very specific time window in May when you see, you know, that like the traffic jam going up.

1:22:26So if you notice everyone's summit days, it's usually all like Edmund Hillary, Tenzing Norgue summit in May 29th. I summit in May 26th. It's all towards that last week that people start summiting, 19, 20. And, you know, with the current, the way things are planetary-wise, climate crisis-wise, the weather window is like the year that I summited, there were only three nights you could go to the summit. Whereas even like less than 10 years ago, it was much wider window to go reach the summit. And, you know, like the monsoon weather that happens in lower region, in Bangladesh, And this, in my talks, I show this without the borders is like whatever is happening in Bay of Bengal, that kind of predicts how the wind is gonna form above Everest during the summit season.

1:23:18It's all connected. Yeah, the interconnectedness of everything, which is, you know, very Tibetan Zen Buddhist, right? Yeah, and the other thing that really fascinated me is like when you have the orbital perspective of - Like being on the summit. Or just from space, just looking at the Himalayas, K2, which is a masculine entity and Everest, which is a feminine energy. They're kind of like the head and tail of this kind of backbone that's going all the way from Nepal too. It's just so beautiful. K2 isn't as high as Everest, but technically much more difficult. And in your case, than 200 meters.

1:24:03There's quite a story around your ascent of K2. Yeah, so we are currently making a feature doc about it, which would give the more inner journey of K2. But geopolitically speaking, K2 is one of the most dangerous zones of the world. Dangerous. I mean, if you're climbing K2, nothing else can be dangerous. And I remember, so it took me, I was the first Bangladeshi to get a permit to climb the mountain 50 years after Bangladesh was formed. So to get the permit, so you need two, one is a trekking permit and a climbing permit. And I needed to acquire two for K2 and also Broad Peak. So I climbed Broad Peak before climbing K2, which is another 8 ,000 meter peak.

1:24:56people underestimated, but it's such a long mountain. It's like it can, so many people have died in broad peak. I saw with my own eyes, one guy just falling off, like when he sat down just to rest and he couldn't hold and he just fell on the Chinese side. Fell to his death right in front of you. Yeah. I mean, on K2, the shit I've seen, I'm still waking up from it two years after, like more than or yeah literally two years after so that's also another story like i have ptsd and stuff that i have been dealing with but k2 i've seen so many dead bodies in my entire career actually have an album in my phone called i see dead people and so sorry it's of all that oh my god so that's so heavy that type of dead bodies i've seen on k2 is crazy it's like all broken because, you know, the body freezes overnight.

1:25:52It becomes super heavy, super hard. So it's very hard to, first of all, move it. You need more than 8 to 12 people to carry a body. But when the winds come and it's like tossing the body, the first thing that happens, it breaks the neck. So there's a lot of headless bodies on these mountains. Majority of them are headless because this is the most, you know, like thinnest part of. And they're just up there because there aren't eight to 12 people to retrieve the bodies. And so they just persist up there. Usually on Everest, you need, so Nepal climbing scene is much more logistically advanced, whereas compared to Pakistan, Pakistan is almost like 50 years behind.

1:26:35There's no logistical infrastructure to do anything out there. But in Nepal, usually your family has to come with the request. No one's going to move anyone's dead body unless you ask for it. So for example, before I went, I left a will saying, if I die in death zone, death zone is 26 ,000 feet up where human bodies basically stop reproducing any cells. You lose brain cells at a rate faster than it can be replaced. So your body is basically eating yourself out. So you spend as less time possible in death zone. So that 26 ,000 to 29 ,000 feet is the hardest push, given also that you've already been on the mountain for almost so many weeks already.

1:27:22So your body's all dying. So I left a will saying, if my death happens in dead zone, do not worry about bringing me back because I'm already probably left with the best view. B, I don't want to endanger my shepherd brothers bringing my body from up there because it's one of the most riskiest job to bring. Can you imagine holding a frozen body through a steep hill all the way from? Like, why would I let anyone go through that? And the cost of it is super expensive. But then I also knew that if I died below death zone, my brothers would come and get me. So, I mean, Nepal's been my spiritual home from so long ago.

1:28:04So I had that in the back of my head. But to answer your question, the bodies aren't being brought back because the families probably preferred them to be there. How many dead bodies are up there then? Over 250 dead bodies. So up there, you're hypoxic. So this is also part of the trainings, like meditation and the mind training part of it, because I knew what I was going to face up there. But in that low oxygen level, your mind is so fucked. It's like you don't have energy or the capability to make rational decision. So when you see a dead body, even from the side of your eye, automatically your mind starts this negative conversation.

1:28:49Am I going to be next? Of course. I could be next or it's just spiraling down. And so to really bring myself out of the spiral and like saying, okay, do not focus over there. Sometimes it's just a hand. Like sometimes you'd be like, oh, is there trash? And I have pictures of this. Like, no, it's a dead body of the back without the head. Like it's kind of like being on a shroom trip where you're seeing stuff and you really don't know what the hell that is. And you look closely and it's like, oh shit, it is what I think it is. In terms of making sure your mindset is dialed in for those kind of super acute situations, how important is or has been your meditation practice?

1:29:36Like what is the relationship between meditation, how you bring meditation into your daily life and how does that inform like your ability to kind of navigate such heightened experiences? I always say meditation or mind training stuff is 90 % of the game because I've seen world-class athletes. I've seen Olympians go up there. And even Everest, Camp 3, this woman, I won't mention her name, super famous athlete. This avalanche happening in a different mountain and she freaks out saying, oh, I left my daughter at home. I'm like, oh, all this time you didn't know your daughter was at home. No, it's just Everest gives you, and mountains like Everest gives you an excuse to give up every single moment.

1:30:20So for your mind not to, because nothing is going to go according to plan up there. You can prepare as much as you can. And, you know, there's a saying that as a mountaineer, you have a backup plan of a backup plan of a backup plan. But also go in knowing that none of it may not work. And you have to be adaptive next day if you wake up and see this. And a lot of people can't deal with that. So, yes, of course, physical training is needed. Of course, the high altitude training is needed. All those is required. But if you don't have the mindset to deal with it, you're not going to make it up. You're not going to last out there.

1:30:54And forget about K2. Like just getting to base camp of K2, 90 kilometers. Like most people get sick just going in. And this is not with the tea house lodge situation like Nepal. This is all remote as part of the Karakoram. And if you have to define what that mindset is, the mindset that is going to allow you to succeed in that environment, what is that? Number one, positive. And that there's a solution to everything, no matter how things are turning out. And that, you know, there are some days when people wake up and then things, it's doomsday, nothing, like people give up. But really patience is the biggest thing that you need up there.

