A Map Comes Alive Not every student group in my class achieves their goal as completely as those students did. Still, my files at Georgetown are now starting to fill with students’ success stories. They have not only had their ideas included in legislation, but some of those ideas have been passed by Congress and signed into law by the president of the United States. The students have promoted development of green buildings, proposed new methods for combating tuberculosis and malaria, pushed for cleaner transportation. Their enthusiasm is infectious—one team persuaded a foundation to support them to fly to Bamako, Mali, to do a feasibility study of a bus rapid transit system. They discuss their ideas with Congress, write opinion pieces for newspapers, publish articles in major research journals, and give presentations at government agencies. They stand at the helm, steering our journey to a better place. Ten years ago, I had lectured with my back to the class. Now my students were part of the world. The map had come to life.
My more than a decade-long journey was nearing its end. I had only one last ocean to surf to complete the record; all I had left to do was pick a beach and get there. Also, reluctantly, I had finally accepted that I would never know the meaning of the amulet. For the last couple of years I had been writing about the amulet in the hope that I could find someone who could translate it. I would get letters from readers, but no one knew what it meant. I spoke to linguists, but they couldn’t interpret it. It was at one talk in particular that I finally had to face facts. I was invited to speak at the Library of Congress. This, I thought, was my final opportunity to decipher the amulet. I told the assembled scholars at the library the story of the Most Holy Rinpoche of the Khumbu and how I had acquired the amulet. I also told some of the tales that followed. I closed the talk holding up
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To the Last Breath a board with the amulet’s letters inscribed on it, asking the experts if anyone could provide a translation. I left the board behind and a few days later got a response from a Tibetan scholar at the library: “I can’t translate the amulet.” I had consulted a final authority, and even then, I couldn’t crack its code. So many things had changed in me over the last decade, but one thing had not. Ten years earlier Jim Williams and I were looking down at Ang Nima, encouraging him to stand, and Nima had remained in the snow, at peace with his own death, comforted by his belief that he would be reincarnated. Despite all the time I had spent in Lama Kinle’s prayer room and all the miles spent crisscrossing Asia talking with monks, I would act no differently today than I did during that blizzard on Everest. I would do what it took to get Nima on his feet. To this day, I don’t look to Buddhism for answers about life and death. Instead, I take my guidance from Joe Louis. Joe Louis was born in a shack in rural Alabama, his parents the descendants of slaves. His family worked farmland until they were harassed by the Ku Klux Klan and moved to Michigan, where Louis intended on becoming a cabinetmaker. Instead of hammering wood, he took to hammering people and, by Ring Magazine’s standard, became the greatest heavyweight boxing champion in history. So what was Louis’s observation on life and death? “You only live once, but if you work it right, once is enough.” I would follow Louis’s suggestion and keep working my life, my one shot. And in continuing to work it, I would find out, in just a few months, that things were not as settled as I had thought. The amulet was about to reveal its meaning.
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