Sunday, August 26, 2012

Sherpa AND Korean "Puja"

Korean mountaineers conducting a "puja", Sherpa Buddhist ritual, at the base camp of Annapurna South Face.



I should say I could not see any noticeable difference from each of the "official" meanings the Koreans and the Sherpas endowed to the ritual.  Anthropologist Sherry Ortner once critically analyzed the ritual placed by mountaineering expedition, separating the key meanings of foreign mountaineers and Sherpa's.

The indifference and difference in the meanings of the ritual, if we can consider to some extent, should be traced up to their consideration of such a terms including "dead", "deap person", "spirit", "god(s)", and so on.  What is "avalanche"?  How can you avoid the disaster?  What it means to "avoid" the force of the mountain.  It is the question: how one understand the "unknown".


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