“The two men were Tibetan peasants. In the early 1930s, they embarked on a religious pilgrimage from the area around Yusho in Eastern Tibet to Lhasa. They were intent on entering a monastery—not an uncommon practice for young men in that culture. But early in their journey, as a result of an intense snowstorm, they became lost and wandered along the Dza (Mekong) river into Southeastern China, where they were captured by bandits.
Shortly after their capture, the bandits packed up and marched into Northern China to join the Communists, taking the two young Tibetans with them. From there, the two men escaped, and, after several years in which they probably skirted the northern lip of the Tibetan plateau, blundered into Central Russia, where they fell into the hands of the Russian authorities at Tashkent.
The Germans had just invaded Russia, and the Tibetans were inducted into the Russian army and packed off to the Eastern Front as cannon fodder. Before long they were captured by the Germans—it wasn't clear whether by military misadventure or because they simply wandered away from their encampment and in behind the German lines.
Luckily, the German commandant involved in their capture didn't execute them. Instead, he had them transported to Poland, where they worked for a time in a concentration camp—Captain Surry couldn't determine which one it was, or its size, only that people were, in the words of the Tibetans, coming there "to the smoky light".
But as winter approached, and under threat of the now-oncoming Russian armies, the concentration camp was dismantled and the two Tibetans were inducted into the German Army and transported to Normandy.
There, we know, once again they fell into the hands of a new authority. Captain Surry went over the events again and again with the Tibetans, convinced that the riddle of their unlikely survival and their profound, elastic passivity in the face of hardship after hardship was eluding him.
The modern world had done its worst to them, and yet had done nothing at all. The Tibetans were neither stupid men nor, on their own terms, were they ignorant.
Finally, it came to him. For ten years, these two men had believed that they were dead.
Reluctantly, the Tibetans confirmed his theory and elaborated. In their terms, their ordeal had been a test of their being, and a means, they hoped, of gaining Nirvana, however confusing and unorthodox those means were.
They had survived because from the very first days they had believed that they were dead men caught in an unpredictable Bardo, or netherworld.
To the Tibetans, bodily survival had not been a goal, since they believed that they were already dead.
They were traversing the netherworld in order to be reborn. They'd sought shelter, eaten and slept only because their bodies continued to make demands for shelter, food and sleep.”
So, when in distress, simply ask yourself: have I considered treating this problem as an otherworldly test of character in which physical survival is irrelevant?
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