Wasfia Nazreen On The Spirituality of Climbing The Seven Summits

Wasfia Nazreen is the first Bengali and Bangladeshi to scale the Seven Summits and K2, and a mentee of the Dalai Lama. This conversation explores Wasfia’s extraordinary journey from childhood trauma to spiritual expansion through mountaineering. We discuss her unique perspective on personal evolution, which blends extreme physical challenges with deep inner work. She offers insights on healing trauma and transforming obstacles into opportunities for growth. Wasfia inspires. This conversation is a facility for anyone seeking to climb their inner metaphorical mountains. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Peak Design: Get 20% OFF thoughtfully crafted sleek carry solutions 👉PeakDesign.com/RICHROLL Bon Charge: Use code RICHROLL to save 15% OFF 👉boncharge.com Roka: Unlock 20% OFF your order with code RICHROLL 👉ROKA.com/RICHROLL Whoop: Track your sleep, strain, recovery, stress and more w/ personalized insights that help you reach your goals. 👉join.whoop.com/roll On: Enter RichRoll10 at the checkout to get 10% OFF your first order 👉on.com/richroll Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉 richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:08Speaker 01

  Mountains like Everest give you an excuse to give up every single moment. Nothing is gonna go according to plan up there. A lot of people can't deal with that. Of course, physical training is needed. Of course, the high-altitude training is needed. But if you don't have the mindset, you're not gonna last out there.

• 1:42Rich Roll?

  Wasfia Nazreen is a trailblazing force of nature.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Patience is the biggest thing that you need up there.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Like Mother Earth can just toss you out in a fraction of a second. I've seen it over and over. I've seen earthquakes, avalanches, anything and everything that you knew could be gone in a fraction of a second.

• 2:07Rich Roll?

  The first Bengali and the only Bangladeshi to summit K2 and the seven summits. Washe is a National Geographic Explorer, recognized as one of the most adventurous women of the last 25 years, who has shattered countless records and stereotypes as both a mountaineer and an activist.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  We all come here for a very short time and we must make this a very purposeful time. Don't ruin it.

• 2:38Rich Roll?

  As much as Washe's feats are extraordinary, it's her backstory that's even more remarkable. It's one of courage, it's one that's marked with resilience and just unbelievable fortitude in the face of almost unspeakable hardship. It's also deeply spiritual in nature and one that has been heavily influenced by her very special friendship with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. And it's one I'm deeply honored to share with you today.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Whatever circumstances we're in, we're all suffering and we're all climbing our own mountains, but there is no mountain high enough for us to climb. If I could do everything that I've done from the background that I came from, anything is possible.

• 3:27Rich Roll?

  Super nice to meet you. Delighted to have you here. And as I was wrapping my head around your story and digging deeper into who you are, what struck me beyond your accomplishments, which are certainly impressive, is really the story behind it, which I think is even more extraordinary. We're going to talk about the summits and all these amazing things that you've done, but I'm really interested in the depth of that experience and the experiences that you had, the formative experiences that kind of led to these accomplishments, which are really just external manifestations of this interior journey that you've been on.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Climbing our inner mountains.

• 4:13Rich Roll?

  Yes, that's right.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  It's an honor.

• 4:15Rich Roll?

  The metaphysical mountains.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me, first of all. I've been looking up to you for many years and it's a real honor. And I think this is karma too, how we got connected and all that. Yeah, real pleasure to be here today.

• 4:30Rich Roll?

  Excellent. Maybe we should just start at the beginning. Growing up in Bangladesh. Paint a picture of what that was like. I mean, we all know of Bangladesh, but I think at least in the Western world, there's a lot of confusion or misunderstanding or an incomplete understanding of what that experience must have been like for you.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  So people who might even not know where Bangladesh is, it's on the left side on the map of India. And before my, like during my parents' generation, so pretty recent, what is now Bangladesh, Pakistan and India used to be one country. So seventy-one was when Bangladesh Liberation War happened. And I was born in, you know, the first, as the first generation of Bang, as a Bangladeshi. And I paint that picture first because we grew up with a lot of stories. Every single person that I know growing up, well, were rebels, like freedom fighters. I think that was very instrumental in the foundation aspect of it

• 5:38Speaker 01

  and teaching me how to stand up for myself. But personally speaking, my parents, this is a long story, so I'm gonna make it short. So, you know, I was born to a musician mom and she's also a schoolteacher. And my father worked in the ships in Beav Bengal, which is the largest delta in the world. And near that delta is the Sundarbans, which is the largest mangrove forest in the world where the Bengal tigers are from. So because of my dad's work, I guess the fact that I was literally in touch with nature from the very beginning. And this is a region in the world where cyclones, floods. I mean, we used to, I still remember growing up, make fun of Americans freaking out over a storm.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  And we're going through the worst cyclones. And I've seen stuff from the earliest that I can remember, like nature. We just knew nature was the god, regardless of which religion we came from. And I grew up in a very secular community. My mom, you know, predominantly Bangladeshi Muslim.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  But it's a very secular Islam. Our whole constitute, like when Bangladesh, what is now Bangladesh and Pakistan separated, we were East Pakistan. And what is now Pakistan was West Pakistan with India in the middle, which was already independent. So we have our language Bengali, mother tongue. When Pakistani government, basically, or army made Bengalis speak in Urdu, which is their language. And this is when hundreds and thousands of my parents' generation students came out when they brush fired.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  And that day was 21st February, when, based on which the mother, International Mother Language Day was formed. Anyway, these are just little stories to say that we grew up with this. And then at the age of 13, one fine day, I found out that my mom left the house. That's all I knew. We didn't know if she was gonna come back. I was hoping she would. But it was kind of, because it was such a small town where we were living, you know, we call this cities, but they're very kind of like a rural city. And she was the teacher in my school. So I, and it was such a scandal that I just stopped going to school. And my father was at work the whole time. My brother was out.

• 8:10Rich Roll?

  And you were, you were how old, 13?

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Twelve, going to 13. And so, like, I, I had nobody. And so, after being absent in school for almost nine months and just being on my own, I wrote or called an aunt in Dhaka, which is the capital of the country, and saying that, you know, like, I asked my father first because he had no choice. He had to work. He had to be in the ships. So we, we took a decision together that it's probably best for me to move with her. And then I requested her, like, can you please put me in an English medium school? So till that age, I didn't know how to speak English. So in our country, we have two modes of. Schooling, one is English and one is Bengali.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  So I moved to Taka City and from the age of thirteen to eighteen, I went through rigorous like discipline of, because I knew the only ticket out is my education. Because if I could educate myself and provide for myself, then I can cut through this. At that time, there was this whole pressure of like, who the hell is gonna marry this girl?

• 9:16Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  She has her mom's shame.

• 9:18Rich Roll?

  Right. So, so your mom splits, your parents get divorced, they ultimately go and create new families, you're left betwixt and in between with nowhere to go. You end up with your aunt in this English speaking school. And you start, I mean, you're an athlete, you're playing volleyball and handball, but you're also doing theater, like you're kind of an artistic, but also athletic kid at the same time. But I would imagine having a bit of an identity crisis, trying to understand, you know, how you ended up in this place, while at the same time, having a deep understanding of how important education is going to be in terms of your trajectory.