1:31:38And wise decision-making skills. But you can't make those wise decisions unless you're in a calm, neutral state, right? So, so much of it is about adaptability and, you know, being able to have some equanimity or neutrality amidst, you know, chaotic, shape-shifting circumstances. The other thing that really, it's not formal meditation, but really helped me was having a connection to Goddess Chamul Nungma. That started months before that through His Holiness Dalai Lama and he told me who she was. and really whether you're in a dream state, physical waking state, like having that connection with her.

1:32:19And she will welcome you if you reach out. And you'll hear many Sherpas say this over and over. They've had so many dreams about her. Kamirita Sherpa, who I was just talking about, who is the highest record holder, 30 climbs, he quit his 26th, I believe, 26th or 27th push because he woke up with a dream in Camp 4, I believe, where the goddess was telling her, no, you're overdoing it. And she backed off. Like that's how respectful Sherpa people are. And I also think it's important to state here, like in the Western media, especially in Western media, in all media, but especially out here, people just say, oh, these Sherpas, like Sherpa has become, and I have been called a Sherpa in my life.

1:33:04Oh, will you be my Sherpa? Right, it's a monolith. But it's a derogatory term because not all Sherpas are climbers. Not all Sherpas are porters. Sherpas are also doctors. Sherpas are also engineers. So for the current generation, so I know it's said in a good way, positive way, when like someone told me, oh, you want to be my Sherpa? Like, oh, you're someone who's going to guide me or help me. That's how it's said. But from their perspective, or if you were a Sherpa person, like a lot of my Sherpa friends, they don't want their children to be ever going back to the mountains. They don't want to do that work and they don't want to be identified with that work anymore because they started as porters, right, for the British.

1:33:48And then they did all the work. It's hard work that never, never been recognized for. So Sherpa is the ethnicity name, but it's also the culture name. So it gets all muddled up. There are many other ethnicities that are working in the mountains. they're muggers, they're gurus, they're rai. The media just portrays everyone as Sherpa people. And it's important because in Nepal, there's so many different ethnicities. And unfortunately, there's a class system. There's kind of like a hierarchy. And so Sherpa people don't like, from their angle, they're very proud people. And so calling a rai a Sherpa or a different ethnicity a Sherpa, it's kind of insulting.

1:34:33That's interesting. I didn't know anything about that. I mean, I suspect the use of the word, there's no intent to be using it in a negative way. It's just a lack of education around that. Yeah, but I won't mention people from a certain country, but there's specific group of people that also use that term, not from Western world in Asia. There's a one country that treats Sherpa people as like as if they're slaves. Like the term Sherpa means, oh, you're supposed to be helping me. But so, yeah, I have a great article on it I can send you later. But just really, because there's the new generation of Sherpa people, they're all in New York.

1:35:16They want to be Uber drivers rather than being in the mountain. They don't look at that job as, you know. So what I'm trying to say is there are many Sherpas that are just engineers or doctors or in so many different professions that are, I guess, from an angle looked more respectfully at. Yeah, understood. With respect to your K2 attempt, the thing we haven't talked about is the fact that you had a really severe case of COVID prior to that. Like not, I mean, not that long before you made the attempt, right? Yeah. So originally I meant to go in 2021 because I wanted to time it with 50 years of Valadis' independence.

1:36:03In 2020, March, sorry, end of February, March-ish, I was coming back from Hawaii after doing like 19 back-to-back talks, 17 or 19. and I was very tired. My immune system was down. And I hopped into a flight back to LA. And as I entered the plane, I instantly knew that half of that plane was coming from Asia and they were all affected. And then that was the night that - Was this in March of 2020? When was this? March of 2020. So this was like - Before America officially closed everything. Wow. Wow. And then hospitals didn't know what to do. They didn't know anything about COVID. But there was this one night when I believe it was Trump who called all Americans in Europe back to come back to the country.

1:36:57And that group had just come in. And in LAX, I was stuck in this group of people just back from Europe with the Italian virus. is I forget which version of it was like the first one the lethal one that was killing everyone in Italy so everyone was coughing and I think I was exposed to it for a long time and so I got COVID I went flatline yeah your heart stopped actually it was that bad but I entered you know doctors or my friends everyone out here was freaking out but I had that was one of the most profoundly enlightening time for me when I went out. I was, you know, a practice called, are you familiar with Tibetan Book of the Dead?

1:37:41So we study, I have a long way to go still, but we prepare for death from, it's part of our practice. And if you study the Tibetan Book of the Dead and a lot of the things that are there, it didn't actually work out for me of what I thought it was gonna be a tunnel vision, you know, like the typical description of the, But it was for me, and a detailed version of it will be in my book, but it was a profound kind of like a floating light. And I could feel it was me, but there was no physical version of me. And my teachers, all four of my main teachers were there and I could hear their voice. But I couldn't see them, but I could feel them.

1:38:27And it was just vast as the ocean. and you know holiness was speaking Dalai Lama was speaking Dilgo Khenzir Rinpoche who's my root teacher he was there and this one line from my another teacher Karmapa he said you have work to do still and I was so I was because I had suffered so much physically I think that light really was healing so I didn't want to come back but Karmapa I think me was it Dilgo Khenzir Rinpoche said I said something from the side, no, Asfya. A very gentle way he was trying to bring me back. But then Karmapa was very like sharp and just says things that just jabs you in the heart.

1:39:12And he said that and that's when I woke up. You snapped back into the body. So you literally flatlined. Yes. And then - How long were you flatlined? It's not finished. Then I got diagnosed with pneumonia and my heart wasn't like, it was, they didn't even tell me that I had pneumonia because my Chinese doctor who I had prescribed, she's an herbalist, she was coming to see me and she said, if we told you that your heart was really struggling, like with everyone dying in the hospital, like people were dying at this time. They didn't know what the hell to do. I said, I don't think you had so much.

1:39:50And I think I had a lot of anxiety at that time. I was all alone. Like all my relatives, everyone was at home. And lockdowns were happening at this point. And then they won't keep me in the hospital. You're in Venice so far away from home, yeah. And also people treated me like I could kill them because they didn't know what the hell was going on. They didn't know at that time that if you come, you know, like even getting grocery or anything. Right, this is when we were spraying our produce and all that kind of stuff, right? Yeah. Early, early days. Yeah, so long story short, it was a huge recovery, 18 months recovery, but my left side.

1:40:31Hold on a second, you're jumping ahead. So you flatlined, do you know how long you flatlined for? No, but it should be there. Several seconds, I think. But for me, it was a long time. Right, your experience of it was different from like the actual amount of time. But it wasn't like they pronounced you dead or anything like that. But like, did they have to like put the, what do they call those things? The paddles? No, the doctor had that ready. What do you call them? The paddles. They had it ready. They were about to zap. And I was so disappointed seeing, like I was just hanging out with my teachers I hadn't seen for a long time.

