Episode Transcript

Note: The following transcript is a draft transcript, and as such, may contain computer-generated mistranslations.

Bruce Langford:

You were going to be staying in a tiny home with possibly 10 to 12 people. You talked about how you were thinking, how is this going to work? And you thought I'm just going to let this go and let this unfold. Tell us the thoughts that were going through your mind as you approach their home that day. And you knew you and your wife were going to be staying over. Tell us what you were thinking.

Michael Schauch, Finding Karma:

This was our second time into this Valley. It was considered a Lost Valley, because it had only been opened up, you know, a few years prior to our first time going in there. Prior to that, it was closed off for generations, for hundreds of years. So it had opened up, we decided to go in there and this was back in 2012. And I went in there to climb this mountain and there's this whole series of events that unfolded. And we can talk about that. But it led basically to meeting this little girl in this mountain village and she showed so much passion for education and wanting to learn and she just kind of approached us. When her friends were approaching us asking for chocolate and candy, because they're seeing some of that now coming in with the trekkers, but she approached us with these little cards, with English words written on them and, and just wanting us to speak the words and things like that.

Michael Schauch, Finding Karma:

So we could see this little girl, all she wants to do is to learn. So that kind of sparked a whole conversation you know, wanting to meet with her family and her parents and then getting to know them. To know what happens here for kids who want to go have some sort of education beyond what they would learn in their village. And so for the next eight years, we would go back to Nepal every year and visit with them. The little girl's name is Karma. And we grew a relationship with her family. And then we went back in 2017 to visit them again in their village. And we brought the girls back to their village because at that point they were studying in a boarding school in Katmandu, which is the capital city.

Michael Schauch, Finding Karma:

So we brought the girls back to their village. And if you could imagine their village, I mean it's sitting at 14,000 feet in elevation. We're living at sea level here. So you can imagine what life is like at 14,000 feet in elevation. It's very hard to grow anything and they're dealing with landslides and avalanches and at the time they didn't have any electricity. The nearest road is five days away, a five day walk across these high mountain passes. And part of the year during winter, they can't even leave because everything's snowed in and the risk of avalanches is too great. So they're semi-nomadic, they move around with the seasons as well. When we went back to the village in 2017, one of the goals was to have a conversation with the family about the future plans for their girls; Karma and her younger sister Pemba, who we had gotten to know over the previous seven years.

Michael Schauch, Finding Karma:

So that was why we went back there. And to your question, I was thinking, because it was multiple days to get up there. They wanted us to stay in the home and I had been in their home before and I was trying to imaginea family of 12, you know, we had a guide and a Porter with us. And, and I was just trying to logistically think about how that's going to work.One of the things that I learned over the last several years was just to not stress about it. Put yourself in the frame of mind to being in the village when you're a few days out and don't worry about that. I mean we have an intention, right? We have an intention to be together. It'll work out, right. There was no sense of creating that additional amount of stress and anxiety ahead of time.

Bruce Langford:

Yeah. Well, it was incredible reading about that. And you talked so much about the Tibetan ways, and you talked about suffering. The higher you ascended, you said the more rocks you saw with the Tibetan mantra, “om mani padme hum”. So you kept seeing that on the rocks. Is that right?

Michael Schauch, Finding Karma:

Right. Yeah. “Om mani padme hum”. It's a Tibetan mantra. You see it wherever you go. It's kind of painted on or carved into the prayer wheels. It's painted on the side of the buildings, on the prayer stones there. So the higher we ascended, the more we got into this culturally Tibetan area, the more we would see this mantra. I was kind of on this quest to learn the meaning of this this very deep mantra because it was everywhere. And I thought what is the meaning of this? And no matter where I went, people would kind of explain it but they really wouldn't get to the depth of it.

Michael Schauch, Finding Karma:

And one of our Sherpas guides showed a lot of wisdom particularly around Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism. And he said wait for the Lama, the monk at this Tasha Lacan monastery. This was one of the most remote monasteries in all of the Nepal Himalaya. It would take us a week to trek there. And it was perched up on this hill, overlooking this little village, which is the most remote outpost in this entire valley. So we went up there and the entire week I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to ask this Lama, this monk, about this mantra and we get there.

Michael Schauch, Finding Karma:

And the words “Om mani padme hum” were nowhere to be found. So in the meantime, I had met this young man named Saddam Georgay, and he had, he had left this little village called Foo when he was 14 years old because he had to leave to get education. And he had to go all the way down to India to get education. He hadn't seen his family in seven years. He hadn't seen his village in seven years and he had just come back right when we were there in 2012. And our paths happened to cross exactly at that moment. And because I was shut down on this mountain that I was meant to climb and I was forced to sort of hunker down in this village, Saddam and I, we got to know each other.

Michael Schauch, Finding Karma:

We became friends over days and we'd go on these walks together and we'd just talk about his village and village life and all of these things and Tibetan Buddhism. And one of the walks we took up to this Hilltop monastery. Then I found out that the Lama wasn't there, the door was locked. I thought, okay, well, I'm just going to ask Saddam about this phrase “Om mani padme hum”, and see what he says. He was a very wise man for his years. He thought about it for a moment. Then finally he said to me, you know, it's a blessing. It's a blessing because all life to live, you know, to live is to suffer all life has suffering.

Michael Schauch, Finding Karma:

And to live you experience that suffering and you grow and expand through that suffering. And so our suffering is actually our karma and our karma is our life. So we bless our karma. We bless death. We bless life. We bless sickness. We bless health because all of that is to live. So I was very touched, very moved by this., I had never heard anyone explain suffering in such a way before where they are actually blessing it. And I thought, wow, that's actually very profound because it made me realize at the time when he was explaining it, I was watching the river, the Foo River sort of flow down. And it was sort of carving its way through the Valley and around these big boulders and mountains.

Michael Schauch, Finding Karma:

And I thought, wow, like, you know, that river has no idea what lays around the next bend and the next bend after that, yet it still flows with intention. It still moves forward. And you know, perhaps if that's the way of the river, perhaps that's also the way of life. And through that moving forward, we can continue to expand, you know, our own consciousness as well as the world around us. So that was a very profound moment for me that just sort of hit at the depth of that Tibetan mantra.

Listen to the interview for more of Michael's story.