• 9:59Rich Roll?

  Because, you know, Bangladesh isn't exactly getting an A plus on the, on the women's rights, you know, report card, right? So talk a little bit about what it's like for a young woman growing up in Bangladesh in terms of access to opportunity and being upwardly mobile.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  To be frank, at that time, like that period was just survival for me. Like, I didn't think of these things like logically, I was just doing to just survive and get the hell out of there. So for example, I went to that school, but then as soon as I was in the school, I was in my mind, I was like, okay, I have heard of my older cousins be out, you know, going for study abroad, and so I need to get the hell out of here. So I was aiming, even without telling my aunts, that at the age of eighteen, as soon as I graduate, I'm gonna apply to colleges and that's my ticket out. Because I knew that if I stayed in Bangladesh, I would not be able to choose life as I wanted for myself. Also, I think that one incident, just to give context, every other aunt of mine was

• 11:01Speaker 01

  married off as a teenager. So that, I'm the next generation, so.

• 11:05Rich Roll?

  In arranged marriages.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Majority, yeah.

• 11:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Well. I have one aunt from my dad's side who had a love marriage, but on my mom's side was arranged. Yeah, so before my mom left, I was the most timid, silent kid. I did nothing. I would walk and follow, like I was clumsy. I was very vulnerable. That one incident overnight made me completely opposite spectrum. It's like, I need to stand up for myself. I don't want to end up like her. I don't want to end up like any of my aunts. So when I started applying for colleges, I went to my dad for money. And then my stepmom told me that they had enough, only enough money for the son, which was her son, which wasn't true, first of all.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  But I was so pissed off with that one answer. I went back and this one college in Decatur, Georgia, gave me a hundred percent scholarship. I wrote to an uncle who lived in London at that time, my father's older brother, for enough money for the ticket. And I think he gave me a few hundred bucks extra, sent me a few hundred bucks extra. And then that was it. I bought a ticket, came to Decatur, Georgia, thinking it was going to be like New York, because that's all I knew.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  And then I landed.

• 12:29Rich Roll?

  That must have been quite shocking, you know, in terms of a cultural shift.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  Can you imagine as an eighteen-year-old good girl from Bangladesh arriving in America, thinking she was coming to New York?

• 12:41Rich Roll?

  In the South.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  And then Decatur, Georgia was very different back then. My first, within my first semester, I almost got gang raped. I was like in the middle of violence. And I was like, holy shit, where did I come?

• 12:53Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  And then I applied right away for study abroad. And I got into another college in Scotland. And I left for six months and ended up staying in Scotland through my college, Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia, who was paying for it. And I kept extending it. Six months went into a year, into two years, till Agnes Scott wrote and saying, hey, if you want to graduate with a degree from our college, you need to return. So then I came back. And then by that time, Atlanta had changed a little bit. And then during my final year, I got another grant to go to India to study how women were using art as therapy.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Because it was double majoring in studio art and psychology at that time. And that is the trip that changed my entire life.

• 13:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 13:46Rich Roll?

  You're a survivor. Like you figured all that out on your own without any kind of like help or support.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Past karma.

• 13:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But this, this call to activism, was that always part of your internal makeup? Like this, this, this sense that the first thing you wanted to do when you finished university was go to India?

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Oh, I hadn't even finished university.

• 14:12Rich Roll?

  Oh, you hadn't yet?

• 14:12Speaker 01

  In my senior year, yeah. I actually never came back for my graduation.

• 14:16Rich Roll?

  Oh, you didn't? You did graduate, you just didn't go through the thing?

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Through the ceremony.

• 14:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So you end up in India?

• 14:22Speaker 01

  So I go to India and we had like, I think 12 to 16 regions or locations we had to go. And Dharamsala was the last in that. I had no idea about Dharamsala. This is pre, I wouldn't say pre-internet, but this is when you had to learn typing with those Macintosh computers. There was no Instagram or anything. So I end up in Dharamsala. There was this group of Tibetan, the fact that Tibetans even lived in India, I was not familiar with it. So this group of women who, some of whom were former prisoners in Chinese prisons, both lay practitioners and nuns, they had by foot, came out of Tibet.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  You've been to Dharamsala and I have so many questions about that. But in Dharamsala, on the main road, parallel to the temple road, there's the refugee center. That's like one of the main places where refugees come in when they cross the Himalayas. And the second place is Nepal. So these women you were using, so many practices. One practice is called Tonglen, which is the whole

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Act of taking in your enemy or perceived enemy's karma, negative karma, and sending out your merits to them.

• 15:41Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  And these women were sitting and radiating the type of glow that I had never seen. And I still remember, like, there were, I wanted to be them because I thought I had it wrong. And I was in a very negative space. This was kind of like where if these women didn't come at that time, I don't know if I would be alive. Because I was really contemplating that kind of like, okay. I had no father to look up to, mother to look up to, no older brother to look up to, I have no role models. I struggled so much through college trying to, you know, just struggling. Um, and then I thought I had it wrong. But look at these people, they've lost their motherland, they've lost their holy places.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  They've been stripped naked, taken their nuns and monks vows of made to do things. And all of them physically brutalized. Some of the women were sterilized. But they have one inch of hate towards their so-called enemies. And it was so freeing, just witnessing that joy. And I was bawling my eyes out throughout the whole time and these women are sitting in their full power, you know, just.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  So on the way back, on that flight out, I took the bus from Taram Salah to Delhi. And in that flight back from Delhi to Atlanta was, I just knew instinctly, I have to go back. I don't know what is there, but I remember my professor and at that time, um, and my dean was like, you're in your elements, I have never seen you like this. And then I came back, this is post nine eleven. International students were having a very hard time getting work permit. And my name sounds very Muslim, but I had a work permit, I had a. Confirmed job in San Francisco that I was gonna go to after graduation. But in that trip back, in that flight back, I decided, hell, no.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  And I came back, had a yard sale, just about enough money to buy a ticket back to India, Delhi. And I did that. And then the embassy informed me that I had to go back to Bangladesh to return my work permit. Because you cannot go around the world with a valid work permit if you're not working in US. So I had to go back to Bangladesh first, go to American Embassy. And I still remember the guy was like, are you sure? He asked me thrice. And I had to say every time, yes, yes. So he refused it without prejudice. You have to just put a stamp on it. And then I took a flight out to Delhi and moved to Dharamsala and ended up living there seven years on.

• 18:17Rich Roll?

  Seven years. And you just showed up without any idea of how this was all gonna work.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I had 250 bucks in my pocket.

• 18:26Rich Roll?

  And it was those women. I mean, what was, you know, can you explain a little bit more about what that pull was all about? And why you felt so strongly about returning?

• 18:37Speaker 01

  I think whole growing up, I never felt like I fit in. And when I arrived in Dharamsala for the first time, I felt everyone I knew and everything I knew. I didn't at that time, I couldn't understand Tibetan, but Tibetan was more familiar to my ears. And like we say now, it's all past karma.

• 18:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, this is some past life thing.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Yes, I've had so many past lives, so, so many past lives in Tibet. Anyway, but at that time, as soon as I moved to Dharamsala, not knowing, not having any guarantee of if I can ever get a work here. Can I stay? Within the first week, I got a job offer. Within less than two months, I met, I'll get into all that.