1:41:12And then I'm out into this reality. I was disappointed to be alive again, to be very frank. And so what do you make of that experience? I don't know yet, but that experience didn't stop there. it prolonged into an 18 months long recovery where my entire left side was... You had Bell's palsy. Yes. But also my kidney was stopped, not functioning well. My spleen had gone, like entire left side was dysfunctional. I couldn't walk to the kitchen by myself. Everything was really hard and that was my physical injury. but that period of 18 months was probably the most inner work. So the left side is related to mommy wounding or not necessarily wounding, but mommy side.

1:42:00So it's all coming up. It's all spilling out. Yeah. And you thought you had healed. I thought I was healed. So this is like a reckoning. But also at that time I was still in contact with her. And so it was aggravating me a lot every time she checked in. And so that is the time when I cut her off from my life, 2020, when I was healing. So this is a time when a lot of, you know, from 2020 onwards to now, I've somehow gotten connected to a lot of shamans and healers around LA. And now I know why my teachers send me. Because I really struggled in LA and I was always like, every time I would talk to my teacher, I was like, is my karma over now?

1:42:45Can I go back? Like, can I leave? Yeah, haven't I done enough? Like we're done with this, right? So from that perspective, there is this idea or this perspective that COVID is this gift, this very challenging gift that's been delivered to you and this very long recovery as a way of slowing you down. Like to your point earlier about being impressed with the idea of patience, right? Patience is something you resist. So you contract this virus, you have a very difficult time for a long time, but this is forcing you to stop, right? So that you can actually confront this thing and finally heal it. Yeah, so I think healing has to be like, it's not like we reach a summit and just remain there.

1:43:40It has to be step by step. And up to that point, whatever healing work I had done, especially concerning my mom was from the time that she had left me to then whereas I never addressed the little girl that yeah that was there when she existed and was still in our life so and I that moment and or the period made me realize how entire like since 29 to now or then I was overcompensating, not just for my parents, in every work that I did, because I was still functioning from a wounded state. So the hyper-performance, like all of that is like a product of this unhealed wound. Yeah, the short version of why I went to, how I went to the top of all mountains is unresolved childhood trauma.

1:44:34It's true though, right? Which is majority of people on top of their game. Yeah. But so that period made me, and I was finally ready to like just heal. Like I'm just done, you know? And so I really used that time to deep dive into every work that I could have done. And like my teacher, Rude teacher said that, you know, you've cleared almost 20 years of karma in that one year, 2020. And had I not, like before I moved, so I moved to LA permanently right before pandemic, end of 2019, not knowing that the pandemic was gonna hit. Before moving here, I was almost for years, I was just every continent, like I was performing, performing, performing, achieving, achieving, achieving.

1:45:27But running away the whole time, kind of. Not necessarily running away. I think the environment in Bangladesh being the figure I was, I couldn't really do the work. You cannot do the work where you've, you can't heal in the place that you got sick. So I think it was, it was all meant to happen. I was sent here so I could heal properly. I could create the community or find the community of healers and practitioners who would help me, you know. So it's been, I mean, I'm still healing. Like I don't think we all, like I said, we don't reach a summit and just exist. What are some of the modalities that have been most helpful?

1:46:05Well, somatic therapy. I went to therapy since I was a late teenager and talk therapy does help, but I had a lot of stored trauma in my body. From 2020 with this physical illness and all the work that I did, like my body is so light now. Like I can't tell you, Rich, like in 2020, up to 2021, I was carrying so much baggage in my body. My everything cleared up. Like I look younger now than I looked in my late twenties because, because I just let that out. And you know, there are many ways I've done it. And it's a bit esoteric, I mean, very esoteric. So I went to all kinds of practitioners. But the other cool part of it is like when I, because I couldn't go back to Nepal at that time, no traveling was happening.

1:47:01But when I ended up going to Nepal in 2022, I hadn't even discussed anything with my Tibetan teacher, Digo Khen Siyang Sirim Peshe. But when he saw me, he told me the version he saw. And it just, it was literally like he watched me throughout the whole thing. He knew everything that I was going through and he was doing his prayers for me. It's just crazy. From the time that I entered the dream state, or not dream state, death state and came back. Like this was all just divinely orchestrated and he knew how it was gonna unfold the whole time. No, I mean, they were worried as hell. Like there was no guarantee of, even the medical system here, like it took me, like I had to figure all of it out.

1:47:46Bangladesh has better medical system than America, I have to tell you. Like if I was in Bangladesh, I would get VVIP treatment and just the way insurance and shit works here, it's crazy. Anyway, that's a whole nother topic. But what's he gonna say? So then 2022 summer is when I ended up climbing the hardest mountain on the planet. I mean, during that 18 months when you're trying to physically heal, you have kidney issues, a variety of issues. Also nerve damage. Bell's palsy, all of these things that you're trying to heal, was there lung damage also? Oh yeah, lung was the main, my left lung was main and I didn't feel it till camp two in K2.

1:48:29It hurt like hell, but they're still great. Yeah, I mean, you have to have unbelievable lungs to do something like that and to go in impaired, you know, still trying to, you know, that's like wild, man. You know, the stitches that you're trying to breathe in. But what happened was in K2, there were boulder size, like humongous rocks that were falling and just knocking people out like while you're hanging. And mind you, I'm also filming at this time with another guy, like Mingma Sharpa and myself. We film our entire like two people camera team. If climbing K2 wasn't hard enough, like filming the entire journey was a much harder task.

1:49:10But I had this rock fall coming and that's when I had a second or an episode of major panic attack and just PTSD rush after a long time. And I thought I had dealt with it. And, you know, first when you experience that, it's like guilt and just anger. For me, it was like, why the fuck is this coming up again? And in high altitudes, it's very hard to, you know, your mind, the air energy within you. it's very hard to control that so I had to actually go back down to base camp and just like sit with myself and have a talk and just just come back again I feel like now and then the last episode was in this march in Antarctica another incident happened that resurfaced some things like just I didn't know till coming to LA and going to somatic therapy that I was living with survivor's guilt for a long time um even though because i've i've not killed them personally but i survived just the people that you survived on these on my best friend died on i mean i've lost really like close people on the mountains and i somehow survived and in 2015 in the earthquake um that gave you know the biggest avalanche that took my best friend dan my biggest climbing partner brother of life and um you know just visuals from the bodies and everything nema was nema who was my climbing partner died in a motorbike accident like all these deaths happened and people just left and coming from that place of losing so many people already in our life in my life um yeah but what i was gonna say in antarctica i feel like because it's in have you been to everything is slow like time stops there is no concept of time or space uh so things are already happening slow-mo in your mind or at least for me it was but i think this time because of the work i have done in the last three years specifically i was able to bounce back way faster half of my mind could you know i get paranoia and anxiety kind of feeling in half of my mind and half of my mind is like, no, you've done this before.

