Block Sacred Place


Mount Kailash in Tibet serves as a sacred place to take a pilgrimage in the Hindu religion. Each person who takes this pilgrimage faces weeks of cold weather and difficult travel while they have to carry all of their supplies that will allow them to survive for weeks in below freezing temperatures with no place except the sides of the trail to stop. There is no transportation of any form taking people up and down to Mount Kailash, so the question stands, what is so compelling about this sacred place that people continue to take pilgrimages to it? Mount Kailash is considered to be the axis mundi in which the earth and the heavens connect into a transient being.
Taking a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash leaves a feeling of kenosis in the form of the divine or wholly other. This sacred place serves as the home of Lord Shiva, the Lord of Yoga. Gray describes Shiva as, “a deity who has wisely integrated the extremes of human nature and thus transcended attachment to any particular, and limited, way of being.” Taking this sacred journey gives a divine view of Shivas home while releasing from the ignorance of everyday life. This sacred place acts as a cosmos where people are able to gain experience from others and experience the divine with other “yous.”

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