• 19:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you, like, as a journalist, right? That was the job that you got?

• 19:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the first paid job, because there's a lot of work you can do in Taramsala. A lot of it is volunteer work, and I was volunteering with several nonprofits, all related to human rights work with Tibetans. So the group of women that I met was through this organization called Guchusam. It's an ex-prisoners' organization. I'm sure you've passed through it. There are only two main roads in Taramsala. But Payul, which is, which means "motherland" in Tibetan, is the news archive that was, especially at that time, because it was pre-Olympic Games, which happened in 2008. It was way before that. But getting right information from inside Tibet is very, it's a big deal

• 20:15Speaker 01

  because of the way the Communist Party controls news and everything. So my job was to, basically, the informer. I had a pseudonym. All my publication doing that was under a pseudonym. So I was the informer going inside Tibet, out Nepal, all over, wherever Tibetans lived, refugees or inside Tibet. And I was the special correspondent for Taramsala. So the most famous person in Taramsala is, of course, His Holiness the Dalai Lama. That's the main news.

• 20:47Rich Roll?

  Perhaps the most famous person in the world.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:49Rich Roll?

  And he lives in this little village, you know? Taramsala is sort of, you know, it's not like, it's not like some booming metropolis. It's a tiny, little, mountaintop village.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Well, it's grown so much now. When I lived there, there was no, none of these bars and the fancy resorts. And like, it's crazy how much development that has happened.

• 21:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and that's all to accommodate all the people that pilgrimage there to visit with him.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then when I, you know, Pahul, I was working with it and then I would meet, you're familiar with the temple, right? Like, right in front of His Holiness's house. So he would come walk from the house to the temple. And during that walking time, there were many times he would just, within thousands of people, just straight look to me and wave. And there was always a direct dharshan. And sometimes my Tibetan journalist would put me in the front, because he paid so much attention to me, just to get that shot, and use me as the bait. And so I was just happy with that. And also, now that, now I look back and I realize that just being around him brought so much healing,

• 21:57Speaker 01

  just the light and the touches, you know, like, they were instrumental during that time. And then, for my healing at least. And then, one day, I'm getting ready to go to work, super early. I get a phone call that, you know, we didn't have smartphones then. I don't recognize the number, and I say hello. I said, "Miss Nazreen." No one calls me Miss Nazreen. So I knew it was an official call. So I said, "Yes." She's like, "Oh, I'm calling from Holiness's office. At some point, did you express meeting him?" I said, "Of course." She said, "Do you still want to meet him?" And then I was like, "This is a prank call."

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Because I was gonna call and ask if you want to meet the dharshan. I said, "Of course, I still want to meet him." He said, "Oh, can you come now?" And I'm like, "Shit." Like, I was in Upper Dharamsala, my home at that time, near Tipa. You've been to Tipa, I think, the culture center? And it was pouring, raining outside. So I had to get from Tipa to there. And I know His Holiness was super particular. If he says eight, he's there at seven fifty-nine. So I was just rushing while still holding the phone to get a sari, like, this is supposed to be the first meeting, and I had only thirty minutes left to go meet him. So he went, and that was my first meeting, and he was waiting there.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  I think it was sharp at eight, that meeting. I was barely twenty-one at that time.

• 23:28Rich Roll?

  Why do you think that he felt compelled to reach out to you?

• 23:32Speaker 01

  I think he heard of me from his brother, who I had worked with earlier, or not worked with, just knew through Pailul. He heard that there was a Bangladeshi woman in town who's working for Tibetan human rights.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  That's why he called me. But when I met him and had the first meeting and before I was leaving the first day, there are several exchanges that happened. But when I look back now, that was my first teaching on karma. I was in my mind thinking, wow, just last week, I checked out this spot where I could fall from.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  I was looking at locations. But I was kind of scared, oh, that's gonna hurt. Maybe I'm not gonna be able to leave. What if I get paralyzed for the rest of my life?

• 24:26Rich Roll?

  You mean, you were exploring some self-harm options? Like, that's the mental and emotional state that you were in?

• 24:35Speaker 01

  And as that thought came into my mind, His Holiness looked at me and just said, "My old friend, we're all here because of our karma."

• 24:47Speaker 01

  And I don't know if you've heard his laughter yet, but a lot happens during that laughter. And it was like a thunder that just struck me on my chest. And then the next line was, "You have a precious human birth,"

• 25:03Speaker 01

  which is the first concept, which I didn't know in Tibetan studies, like to value how long it took us to come to this human form. We have six realms of existence, and the human realm is the most... How to say it? Human realm is the only realm where we can ascend into enlightenment. There are humans who are living in the god realm. Like they have no, a lot of people in Hollywood are in the god realm. They have no, you know, they have endless money, everything that you need in this world to survive. But they're so, like their desire is so much with it and they're enjoying it so much is that

• 25:47Speaker 01

  they're not gonna work towards, they don't have enough obstacles to work to transform them and seek enlightenment. Does that make sense?

• 25:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I understand that.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, so yeah, he told me that and then went back to his, he has a small office inside the main room and then brought me in there and then gave me my first amulet that, I have many amulets from him, that was the first. He said, "You're gonna be needing this one." I didn't understand what he meant at that time. And that amulet is related to, you know, in the Tibetan texts, there's a lot of deities and technically they're all energies or avatars within our own selves. Pal de Lama is the protectoress of Tibet and Dalai Lama, that's his principal protectoress, a feminine entity, very wrathful.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  So he gave me the protection amulet related to Pal de Lama and taught me the text that I'm supposed to read. This is like all in the first meeting, first of all. And I'm trying to wrap my head around everything, I'm so young. And he gives this and so then instructs his assistant to give me the prayer to call her in and said, "You're gonna be needing that." And then he sent me off. And then since then, I mean, I don't remember how many times I've met him, but...

• 27:13Rich Roll?

  But the inference that you're making about this first meeting is that on some level he had an awareness of what you were going through and felt like he could be a benefit to you in solving this wound.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Perhaps, but also the one specific thing that he said is like, "You're here because we have karma." I mean, he didn't say "we have karma," he said "because of your own karma." And so karma, which we can extend into later, but I feel like the first few years of this life, none of it is karma from this life. Like, the connection I have with, let's say, Dalai Lama or any other Tibetan teachers, that didn't come from this life. It's accumulated karma from many, many, many past lives. That's why he called me as his old friend when I walked in. I think he, it was needed for me to meet him at that time, the way I met him. And he could see that this woman, somehow I need to detour her from this,

• 28:13Speaker 01

  because I was going back to my past and I was not willing to leave Dharamsala. And I was so heavily involved in Free Tibet. And this, when I shared the later stories, like, he would constantly call me and just say, "This is, this is not your fight." And I would be like, "No, I'm freeing Tibet this lifetime. You don't understand Kundun." We refer to him as Kundun, which means "the one with the presence." And in my mind, I would be like, "What the, like, what? He can't appreciate that I'm serving his cause? Like, I've never met a leader who's like, removing me from his cause, but he saw the danger that I was gonna get into. And to be very frank, like, he's the one who brought me to the mountains. I had no goal to be a mountaineer.