1:51:28Like there was this courageous aspect where like, no, just breathe in, do this, do that. So I was able to process the whole thing. I was actually talking to Conrad about it because we have similar, you know, incidents about losing people and stuff. And it's just, we're never gonna like be at a place where it never comes back. It's just how we manage it and how we deal with it on a daily basis. Your commitment to this healing journey, that was really inspiring to me. It is, it is. And as I said earlier, I'm kind of processing this experience that I had in Dharamshala and I'm very confronted by this idea of the mother's love for the child because I have a very tricky and challenging relationship with my own mother, which is trifling in comparison to like what you've had to contend with.

1:52:25but it's been an impediment to me kind of embracing what the Dalai Lama had to share. Like it's a block, right? And that block obviously is exactly what I need to be seeing because that's where the work sits, right? I was just gonna say that. That's probably why he said it in the first place. And this has been a thing like, you know, for many, many years. Like I know that I have to heal this thing, right? But I've lacked like the proper way to approach it. Like I don't really, like there are many times where I thought that I had kind of transcended this issue. Clearly I have not. It's that same thing when you think that you've kind of managed it and then it comes up again.

1:53:14And this is like my mountain to climb, right? And I'm trying to figure out how to do it. And then here you arrive, who has had this exact same experience, except super heightened in comparison to mine. And I'm like, oh my God, this woman is gonna give me all the answers that I need to figure this out for myself. It's like unbelievable. And it all, and it like, I can't help but think like, this is part of some kind of design that exists outside of myself. Like there's a divinity and a mysticism to it that's quite extraordinary. And when I think about all the things that you've done, you didn't sit down and say, here are my life goals and I'm gonna write it out and here's how it's gonna happen.

1:54:00Like, no, this has been this unbelievable, fantastic, mystical journey that you've been on that is deeply spiritual. And patient zero is like the Dalai Lama who says, go to the mountains and like you go and then look at all these things that have happened. It's really quite extraordinary. Thank you. As you were talking, I just, I wonder if there's a lot of it stored in your body, which I know it is. So much of it is. But when those blocks, what helped me in my journey is removing those blocks because when those blocks are still in your body, our nervous system cannot function properly 100%. So there's no point forcing yourself to release it before you.

1:54:47Somatic therapy changed my entire life. Thank you, LA. Because I didn't even, are you familiar with that term? No, but you're gonna tell me who I'm gonna go to. Okay. And then I'm gonna go and you're gonna be, I'm not gonna say you're gonna be my Sherpa. I now know better than to use that word, right? But maybe you can be my guru or my teacher here. No. Can I enlist you? I'm gonna be a sister in your healing journey. All right. In some way. I'll go with that. But you're gonna help me out, right? But I can assure you that what he said to you was meant for you. Yes, I know, right? And I'm like sitting with it and I'm like, what am I supposed to do with this?

1:55:29I know I'm supposed to do something. No, I think when, and I was talking to my wife about this, like right after the experience, like when he's like, well, in order to like experience love and give love, you have to just embody the mother's love for the child. And when I think about, when I reflect on my own mother, I don't experience compassion. I experience resentment and misplaced anger and all of these complicated like emotions that obviously are impediments to the solution, which is love, right? And so how do I break down those impediments? How do I deconstruct that wall and find a way forward?

1:56:18Like, this is really like, this is like the biggest thing that I'm trying to do right now. And then suddenly you appear. That's really interesting because it's very similar. Like when I was telling you that he was telling me to do this and in my mind, I was like, Yeah, I was just like, fuck that. But over time, the more I sat with the one minute practice of imagining myself in her womb and what she was going through and the trauma she came from, the generational trauma she till today carries. Reflecting on that, being her, not as was fear, not as rich. Take your mom, embody your mom where she was.

1:57:00Do you know much about your past history, like your grandfather's? A little bit, but I could learn more. Yeah. So that really helped me generate compassion towards her and ultimately get, really forgive her. Like I really, from the bottom of my heart, want her to leave very peacefully. Like I don't want any kind of suffering. And I know I mean that, but I wasn't, I never felt like that even 10 years ago. And how do you feel? You said you feel lighter. Like what is the feeling that you have? Like knowing that, like really owning that. There was a lot of chronic pain and I would get injuries all the time.

1:57:41And I think I've cut that pattern. I released all this stored trauma. And like, I think it was TR who said, how the fuck did you, TR is our - He's the guy, yeah, yeah, yeah. My trainer. He's like, how the fuck did you climb all this mountain with all this trauma in your body? Your leg is separated from like this thing he only fixed after K2, which is post 2022. This is last year mainly. But so yeah, just energetically, just so much lighter. Like it almost feels like I've lost 50 kilos, like from my, like this backpack I was carrying is just out. And more free, just mine was very free. Just I'm under no captivity.

1:58:29And maybe you can draw yourself a map on what that freedom might feel like and have a goal like, oh, I'm doing this because this is what's going to give me your ultimate freedom. Yeah, I like that. I will also say that doing that work towards my mom, like when I, not just mom, parents, anyone who's hurt you, like when I started, you know, step by step doing that work, it changed my entire pattern of people that I used to attract to. because when we still have that mother wounding and operating from that mother wounding or father wounding. So I'll just give an example. I had a lot of narcissist people around me.

1:59:12Therefore, with the wrong agenda, starting from my previous trainer to like only friends because they could gain something from me because that's what my mom was. So I was attracting all these people because somehow I was probably also codependently, you know trying to recreate friendships, like they were all versions of my mom. Right, you're seeking validation and acceptance in people you perhaps look up to, right? To solve that wound. But I would also imagine, I wouldn't be surprised if also those abandonment issues show up in any kind of attempt at a romantic relationship where you're gonna push people away before they can push you away.

1:59:59Anytime it feels like perhaps the relationship is teetering, you're gonna be the one to break up to protect yourself. Fight or flight mom. Yeah, right. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, I dated my mother for, I think, 15 years in all seven continents, literally. A version of my mom. Yeah. Until I started doing work. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, not, like I said, like my work, work people, trainers, people around me, so many of them were versions. And then the people who would actually be the right mutually benefiting relation, those people started pouring in from, yeah. Yeah, because you have to heal yourself.

