SEROLSAR LAKE, HIMACHAL PRADESH
Sacred places don’t change you permanently. They show you what’s possible.
Tenzin’s eyes hold the kind of peace that comes from decades of sitting with difficult questions without needing immediate answers. At 52, he’s spent more years in meditation than most people spend in their careers.
His journey to Serolsar Lake isn’t tourism – it’s pilgrimage. “I come here every year not because the lake needs me, but because I need to remember what stillness actually feels like. In our busy minds, we mistake noise for thinking.”
He wasn’t always a monk. “I was an angry young man in Dharamshala, full of opinions about how the world should change. Then my teacher asked me a simple question: ‘Have you changed yourself yet?’ I spent the next fifteen years finding out.”
His teachings aren’t abstract philosophy but practical psychology. “People think meditation is about stopping thoughts. It’s actually about changing your relationship with thoughts. You don’t need to go to war with your mind – just stop believing everything it tells you.”
The wisdom he shares feels ancient but immediately applicable. “Suffering comes from wanting this moment to be different than it is. Peace comes from finding what’s beautiful in this moment exactly as it is. The lake teaches this – it reflects everything perfectly without trying to change anything.”
His laughter comes easily, especially when discussing serious spiritual matters. “Enlightenment isn’t as complicated as we make it. Children know how to be present – we just forget by trying to become someone important.”
When I asked about his biggest teaching, he pointed to the perfectly still lake surface. “See how the water reflects the mountains perfectly? It doesn’t try to improve them or judge them. That’s all we need to learn.”
Some teachers give you answers. Tenzin gave me better questions.
– Zara