• 28:58Rich Roll?

  He was the one who said, "Your, your, your path is in the mountains, and it's not with freeing Tibet. It's more to do with the mountains and also the women of Bangladesh." Like, he sort of pointed, he sort of tuned your compass to that.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I was fighting with him. Even when he said, "You're supposed to be leading the women of Bangladesh," I was like, "What? I'm freeing Tibet."

• 29:23Rich Roll?

  I like that you were mixing it up with him and pushing back on him.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:27Rich Roll?

  But you developed this, like, pretty deep relationship. Like, it was a mentorship that went on for many years. I mean, you became, from what I gather, like, pretty, pretty close with him, yes?

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Twenty-plus years now, but a lot of, I mean...

• 29:42Speaker 01

  You know, Holiness was much more active before. Now he's almost ninety. So he can't give that much time. And I haven't seen him for a long time. But whatever mountain I'm on, even when I was on K2, I got a message that, you know, blessing was there. And every single mountain in life that I've climbed, Holiness was behind it. So I have three more teachers that are in the Tibetan world. I'll mention their names just in case someone recognizes. So Dilgokhenserin Pushe, who's a very prominent teacher, Tibetan teacher, he was a lay practitioner. And I share this because I think a lot of people put Tibetans as like,

• 30:25Speaker 01

  oh, only a monk can do this, or a nun can do this. What the teachings of Buddha is for all humans. And the fact that lay people can do it with, you can be a rock star and you can still reach enlightenment. I'm not, I mean, that's not a, that's a weird example.

• 30:41Rich Roll?

  Might be a little harder, but yeah.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I'm just saying that the techniques work for any human mind. Buddha was a scientist. He, you know, he was a medicine man. He figured out the mind and taught eighty-four thousand techniques for different kind of mindsets. Right, so we were talking about Dilgokhenserin Pushe, and he was Dalai Lama's teacher. So right now, we have the next incarnation of Dilgokhenserin Pushe, who's slightly younger than me. But he shape shifts between the previous and this one. But he, so why I mention him is when His Holiness leaves this incarnation, Dilgokhenserin Pushe alongside several other lamas will be holding the ridge because the teacher can identify the students.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  So the next recognition of the fifteenth Dalai Lama, if he chooses to come back, which he will, hopefully. Because, you know, the next one is going to be very complicated because Chinese government is going to choose their own Dalai Lama.

• 31:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and Mongolia also is sort of involved in that discourse.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  I mean, it's, God knows what kind of shit show is going to happen.

• 31:49Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  So someone's going to have to hold it down. So like, this one, this amulet was made by Dilgokhenserin Pushe's, which was by main protection for K2. But, but no, so just to say that there's, even if I don't have a direct... Talking relationship with him being so far away. Our minds are always connected. I know that when, and he says that all the time. Because in the first few years, I got very clingy to my teachers. You know, not having any kind of family role models. And then you get these like powerful teachers. So they were the whole time trying to send me away. You know, and this is one thing that as someone who's practiced or like during my college years,

• 32:30Speaker 01

  I was, I've tried out every single faith just to like from Baha is to Christian mysticism, do mystic Judaism and all, everything. I just wanted to learn. And what really appealed to me is like, there is no, or at least how Tibetan Buddhists teach it is like, ultimately you are your own guru. Yes, we have a teacher guru, meaning teacher, teacher, student, teacher, student, oral tradition from Buddhist time. But ultimately you'd learn from us and then find your own guru. The power is within you. Pretty much Star Wars, which was based out of Tibetans.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  George Lucas actually went and spent six months in Dharamsala and came up with Star Wars.

• 33:20Rich Roll?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, Yoda is one of Holiness's teacher. I'll send you the article.

• 33:26Rich Roll?

  Oh, really? That's interesting. It's not surprising, though.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  You know, the part in the Ewok village? Gunda.

• 33:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  If you hear it, it's rewind, how do you say it? Like Tibetan talking. And then he put it back in reverse.

• 33:42Rich Roll?

  Played backwards. Wow. So it's like, it's encoded.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Everything that you see in Star Wars was taken from the Tibetan pantheon, the oracles. There's a whole living tradition of oracles in Tibetan diaspora. They're the, what is the other one? And within the oracles, there are different kind of like, there's a female. There's only three living oracles right now. Back, back in Tibet's blooming time, there were so many flying oracles, all types of oracles. Have you met the oracle in Dharamsala, the female one? That's a whole nother, they're shapeshifters of all kinds.

• 34:20Rich Roll?

  Maybe I did and I didn't know it.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 34:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 34:33Rich Roll?

  I appreciate this idea that we're not to deify the guru, right?

• 34:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:38Rich Roll?

  Like, it's about empowerment and a transmission of teachings and wisdom, but not for the sake of advancing the interest of the guru, but in empowering the individual to, you know, go on their own journey with what's been transmitted to that person.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that every individual have, like, we all have our own specific karma. You know, I live in L.A. and often see bumper stickers that says karma is a bitch. But I feel like here, people only talk about karma when it comes to negative stuff. But this too is karma, the positive, the negative, the neutral. Karma, the word, means action. And all actions start like, so we have body, speech, and mind action, things we do physically, things we say through our speech, and then things that arise in our mind. The most important is what arise, because the first two depends on what arrives in the mind.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  And all of it, from time immemorial since our souls have existed, is being recorded in kind of like a database like iCloud or Google Plus, whatever you use, like, infinite. There's no unlimited capacity. But the Tibetan word for mind, for example, is not mind, it's mind continuum, because the karma is every instant. I could be talking to you right now very pleasantly and have very negative thoughts about, oh yeah, your t-shirt looks ugly, or da-da-da, I'm creating negative karma even if I'm... And it's moment to moment, and it's constantly being recorded. And when we die, our root mind, which remains in our heart chakra...

• 36:25Speaker 01

  So the brain is the cognitive mind and the soul's mind, which we call the root mind, is here. And only that, let's say it's like a chip, that just, like a light chip that passes away with that information. And then whichever body we go to, that's what's passed on.

• 36:46Rich Roll?

  I don't know if it's karma or divine timing, but there's something interesting about the fact that you're here today, right now. I mean, even the timing of it is extra fascinating to me because I am, right now, in a moment of reflection and sort of deep inner work that was catalyzed by my experience visiting the Dalai Lama six weeks ago.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 37:13Rich Roll?

  And is also related to some of the inner work that you've done. So going to Dharamshala, spending time with him, having the opportunity to receive Darshan and his wisdom in a very structured kind of environment. Arthur Brooks was hosting it and he had a series of questions and a sort of arc of experience he wanted to take our group on. But as you know, the Dalai Lama doesn't necessarily play ball with that. Like, he's going to tell you what he wants to tell you or what he thinks that you need to hear or are capable of hearing. And over the course of these two days, pretty much without fail, his response to almost every question that was asked of him was the same.

• 37:57Rich Roll?