2:00:38You have to be the person that those types of people would be attracted to before those people come into your life. And then also every now and then the universe is gonna send you a version of her again to see. To test you? Yeah. How's that going? I was like, oh yeah, now I know my boundaries now. So, no, I laugh at now when I see a world, it was like two years, even two years ago, it'd fall for this shit. But now I know better. I love how you frame your climbing in the context of humility. Like people like to say you conquered a mountain and you're always quick to say like, nobody conquers a mountain.

2:01:18Like it's a surrender, you surrender to the mountain. What are some of the lessons that, you know, we can learn from your experiences on, you know, being on such, you know, incredible peaks. Yeah, from the very beginning, I found that word. And even now, media says, whilst we can't get this, I hate, I just, my whole body's like, why do you still use it? Because the view before the summit is like, everyone's begging the mother to go up for even a split second, even it's like one second, please give us one moment on the summit. As soon as you come down, you're like, no, I freaking conquer. Like the ego steps in and some of our mountaineers' egos are bigger than the mountains.

2:02:01They climb themselves. So I feel like not just with mountains, but any part of nature, like even with the environment, climate crisis, especially in America, I hear often, save Mother Earth. Like, oh, please. Like Mother Earth can just toss you out in a fraction of a second. I've seen it over and over. I've seen earthquakes, avalanches, anything and everything that you knew could be gone in a fraction of a second if a tsunami comes. So we know we need to be healing ourselves. We need to be saving ourselves and Mother Nature will heal herself by itself. So having this ego state of higher ego state over the mother, I feel is really wrong.

2:02:49And another practice is, I think, when the internal elements within us are balanced and when we are calm, and this is a very Buddhist practice as well, the external elements settle on its own. When so many of us humans are functioning in anger, jealousy, all this negative, greed, whatever you want to call it, that creates a lot of these outer dimensions. The microcosm produces the macrocosm. Exactly. I've read that you said, you know, mental health is planetary health. Like there is a nexus between like how we treat ourselves and, you know, the outer manifestations of our interior world is what's creating what we see around us that needs to get fixed.

2:03:35Yeah, absolutely. Which is also a very Buddhist thing, right? Like the way you save the world as you save yourself, or if you wanna fix the world, fix yourself. If we all focused on mental health and our own health, I think half of the world's problems would be gone. Like we don't have to do anything. If we were in full control of our mind and our bodies. It's empowering to hear that. I truly believe that. But mental health right now is not, we're not doing well with that, are we? Collectively. No. At least in the West. Well, in the East, it's a shame to talk like, what? Mental health? Like I think in West is ahead a little bit.

2:04:16LA is for sure. But yeah, that's my focus too. I was just thinking coming up here, my podcast is gonna be called Climbing Inner Mountains. Yeah. Well, that's what we've been doing today. Yeah. But it's like nothing impresses me, like whether you've gone to space or whatever, if internally you haven't done the work. Yeah. Yeah. What is your relationship with gratitude look like? Oh, every moment, every day. Honestly, like this past couple of months have been hard, in the last year, like to really go back to a state of gratitude. But I think, like again, going back to karma, like there's positive karma, neutral karma, negative karma.

2:05:04And when we don't have gratitude, it often goes automatically to negative because we are not appreciating what like this, the fact that we can sit with food, three types of drinks and with such a nice environment talking to you. This means already that both of us and those people associated with us have done a lot of good work in the past, good merits for us to come. Sit in a time like this when so many people in the rest of the world are suffering, that we can have this positive experience. Rejoice. We use that word specifically. And rejoice automatically when you look at other people's good things, good achievements and rejoice on it, especially on things that you don't have.

2:05:52That's what multiplies your positive karma. And enough people don't reflect on that, that there's a way around multiplying your positive and putting the negative, like subduing the negative karma. I think we should do a course in that, but - Yeah, no, I'm interested in the formal practice of cultivating it when you notice like you're not experiencing it. Like, is there something that you do or like a tactic or a habit? Every morning to 6 a.m. I have a two hour period. Two hours. Yeah, before heading to the gym. Walk me through that before you go to the gym, wow. Well, now he has made the time 5.45, so I have to be at Cole's at 5.45.

2:06:37Be where? Oh, at the gym, okay. So you get up at what time? Usually I'm on the mat by 4 a.m. Wow. Yeah, I haven't been sleeping properly, I must say, but 4 a.m. and that's, you know, that practice has been going from dharamsala days. So the first part, I mean, it's not the same every day, but usually it's the several texts that we study. And it's different every, like right now I'm finishing certain practices. So it's more the mantra chanting. So clearing your speech. So, you know, we have so many mantras that we do, and I'm not the most highest expert to explain mantras, but I would say that it really refines your inner karmas and it really helps me.

2:07:27And we all have different body types. So what speech practices are going to do for me might not do the same for you, if that makes sense. So then after that, I have sitting meditation, which is both analytical and just like, you call it insight meditation, I guess, here, which is vipassana. And then sometimes visuals, like, so let's say, I'll just give a stupid example. If I'm working on a certain project, really planning it out visually and how morally, ethically, rightfully I would do, but also projected visually. And then, you know, people who are not familiar with Tibetan practice might get confused with it.

2:08:14But like the deity practices we do, I'll just say like it's almost like having those deities are avatars. So these are the deity practices are more in which is called the tantric practices. And it's hard to explain over a podcast, but the specific deity that I'm practicing with is ultimately the avatar within me. It's the energy quality. So I'm trying to develop that within myself. And at the end of the practice, the deity merges into my heart chakra, which is where my mind lives and we become one. And then, yeah, and then closing ceremony. Wow. And are you doing this with the counsel of a teacher or guru?

2:08:56Yes, everything has been passed on. So I have four main teachers. Both Dalai Lama and Karmapa are so busy now. So Karmapa is often considered it as the second most important lama after Dalai Lama. But I don't think you can hierarchically put it like that. This is again, the Western media description of it. Karma Pa is the second lama in Tibet, which is not true. Often they portray him like that. But Karma Pa, Pa is his father. Karma is action. So father of all actions. So he comes from the action family. We have five different families. I am of the action, like, do, don't. Right. Yeah. So this makes him the perfect teacher for you.

2:09:39Yeah. So he was my, I found him second after Dalai Lama, but he's the knower of all times. Like he literally saved me from earthquakes, saved me from gun violence, saved me, pulled me out. Oh, he's the one who talked you off getting on a plane, right? Yeah. Yeah. So he's the, he's clairvoyant. And that you were going to Kathmandu and that's when the earthquake was, right? To meet Dan. What's that? To meet Dan who passed, who was the first dead body to come. Right, wow. My last text to him - And he just called you and said, don't get on the plane. Karmapa did, yeah. Yeah. He knew, I didn't even tell him.