  Like, it was the same answer, which all tracked back to, you know, love and compassion, of course, but also this idea of the mother's love for the child. And I'm sure this is, there's a version of that, you know, transmission that you've probably received many times. And I'm curious about, not only on a higher level, like what you've learned from all the time that you've spent with him and what you've taken away from that, but also how this relationship that you have with him has informed how you've navigated your own healing over the trauma of being abandoned by your mother. So when he says, "When you're challenged to feel love

• 38:42Rich Roll?

  or connect with love or to receive love or to give love, reflect upon the mother's love for a child." I'm sure when you, at least at that time, We're in a position of reflecting on the mother's love for a child. All that would produce for you is pain.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  And it did.

• 39:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So it's like, what am I supposed to do with that? Like, basically, it's the opposite of what he's trying to tell you. Because you have this, you have, you have this experience that is blocking you from, from being able to kind of embrace that message.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  I remember his face when I snapped, like he's, he said something very similar, like, all women are mothers and mothers love. Because he's, he has had a beautiful, mother-loving relationship with his mothers.

• 39:29Rich Roll?

  His thing with his mom is like intense, right?

• 39:31Speaker 01

  So he, he, he shared, shared that with me and he said, and this is before I actually told him that, what happened to me. And I was, I could feel like, because I'm, I'm a Mars, I'm ruled, but my ruling planet is Mars, my, I'm fire. So it's very, it was my biggest thing that I had to get rid of my anger. Like, if you met me in my twenties and late twenties at least, I was a different being. I would, I couldn't control the anger within me. Different version of anger, of the whole spectrum. And then he was very shocked to hear after that. And he just went, you know, because Tibetans do this all the time to express disapproval. Like, and then, was it that meeting?

• 40:16Speaker 01

  No, it was a different meeting when he said, but your real mother is Mother Nature, no? And at that time, I had already gone back to Nepal to climb some, like, smaller mountains, which are in Nepal, 5,000, 6,000 meter peaks, which is also a blessing for me. Like, I, by default, started in the Himalayas, which is unusual for other mountaineers, carry over, they end up towards there.

• 40:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they, they go to the Himalayas after they put their time in with, yeah, a lot of other mountains.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  But by default, I started there. So I realized, on my own, that nature, just being in this Pilgrimages, because climbing, because I learned from Tibetans and Sherpas, it's a very different approach how we climb a mountain. We never go without seeking permission from the mountains. But throughout those process of taking these long journeys in the mountains, I was, I could see that how I was healing. It was, it was really like a healing pilgrimage for me, every single mountain. And so at one point, he did instruct me to think of like good memories from both my parents. And I really struggled at that time to think of anything good, positive with my mom.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Now I can, but at that time I couldn't see anything. And then at that time, he had, with my father, I had a lot of positive memories and I shared that. And then, so he was, you know, just encouraging me to reflect on that in, during analytical meditation and really give birth to gratitude. Because I, this is a time when I forgot how to smile, like I was dead inside. And Holiness has done so much things for me, but one of the best things that he's done is made, made me realize that I can laugh even in my hardest, during my hardest struggles.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  And this freed me up and I don't, I can't technically explain how he did it. But like the reason why I make fun of all my tragedies today with an open heart and it's because he showed it, showed me the way. Anyway, so over the months, I, you know, I was going back and forth. Usually it was because of work, but he would ask on how I was doing with those kind of meditation. And I, I kept telling him like, nothing is coming up with my mom. And then he just, he just, you know, and politely said, but she carried you in your, in her womb for nine months, no?

• 42:53Speaker 01

  And as he was saying it, I saw myself as a fetus like baby. And so I went back and I would just try to, it was tough at that time because my body was reacting. But to really just even if, so he told me to start at short times and then create a habit every day, even if it's for a minute. So I went step by step, thinking of myself as a baby in her womb, thanking her for the everything. But it took years for me to really free from,

• 43:26Speaker 01

  you know, sending them gratitude for the life they've brought me in. Whereas right before that, before meeting Holly, he's like, why did you bring me in through this life when you couldn't take care of me? And so it was just, again, polar opposite perspective.

• 43:42Rich Roll?

  Do you feel like you've healed that wound?

• 43:44Speaker 01

  With my mom?

• 43:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  I feel so, she's still alive. When I reached the summit of Chomolungma Everest at the age of 29, she was the first person I called to thank. She didn't pick up. It was 6:26 a.m. to be fair.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  But, you know, just because,

• 44:07Speaker 01

  not taking away anything from what she's done, I'm not saying it's okay what she's done. And there's a lot more into it, which, the details of which will be in my memoir, but I am so happy she did what she did because if she hadn't left, it wouldn't have created the domino effect of a series of events that I had to go through and not make me, I don't think I would be who I am today. Because if she hadn't left, exactly how she left.

• 44:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there is a perspective that she is perhaps your greatest teacher.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and developing gratitude and appreciation for that in light of.

• 44:46Rich Roll?

  Everything that happened and this, you know, story that has, you know, led to so much pain and, uh, and, and hurt, right? To be able to transcend that is a beautiful thing.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  It's beautiful and I kind of lived with that till I almost died in COVID and it reappeared, uh, and we can get into that later.

• 45:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we're gonna work up, we're gonna work up to that. Meaning, meaning it flared up and you realized there was still work you had to do around that.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  No, because she came back into my life for a different reason. And yeah, it was a lot of, a lot of things just came up.

• 45:21Rich Roll?

  Things got messy.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, when I came down Everest, every, both sides of my family were fighting on who to take credit. And there's a specific point in Kumbu Icefall where I stood and I looked back towards the summit. And, cause my satellite phone was beeping with all the news of what was happening in Bangladesh. My stepmom at that time was in the front page of every newspaper.

• 45:47Rich Roll?

  So these people that, that essentially abandoned you were suddenly showing up to take credit for everything that you had done. Yeah. That's the, that's the, that's the, the comedy of the human condition.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Had I known climbing one mountain would change so many things for me, then I would have probably strategized climbing that mountain much earlier. So, but no, it's not just parents. I had more relatives appear in my life that I hadn't even, even known of. Everyone came back into my life, um, and we can talk about that later.

• 46:19Rich Roll?

  What is the, what is the essence of, uh, you know, what you learned from your time with the Dalai Lama? Like if you could condense it down into a few pearls of wisdom that have been instructive and formative for you?

• 46:33Speaker 01

  Oh my God, this is so, I could write a whole book in that, uh, on that. But, um, I would say transforming obstacles into opportunities. Lesson number one and the concepts of karma. Like once I, you know, my first teaching of karma started in 20, at the age of 21. And throughout my entire twenties, I would get a lot of, this is like a very young mind to, to comprehend such vast teachings, right? And a lot of the teachings that he gave me on karma in my twenties, I only absorbed it after moving to LA in my late thirties. And so, cause when you're next to the teaching itself. Not that I took it for granted, but it was so much in a very short time.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  It was so much that was passed on to me that I didn't really. I wasn't fully able to digest it, see it, and.

• 47:29Rich Roll?

  Well, you have to, you know, sort of leave the metaphorical cave and go live your life.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 47:35Rich Roll?

  And, and, and when things come up, that's when you have the opportunity to practice those ideas. Right? Otherwise, it's just theory.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:44Rich Roll?

  If you stay in Dharamshala.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:46Rich Roll?

  And immunize yourself from those kinds of life experiences.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  They sent me to the hub of samsara that is Los Angeles.

• 47:53Rich Roll?

  I know you're here, right? It's all gonna get, it's all, it's all gonna come, come up, right? Plenty of opportunity to practice.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  I also, it did resurface a lot of things because for once I was out of, whether it's Bangladesh or the place that I got sick and I, becoming a national figure in Bangladesh, life got really messy for me. And I couldn't heal in that environment. So for me to take this distance and also finding so many different practitioners or healers in this city, like that was life changing for me. So I know that even though I, I struggled the first few years of being here in terms of work and finding my community and just like, it's a huge city, you know? Like it's hard to fit in here from a place like, I always lived in small towns.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Kathmandu, you know, the entire city I know by heart. Dharamshala, it's even, it's not even a small town. It's, what would you call it?

• 48:54Rich Roll?

  I don't know.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  You call it a village.

• 48:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a tiny place.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  I'm used to that kind of place. So that's why I live in Venice, because I know the two mile by two mile route. That kind of is my.

• 49:04Rich Roll?

  And it is kind of its own thing there. Yeah.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  But it's a bubble. And I realize every time I leave LA, how, how bougie and how pampered we are in this world. This is so question.

• 49:17Rich Roll?

  For sure. I mean, there's no question about it. When you're in Dharamshala, I mean, if you go anywhere in India, I mean, it's so, it's such a mindfuck because it's like traveling to a different planet. You know, as somebody who's lived in Los Angeles for a long time. And you can't help but. Have a different perspective on, you know, just how, how much we have and also how different our relationship is with spirituality and perhaps like what's most important because when you spend time with people who have nothing and are more joyful than most of

• 49:57Rich Roll?

  the people that you encounter in the Western world, you can't help but, you know, sort of begin to deconstruct like, you know, the priorities of life.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  I was also like, it was eye opening for me to see how many people who I used to look up, whether they're A-listers or like big names, they're really suffering, man. Like, people are really suffering in this town and I still don't understand why you have so much money, everything, basically. Everyone has so much resources here, but still so I can be so unhappy.

• 50:31Rich Roll?

  Well, it's, uh, you know, they're trying to stuff the God-shaped hole with all of those things and the more you do it and, and it doesn't, it doesn't like deliver on that implicit promise, the more suffering you're going to reap upon yourself, right? Until you have a reckoning and you, you know, decide that you're going to approach your life differently. And, you know, it's, that's, that's a, that's a, that's an affliction of, you know, the Western way of doing things and all of the messaging that, you know, we kind of absorb every single day, uh, as long as we can remember, that tells us that the path to happiness is built on this path of accumulation and, you know, power, property and prestige. And

• 51:15Rich Roll?

  this is a town where there's a lot of people that have a lot of those things, but what they're missing is any kind of, you know, relationship with faith and spirituality, uh, you know, relationship with the, with, with other human beings that they care about. Like, all of these things that we, that we know are integral to living a meaningful, happy life, but they become deprioritized for the sake of, you know, these other kind of goals. Um, and, you know, that's what's producing all of the pain and suffering, I think.

• 51:50Rich Roll?

  For too many people and it's just writ large in this town because you know, because of just the nature of the business here, etc. When you're in Dharamshala, though, you you're nestled up against the Himalayas. You can see these snow capped mountains. It's quite beautiful, but what you might not immediately understand or appreciate is that those are just the that's just the first range. Like, these are tiny foothills. Like, the real Himalayan peaks are like two ranges behind that that you can't even see. And those mountains that you see from the village, you're like, wow, those are huge mountains. Those are nothing compared to the mountains that you've climbed. And and the culture just is, you know, you said, like, climbers and mountaineers have to work their way up to, you know, climbing the Himalayas.

• 52:35Rich Roll?

  But people in northern India, they're just they're just out on those mountains all the time. So it's not surprising that you found it sort of natural to begin there and, you know, did it through like, you know, joining those people.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Every time in Nepal, have you been to Nepal yet?

• 52:53Rich Roll?

  No.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  You gotta go.

• 52:54Rich Roll?

  I don't I've only been to India that one time.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Wow. Well, Nepal's next because

• 52:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, all right.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  That's a whole level of like so much spirituality just in one place and it's buzzing. I think you're gonna love it. And also you need to go to Everest at some point.

• 53:10Rich Roll?

  I don't know if I need to do that.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  No, you don't.

• 53:12Rich Roll?

  There's too many people up there already.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  We go on a season when that shit show is not happening. I never take people up there anymore during spring season. Anyway, but the when I was going to Nepal, because Tibet in the second biggest largest refugee community is based in Nepal, because that's another route to come in from Tibet. All my colleagues that I was working with happened to be just outdoorsy mountain people. So it literally was like, hey, like, over the weekend, you go for a pub or drink. We didn't have that back then. Let's go to the mountains. So it was just I was friends with Sherpa people. Sherpa originally, like Sherpa means coming from the east, implying east of Tibet.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  So technically, they're Tibetan origin that migrated over 15th and 16th century to this side of the mountains. So Everest, which is a British dude's name.

• 54:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you've mentioned the Tibetan name for it. Can you say that again?

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Chomulungma.

• 54:15Rich Roll?

  And that means?

• 54:16Speaker 01

  It's the mother goddess of the universe. It's a very feminine entity.

• 54:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's a much better name.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the goddess is called Miulang Sangma. And she's the goddess of inexhaustible giving. Only if you respect her and go abide by her tradition. And there's, I forget how, how many centuries ago this text was acquired. But it's a text or the prayer that bows, like humbles everything in her feet. So we do this puja or a ritual, prayer ritual in base camp before approaching the mountain, asking for her forgiveness first, saying, confessing that we're about to step on you for a long period of time.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  So we even bring in our crampons and ice axes, all kinds of objects that we're going to take up, ask for forgiveness beforehand for hurting her, promising that we're never going to leave trash or not hurt her in any way. And there's a series of things and, you know, the chanting goes on for hours and hours and you just keep repeating. And then the Lama, local Lama, looks for signs, positive signs from her. There are many ways to decipher it, whether it's a raven sitting on the flagpole or something, things like that. And only after those approvals come, we have a celebration. And that's basically.

• 55:41Rich Roll?

  And the green light to go. Wow, that's very cool.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  And we did.

• 55:45Rich Roll?

  And that's passed down.

• 55:47Speaker 01

  Centuries.

• 55:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, through the, through the Sherpa lineage.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. No Sherpa will approach any mountain without a puja, even if the client is, doesn't want to do it. So in K2, which is in Pakistan, in a very predominantly Muslim society. We did, there is no culture of doing this kind of puja, but we still did it. I did it. I took in, like I said, I had two of my main teachers like supporting the whole climb of K2. And we re, so K2 again, thanks to the British, the dudes came in and it was like rename K1, K2, K3, K4, G1, G2.

• 56:27Rich Roll?

  So creative.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Very creative.

• 56:29Rich Roll?

  What's the original name of K2?