2:10:20He didn't know that you were about to get on a plane. He just said, come, come, come back. No, I was fighting with him. He said, don't go. And I said, why? I have, like, I was very stubborn. Still am. That's shocking. But I was fighting. I was like, oh, I'm not going to miss my flight. But also a number of, so Karmapa and Dilgukhin Sirim Prashe, they're both kind of similar age. So I kind of have a very friendly, best friend version of it. Like not a lot of people would fight with these high llamas, but I always argue. and they kind of love it because debate is part of the Tibetan culture. I think you went and visited or saw some - We did, we saw a debate.

2:11:02We got to spend a lot of time with some of the monks who I just love, I loved hanging out with those guys. So even Daya Lama, he would always say, come in, challenge me, question me. If there's part of my teaching that you don't, he told me personally, there's anything in the text or teachings that I give, don't just believe because I'm the Dalai Lama, question the Dalai Lama, you must question the Dalai Lama. And if it's not working for you, don't practice it. Like he would, so. Yeah, yeah, that is part of it. I remember this debate, it was funny. It was Arthur Brooks and all these social scientists, you know, and then you have like the - The llamas.

2:11:40The llamas on the other side, who are kind of laughing the whole time. Like you guys are so up your ass in your head, you know, like it was very entertaining. Actually, go ahead, sorry. No, I was gonna go into my teachers. We were talking about... We were talking, well, we were talking about how he talked to you off the plane and that you have this jocular relationship with them where you push back and debate and argue. And then he hung up when I was like, no. And then the text I got is come see me. And then I texted Dan saying - And you were where at this time? Almost near the airport. So I have - The Dharamshala airport?

2:12:20No, no, no, in Bangladesh. So Dhaka to Kathmandu is less than an hour flight. It's like it takes longer to get to my home in traffic than get to Nepal. It's literally like if India allowed us that 30 minutes of road over land, it would just be a small car, short car ride. So I go back and I forgot where he was and I call his assistant and he's like, oh yeah, come to New York. I said, wait, what? He's in New York? I'm going to fly to New York to meet him? And next day I got a Qatar flight, woke up in Qatar, like it was a layover, when my phone started, Qatar or Dubai, somewhere in those two hubs.

2:13:05And then my phone started beeping with messages of the earthquake, but I had a flight to catch. And when, by the time I landed and saw him, he was already in meditation. So when the earthquake happened, both Dalai Lama and Karmapa went into deep meditation. And they don't say it, but they try to take on as much of the suffering that they can. And so I think it took me three days to see him. And by that time - You're just hanging out in New York, waiting for him to be done meditating? No, I knew by that time, I kind of just because I had already gotten Dan's news and I knew. But then when I saw him, I didn't know.

2:13:52Like I was angry, but I was also, I guess, fighting with guilt because I was recreating the whole scene of if I was there, I could have maybe saved him. He died basically in base camp doing nothing. You know, he wasn't even climbing. And so I was replaying it, which is again, a version of Survivor's Guild because it was his big sister. Even though he was older than me, it was like, we always watched each other out on the mountain. So yeah, it was just, and then I saw him and then I went back to Nepal from America and I ended up staying there. And there were 360 plus aftershocks after that. So it was a very tragic time, but one of the most powerful time in my life where we spent almost a year rebuilding.

2:14:42We all from poor to rich to all walks of life people. And only in Nepal this could happen. Coming out, living under tents, holding each other, random strangers just out in the street while the aftershocks are happening. Like everyone watching out for everyone. the amount of community collective work that happened post earthquake. And I've been in other earthquakes. I feel like in Bangladesh, people wouldn't have behaved like that. So just like seeing people who just lost everything, still like going and recovering or, you know, just doing what it was necessary at that time was very powerful. Do the mountains still have the pull and the allure?

2:15:24Like, do you feel like you still have some things you want to do there? Or do you feel like you've learned what you needed to learn from those experiences? I think until my last breath, I would want to return to the Himalayas. There's this longing of like, this is the longest time I've been away from Himalayas. My ashes are supposed to go to the Himalayas. So I have a connection there that it's more like, it's almost like therapy, every like annual therapy kind of a pilgrimage. Like if I'm not in touch with the rocks and the vibration that you feel. What is it that's so unique about the Himalayas that makes them different from other mountains, irrespective of like how high they are?

2:16:08They're just so alive. They're like living beings. So there's this territory within, so Everest and all these mountains, it almost like curves out in the Nepal side, like almost like an embrace, like a mother. And when you put a camp in there and sleep on the ground, let's say base camp on Glacier, if you're, I'm not talking about these crazy people who are just like doing stuff, but if you're in tune with your body, within three days you'll be attuned with the mother. And there's a chapter in my book called Avalanche Lullaby. And it was about an episode in my life where post Everest, I couldn't sleep anywhere.

2:16:48Like in Bangladesh, I had insomnia, never struggled so much with sleep. I would be up all night till I went back to base camp the next season. And, you know, officially speaking, you're not allowed to stay in base camp without a permit. But I have enough Sherpa friends where I just put up. It wasn't sneak. I mean, all the official people knew that I was coming. But I stayed there just to sleep. And while you're lying down, whether it's morning or evening, it just goes from... So it's like a whole lair in the embrace. There's so many big mountains, just avalanches happening. And that was so calming for me because I slept with that sound for so long.

2:17:35like that became my lullaby and it's only in that lullaby that I could fall back into sleep. You can't fall asleep unless you're listening to avalanches. But it was so sweet. It's not like the wrathful, even though they were wrathful, they could take it in a whole village. But that sound was so pleasing. And so I felt so protected in her embrace, I would say. And also a lot happened while I was climbing ever is like my entire camp three which is on the Lhotse face went off with an avalanche and right before summit push so I had to recreate so if people who aren't familiar with how the climb goes you basically don't climb the mountain all at one go you acclimatize you go from camp one camp two carry I'm talking about people who are actually carrying their shit and then you go back carry more stuff but this is a that's why it takes so long to climb these mountains and so by the time we reached camp three it was almost summit push time and summit push time is a window we never know when that's going to come till much later in April and then we do several you know satellite so we there are two main satellite readings that you can do very costly one is Swiss one American so I bought the American one someone else bought Swiss one and then we exchanged And anyway, long story short, I saw that there was one window on 26th.

2:19:03The second window on 27th was a no-go. And 25th could be a window.