• 56:32Speaker 01

  It's called Choguri, uh, King of All Mountains. So it's a masculine entity and God, is he a masculine entity? He is freaking like just brutal. I, I, the whole time I thought like there was a God sitting on the summit and saying, oh, you wanna come to the top? Let me just throw you a rock and see if you can da, da, da, da, da, da. Prove, prove me. Anyway, so we did a puja asking for forgiveness from Choguri. And that puja was attended by people from all faiths, including local Muslim people, which are the Balti people in Pakistan. All that to say is like, so my, I'm very grateful that my introduction to climbing was that.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  Before I came out into the world and went into, you know, every other continent where I climbed with Westerners and other people. But it's very hard for me to approach a mountain without the rituals. Like it's just, we call it the approach, how you approach a mountain. Cause you know, also we function in a very, if I may say, white says dude. Like predominantly it's all male and the energy is very different.

• 57:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And, and meanwhile, none of the Sherpas are appropriately sort of, you know, credited with just how extraordinary they are. Like we're in Hollywood. They're sort of, the Sherpas are sort of the stuntmen of the climbing world, right? Like they do all these incredible things. And they're just sort of overlooked because they're in service to somebody else who gets all the credit. But these guys are going up and down these mountains like all the time.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  Not just that, they're, they're carrying the load.

• 58:11Rich Roll?

  They're overlooked.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Of course. I mean, that, the whole history of mountaineering. Is like colonizers, it was a very colonial approach. We are going to conquer the British and the Italy fighting, different countries fighting to get to the top of mountains. Who's going to take credit? The first successful ascent that happened, it's called the British Expedition, even though the person who climbed, two person who climbed, two people, Tenzin Norgay, Nepali, he had four times gone up to that level. And that's why he was so important in the British Expedition.

• 58:45Rich Roll?

  Before Hillary.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  Before Hillary. And Hillary was, Sir Edmund Hillary, he was one of the most kindest human beings, you know, I've never had the luck to meet him, but every, I know his, I just actually returned from a trip recently with Peter Hillary, his son, we were guiding in Antarctica. They're one of the most humblest families I know in the mountain tradition. They've done so much good for the region. Aside from him, like there's, and he's always given credit to Tenzin Norgay. But Tenzin Norgay till his death didn't get credited. His grand, you know, three generations have passed by. Pretty much 70 years after his ascent, there's finally a movie being made about a person

• 59:30Speaker 01

  who's died. And so that just shows how far behind we are in terms of giving these people credit. But the other thing I wanted to say is like, yes, we don't give them credit, but as an audience, every spring season, when we hear of, if I may use the term Tom, Dick and Harry climbing up the mountain, fucking ask, who the fuck took you up there? What are their names? Don't just say 50 Sherpas went up. It's like cattle, you know? Tenzin Sherpa went up, Sonam Sherpa went up. Give them credit. It doesn't take away from it. My friend, you know, between two brothers, they have, I think, 56 total summits of Everest alone, just one mountain.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  Kamritta Sherpa, the younger one, he did, he just broke his own record of climbing the mountain 30 times.

• 1:00:19Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  No human in the world has done that. Imagine a white man doing that.

• 1:00:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it'd be such a big deal. And he, this guy does it, it's like, oh, well, that's what they do.

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  No, nobody even knows about him.

• 1:00:31Rich Roll?

  Nobody knows the person's name or anything.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  But this is-

• 1:00:34Rich Roll?

  It's wild.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  But this is, whose fault is it? Who doesn't give the credit? I mean, I myself, within National Geographic, has been fighting for this for almost 10-plus years now. It only started changing from 2018 when they did, when we did our first, I don't know if you've seen National Geographic Magazine, the one, sorry for racist coverage. We did one cover, but that took a lot of work. And then BLM happened and all this talk started happening. It's the Westerners who hasn't been crediting the Sherpa people. You know, majority. I'm not saying all of them. But so it's, and as an audience, now that the world is so open, we can always ask, who's the one who's led you up there? Who was carrying your oxygen? Who was your base camp manager?

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  The freaking base camp, which is almost one hour to one and a half hours of walking, like, it's almost like a little village. That itself is on a moving chunk of glacier. And I have footages that happen of, you know, what happens before clients go in. It's built on the back of Sherpa people. It's really hard work to make a freaking base camp out of a moving glacier. So that itself is made by Sherpa people. So when Westerners come in and say, "Oh, I did this climb unsupported." Hell, no, there's no fucking way you could. Even if you spend half a day in base camp, which is not usual, it's way longer, you've taken support. So, yeah.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Sorry, this aggredes me a lot.

• 1:02:07Rich Roll?

  And listen, like, a lot of work remains, you know, to tell those stories. And they're incredible stories.

• 1:02:25Rich Roll?

  Of all the mountains that you've climbed, seven summits, I mean, I have to think that K2 was the most challenging and difficult.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  Well, all the mountains in life that I've climbed, the seven summits happened when, it was also a different time in my life.

• 1:02:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, that was 2012 to 2015?

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I finished, so the first five of the seven, including Everest, I did back-to-back in one and a half years, just like I was going like crazy. Till I ended up with a frostbite in Danali. And this finger, which was cut up to here, it literally grew back. You can go to Sider Sinai and see my nails, how this case study, they call it a miracle case study. Anyway, we can talk about that later.

• 1:03:10Rich Roll?

  Your finger grew back?

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:03:13Rich Roll?

  Like a lizard? Really? I mean, it was cut off?

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  This part was cut off. This one grew back.

• 1:03:21Rich Roll?

  Including like the nail, the part with the nail and all that?

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so nail was chopped off. I have pictures of, in case you don't believe me. So this is again-

• 1:03:29Rich Roll?

  You regrew your finger?

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  No, this is blessed by His Holiness. I've worn this since I have had-

• 1:03:35Rich Roll?

  What is that, an emerald, an opal?

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  Emerald and opal.

• 1:03:38Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  Turquoise and what was the other one you just said?

• 1:03:44Rich Roll?

  Opal?

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  Opal.

• 1:03:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's beautiful. And that's on the finger that grew back?

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:50Rich Roll?

  So the finger grew back because it was superpowered through the ring?

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  Well, I also had-

• 1:03:56Rich Roll?

  And the energy of the Dalai Lama.

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  And nine surgeries.

• 1:04:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and Sider Sinai, the best of Western medicine. All cooperating to regrow a finger.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  But you know, like when you get a frostbite, let's say if you get it in January, there are every chance that you could be amputated in August. Like you don't know how it's gonna develop. So the first choice that a doctor gave me was like, we can chop it off right now so that, because it was already damaged up to here. But it's gonna, and then he was giving me options of the different types of, what do you call them? Like bionic, different ways I could have a prosthetic finger. And I looked at him and I said, do you have like a Wolverine claw? Because I thought he was joking. And he looked at me and said, Wasfia, this is really serious. Like you can damage rest of your hand if you don't measure it properly. The other way is to live it out, go through the pain.

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  It's gonna be intense pain, but we can, you know, because it was like microscopic level.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  You know, they had to do it in slices. It's kind of like the opposite of burn injury. So they didn't want to chop off different parts like because some cells were damaged and some weren't. Anyway, so all that to say that when that frostbite thing happened, Karmapa, who I don't know if you know of him, but he's another very prominent teacher in Tibetan Buddhism. But he's very like, it's not angry, but he's when he talks, it's very like it pierces through all your lives. Like you're just like, ah. So he just looked at me and he said, you're doing it too fast. And as he was saying it, I realized, wow, you're right. Like I was just going, going banging, banging, banging.