2:19:12And if I can touch base on Camp 3. So me and Nima, we were already up there. We had our supplementary oxygen that we were going to carry to Camp 4 and then go for the summit push. Food was there. and it took weeks, you know, it took weeks to bring them up. And then Nima just came in to the tent and it's like, Didi, Didi means sister, older sister, we're not going up tonight, so do you want to just go to Camp 2 and sleep there? Because the idea is as much as you can, you sleep at lower realms, like there's no point losing your stuff. And I just shrugged and I don't know what, I just said, yes, let's go.

2:19:51And as we were grappling down Camp 3 to Camp 2, we heard this from the top. And I thought it was an avalanche. And it was an avalanche. But it happened on another side of the mountain that made a humongous building-sized rock. And we're watching it come straight, took my camp, took the next camp, two Sherpas had to be airlifted out with their backbone injury. And so my entire camp... How long after you had left Camp 3? We were still on the rope coming down. And then next day, Nima and I, when we go back to the place, because we were like, okay, if we could have, say, one oxygen cylinder or something, nothing was there.

2:20:36And then a cracked amulet, the one His Holiness had given me, forever is, that was just there with a crack and broken. Everything else is gone except this amulet. there was some like little stuff left, but the main stuff like food, oxygen, everything was taken. So I took those broken pieces and later gave it to Dal. I was like, this happened and that happened. And then he just looked at me and he was like, time for a new one. And he went back and gave me another one. I keep asking this question, but like, so what do you make of that? Like, what does this mean to you, the way this series of events unfolded?

2:21:21Well, I think that was Chomulungman's way of, because the first night that people started going up, it was a total shit show. I would have died in that line. There were over 250 attempting. I didn't make that crowd. A lot of people died in that crowd. By the time I reached, the night of me reaching the summit, I crossed over seven dead bodies, out of which there were people from that same season. who I had tea with. And those people died in the just previous summit window. So that was the time when I was like, okay, I was looking at them. But also I must say, when I went back to Camp 2, automatically it was very depressing.

2:22:03Like I still didn't know if I would make it. I had to go back to base camp. My supplies came on a helicopter from Kathmandu. and me and Nima had to recarry back. Can you imagine the energy loss, the mental thing? But as soon as I reached back to Camp 2 and settled my mind, I'm going to go, I felt like someone, like a mother, a goddess, fearless energy was like, you're going to come up and was just pulling me. We reached dead zone. So dead zone starts above 26 ,000 feet. So camp three above, technically speaking, is dead zone. You spend as less time there and you have basically no appetite in dead zone.

2:22:49I went into camp four. I was so hungry after eating my food that I ended up eating Nima, the next camp, next tents, all the Sherpas left over food. And everyone was like, Didi, what happened to you? Like I had this newfound energy that I couldn't explain. And then throughout the night of climbing, I felt like someone was pulling me, like just this big energy. And it was as cliched as it kind of sound. That climb itself was probably one of the most profound spiritual experience for me. And I'm so happy that it happened because if I was in that shitshow line before, I wouldn't be having this experience.

2:23:31And the other thing that happened, Nima. But hold on a second. So profound how and why. Because I was constantly like, I knew mother was there. She was protecting me. She was pulling me. And then my entire life at that time, I was only 29, but my entire life flashed through the last couple of hours of reaching the summit and everything from very life altering moments to insignificant memories, like random people crossing in Heathrow airport or like just, but it was happening at a rate faster than the speed of light. Like everyone just passing, passing. But the overriding feeling throughout that was of gratitude.

2:24:11Like I was so, I was like bursting with gratitude. I was like, wow. And, you know, there was this last ridgeline before the summit. So I studied the mountain, obviously, like the maps. So I had, I knew of what was there, but you're at nighttime climbing it. You know, you have no concept of how high you are, how low you are. You're just going up, up, up. And then all of a sudden from my right side, from literally below me, you know how sometimes you fly in the plane and you can see the curvature of the earth? So just like that, the curvature of the earth and the sun started coming up and I looked down and I was like, holy shit, like how high I was.

2:24:56And I knew that was Tibet. So the mountain summit literally goes on the border of Tibet and Nepal. So on the summit, that side is Tibet and this side is Nepal. So I was even joking like, you know, with Nima is like, oh, if you fall, like in this place, we have two places to die, two countries to die in. We have a choice. If you fall on the right, you fall in Tibet. If you fall on the left, you die in Nepal. And Nima was like, yeah, don't fall on the right, Didi. We can't get your body out from China. So we were just joking nonstop about that. And then we finally reached the summit at the time when sun was literally, sunrise was happening.

2:25:38And I got to watch that from top of the world with Nima alone. There was no bloody single person. But I must say here, Nima, if it wasn't for Nima, he was one of the very few that were at that time, this is 2012. 2012. He was one of the 18 Sherpa people to have learned English and he was pursuing the international guiding certifications. He was very skilled and ahead. So he climbs like a ninja, like without rope or anything, oxygen. And he had seen what could have happened on the balcony and other places. So he brought extra rope with him, which is abnormal because the ropes are already set up so when we hit a traffic point he detoured me through a rope and we basically bypassed the traffic and that's how I could and I was fast and I was so surprised like how is this happening it's the mother you know that she's the goddess of inexhaustible giving and then I bawled my eyes out on the summit just like and you know I was like trying to because like your cornea is going and freeze like just don't cry right now.

2:26:43But it was just overwhelmingly, I don't think I've felt gratitude in that way ever before. You were being looked after and you were being looked after by the great mother who was expressing love for you when you needed it most. And then I did a naughty thing after that. What did you do? So I was banned from Tibet in 2007, five years before the climb. And it was because of a book that I was carrying. It was a meditation book called Art of Happiness with a very smiley picture of Dalai Lama. And I got caught. That'll do it. So the officer, he ripped it looking at me like this. And then he threw the cover like this on my face.

2:27:36And this is, I mean, yeah, it's a meditation book, but it's a spiritual scripture for me. So I found it. I mean, he just literally ripped the cover with my teacher on it and threw it. And through my passport, through the rest of the book. And the last line he said was, you can never step into Tibet again. And I was so pissed with that line. So I carried that cover to the summit just as a backup, knowing that the border of Tibet lied over there. And after watching sunrise on top of the world, I was like, Nima, are you ready? Do you feel good? He's like, I think you're doing very good. Let's go.

2:28:16Because, you know, you have to also remember that summit is only half the way and you still have a mountain to go down. So we rappled down Tibet side. and I put the cover of Dalai Lama inside Tibet and I said, I stepped into Tibet again. And then I gave a picture of me holding a picture of him. So there's a picture of Dalai Lama holding a picture of me holding a picture of him inside Tibet. That's hilarious. What was his reaction when you told him that story? He had so much, he was like, wait, what did you do? Like, he was just so shocked. And, but then I also took a zoom lens to, I took a 180 panorama in several sections as far as I could.

2:28:59And I also gave him that, like the view of Tibet from top of the world and just how much the glaciers have gone out. And I don't think I've ever seen Kundun this sad when he was looking at those pictures. Those are in his home, all of those. Yeah, that was very sad. but yeah, that was the naughty thing I did. And then we came back. Did he ever reflect back to you like his thoughts on what you accomplished? Not yet. You know, this idea that he's like, go to the mountains and then you go and you go to the mountains and then some, and then you go back to him. What does he say to you about like this arc?

2:29:46He never takes any credit and he doesn't, Like when any time I've gone back and said, remember when you told me that and because he counsels so many people. And also it's a very Tibetan thing to not, you know, just everything. Don't take credit. None of my teachers ever want credit. But so I in my 20s and 30s, I was I had this karma with authority figures in pretty much every single country. I was getting into trouble with the army, the intelligence and a lot of this shit show that was happening in China, inside China. And so he would, one was concerned that a young girl is going to get into a lot of trouble and probably get killed.

2:30:31I already got banned and profiled. And so he was always, you know, I was going to him for protection and said, like, can you do something? almost like can you call up the gods to remove this this is so he would he would be very serious and then wanting to know what happened back in bangladesh when i would go back and then somehow something oh it was basically after everest every single politician to intelligence they all became my friend because they had to claim me for their parties right and so when i went back and told told him that he was just going from his home to suklagang which is the temple and we met in in the street and I was like, Holyness, there's no more trouble anymore.

2:31:12Like, I don't know what happened. And he looked so disappointed. He made this very disappointed face. He's like, oh, like he made a disappointed face and said, I must go back into prayer now to cause you more trouble. Because the whole concept is if there are no obstacles, then you're not going to learn anything. Yeah. So what's the point? Yeah. But to answer your question, to go back to your question, I think my memoir would be the good way to let him know. Because every chapter has him in some way or other. So I think I got to finish it soon and give him a copy. The clock is ticking. You've been working on it for a while, right?

2:31:56No, because I know why. because a lot in my, the first book proposal I got was after Evers, when I was only 29. I'm going to be 42 this year. And my story hadn't finished at that time. So this one is now finishing at 40 when I leave for Ketu. And that's where it should, because I hadn't gotten the healing, the mother wounding stuff we talked about. All of that work only happened in 2020. There's so much more I want to talk to you about, but I'm gonna have to release you back to your life. But I'm not gonna let you go. I think until we kind of land this and the way I wanna land it is with a little reflection on what you might be able to share about the many transformations that you've undergone.

2:32:45Like somebody can look at your story and be inspired by all the things that you've overcome to achieve all the things that you've achieved. And I wanna leave people with some thoughts on how they might reflect on where they are in their life and what's standing in the way of them achieving some aspiration for themselves and how to go about perhaps manifesting that dream or that goal. When I share my stories, I think one of the most important thing for me is to really make people realize that it does, we're all climbing our own mountains, regardless of whether we are an A-list or like we spoke about or whatever circumstances we're in, we're all suffering and we're all climbing our own mountains.

2:33:38But having a purpose, having honesty and really working at it, there is no mountain high enough for us to climb. If I could do everything that I've done from the background that I came from, anything is possible. It truly is. It's not a cliche line. But we got to work hard for it. You know, we really got to be prepared and train ourselves for it. But there is a way out. And we only get one chance at this game. None of us know when we're going to exit this planet. The likeness of me dying on a mountain is way less than me dying in the streets of, let's say, Dhaka City or LA City. I don't like civilization.

2:34:20I don't function well. But just to give that, like we all come here for a very short time and we must make this a very purposeful time. Don't ruin it. It's like what the Dalai Lama told me in different ways in our first meeting. What do you say to the person who says, I don't know what my purpose is or I don't know how to find purpose or I know my life could be larger or more expansive, but I don't even know where to start. Yeah, that I think, I mean, that's how I was questioning in my mind when His Holiness gave me the purpose lecture on my first meeting. But I think we all need to go on our own journey in our own ways and really dive deep into understanding what karma is.

2:35:08And I don't mean, again, karma is, even though the word means action, what is the purpose that we came in? But no one else can find it out for you. We all have to find it on our own terms, in our own ways. And that journey will teach you so much like it did me. I had to find my own purpose. And oftentimes, we go through journeys and it never makes sense, but ultimately in the end, it all makes sense. Yeah, it doesn't make sense when it's happening. Later on, you look back and you're like, oh yeah, of course. but you don't get to see or have that feeling when you're in it. It's just sort of rigged that way, isn't it?

2:35:52That was beautiful. That was so, I don't normally get to talk like this with a lot of people in LA. So how do you feel? Do you feel like we did it? Do you feel okay? Yeah, I think we covered them a lot in the short time, but I think we could talk for days. Yeah, I think there's more. I think we're gonna have to do a part two at some point. Yeah, in the meantime, I need to go to this somatic healer. We can do all our somatic work and come back and have a different episode on the inner work. You really inspire me with your example. We didn't even go into all of your activism and the kind of moral compunction and ethical way that you go about showing up in the world to speak truth to power and to address the causes that are important to you.

2:36:48So I think that would be something we could go into next time as well. I just think it's beautiful how you do that. It's really powerful. It's inspiring as an example of service. And I'm just so glad we had a chance to meet. Thank you for what you do and for coming here today to share. Thank you so much for having me. And you need to get that book done. And you need to get that documentary done, right? Yeah, we're working on it now. Yeah, good. If people wanna learn more about you, where's the best place to direct them? To your website, to your Instagram? Yeah, I mean, I gotta step up my game on Instagram.

2:37:23That's, all my LA people are disappointed. But yeah, Instagram. It's all Maya, right? It's just an illusion. Yeah. My Instagram is wasfianazreen. website is waspianazreen.com either of those Facebook same Waspianazreen people still go to Facebook I have I have so many people globally yeah no I mean all my American all the Nat Geo people are there it's a different crowd yeah but it's Instagram is short attention span Facebook is more like long version yeah Yeah. Cool. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you. What is the word that you use in closing that is, it's not a goodbye, but it's this word? Oh, it's in Bengali.

2:38:21Ashi? Yes. It starts with an A, right? What does that mean? So in Bengali, we have a culture of saying ashi, like I'll be back or coming back shortly. So we don't say goodbye. We say ashi. All right, so let's end it with Ashi. Yeah. Thank you so much. That was great.

2:38:54That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment.

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2:40:58Thank you.