• 1:05:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, without.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  Not, not, not really living through the journey. And so the frostbite happened. It basically stopped me for almost a year. Like, because I couldn't, the recovery was nine months. So I couldn't go back to cold, cold zone with that finger. But during that time, I really, you know, and by this time, my whole life had changed, you know, because after Everest, everything had changed and I was a national figure, which brought in more harm than good. Being a single woman and, you know, doing what I'm doing in a country like Bangladesh isn't, you know, fame isn't the best thing for us.

• 1:06:18Rich Roll?

  What do you, what do you mean specifically? I mean, you, you become this national, you go from, you know, somebody nobody's ever heard of to, to literally becoming like your country's biggest national hero. Right?

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:31Rich Roll?

  Yes, is that true or no?

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I mean, I from, I did Akili, Kilimanjaro, Aconcagua, and then Everest. So that was the timeline. Aconcagua, which is the highest mountain of South America, is also the highest mountain outside the Himalayas. That got a lot of coverage because I somehow timed it on the victory day of Bangladesh. So the whole campaign of climbing the Seven Summits was done to celebrate 40 years of Bangladesh's women's progress. And Aconcagua was in December and Everest started in March. So when I started going for Everest. There was a lot of publicity about it because it was Everest. But I also knew that nobody believed in me. Like, everyone wanted me to fail.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  And there was a lot, there was so much media pressure, but I, I really didn't want that. I wanted to just have my own spiritual time and climb the mountain.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  Lot of other shit shows happened and then when I came down and there's a specific point in Kumbh Aisfoi when the cell reception and the, you know, I was checking news. So when you're coming down, you gotta be as quick as possible because this is already monsoon season coming. So everything's starting to melt. So from, you know, the crevices that have ladders, for example, those ladders fall in. So there are a lot of rerouting has to happen. So you wanna make sure that you have enough energy, food, everything to come down very fast. So we came down, summited on 26th May, came down by 28th. Me and Nima Sherpa, who was my brother, who's passed away, and my climbing teacher. And so we came down and in that cell reception, the first 50 messages was like,

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  "Your so-and-so is on the front page claiming to be your mother." "Your so-and-so did..." like, no. And I remember looking at the news, like, can you imagine coming down 29,029 feet, hypoxic? You're still, you're hungry, you just went through like avalanches in this whole three months long expedition. And the first news is like your, two sides of your family is fighting. And I, at that point, I look back, you can't really see the summit, but kinda tours the summit. I look back and I was like, should I just go back? Because I, I don't wanna deal with this right now. And from that time, when I came back to Bangladesh, I mean, in the VIP section, there was, my father's side was one side, you know, every, there were two village, like, two, sorry.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  There were two buses full of people that came from my village, my, so even though we live in the city, we all come from particular villages. And my dad's village is one of the most conservative part of Bangladesh. And these people have all like, my pictures on their crown, buses and drums and just like, before I was, I was, because I got into a lot of trouble as an activist and I was the, I was bringing shame for my village. Lot happened with the Chinese government, that's a whole nother story, but. So my village people actually didn't recognize me at that time. They were ashamed because intelligence went into the villages looking for me. Bangladesh intelligence.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  And now the same people traveled all the way from my village to the capital in buses with food. And they brought Pajeros to take me and like everyone was there. And you know, in the pictures, you see me smiling because that's and I had to be wasp here out there. But internally, that was probably one of the lowest moment in my life. Like externally, I'm having to be washy and ashy, da, da, da, da, da. But internally, having my parents come back, everyone who came back to my life. Yes, it was great, but I also knew the reason was wrong. I knew why they came back. And so that kind of, uh, yeah. I, I didn't realize how big it was gonna, like, I didn't think it out.

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  And also because I think it was, um, a lot of people doubted me and it was kind of like a slap on their face. Like, I told you I'm gonna do it and I'm gonna do it and I did it. Cause people in Bangladesh speak a lot. They're not, everyone is a doer, uh, we generally.

• 1:10:40Rich Roll?

  They talk a lot of shit.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  And then.

• 1:10:44Rich Roll?

  Do you find that, is that, is that motivating for you? When you hear that, you've, you, you sort of think, well, I'll show them or?

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  No, I think my personality, I'm a doer. I am, um, I come from the karma family or I'm ruled by Mars. Um, I don't know if you, uh, you're familiar with the Vedic astrology, but.

• 1:11:06Rich Roll?

  My wife is very familiar, but you'll have to, you'll have to fill in my gaps.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you give me your birth time, I can figure it out for you. But it was very important for me to understand who, what planet I'm ruled by, which is basically, it's called the ascendant lord or your lagna lord. So I am ruled by Mars. It's the energy of pioneers, athletes, uh, doers. Everything should have happened two days ago, that kind of energy. But the.

• 1:11:36Speaker 01

  Fully embodied positive part of being ruled by Mars is the commander in chief, who doesn't fight himself or themselves. They sit back, send off warriors to fight, which I didn't know before. I was the wounded, I was functioning from a wounded warrior's trade. And my progression has been to learn how to be a skillful warrior, which I don't think I've been there yet, but I'm learning and I'm getting there. So I don't fight anymore. I don't do my activism anymore like how I would have in my 30s or 20s. And I think 40 was a major turning point also of realization, thanks to Los Angeles.

• 1:12:13Rich Roll?

  In other words, this wounded warrior incarnation of the Mars energy, in your case, would be one that was fueled in part by this pain body over the abandonment, right? Like this latent anger that gets translated into action. So that being sort of an impetus to these challenges that have like served you well and, you know, given you this platform and all the good kind of things that have come from that, but recognizing that there's still healing to be done so that you can ascend into a more of a commander in chief energy. Like, that's a cool way of thinking about it.

• 1:12:59Rich Roll?

  What do people misunderstand about Everest? We all see the photos of the train of people going up to the top now and how it's, you know, littered with, you know, what people leave behind there. Yeah, like, and I know that you, I mean, you like had to kind of walk past dead people, right, that you had spent time with in base camp.

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:27Rich Roll?

  But it's easy to make presumptions or conjure an idea of what that experience is because so many people have done it and they talk about it and we see these videos and these photographs, but... Where are our kind of assumptions about that wrong?

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  I would say you don't need $180,000 to climb Everest, first of all. Do not pay these Western companies to take you for that much money, or even locals. They're local people. And end of the day, it's the local people who's doing the work. So you might as well, better off going with a local company with Sherpas, giving them credit and paying way less. So when I did Everest, for example, I did it all like in a very small team. I knew I was gonna climb with Nima. I hired everything separately because I already knew the cost structure of what happens. The permit is $13,000. That's the main chunk of money. Every single person going past base camp, whether you make it to camp one or two, has to pay $13,000.

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  That goes straight to the pockets of politicians or locals. But it doesn't go to the locals of the region. It goes to Kathmandu. So Sherpa people are still not benefiting from that. Most foreign companies, I would, let's say, even if they charge you $180,000 or $20,000 or whatever number, the maximum that would go to a Sherpa person, which is pretty much their whole year's earning, $6,000 maximum. And these, each of these Sherpa, mostly males, have a number of children to feed, you know, and they're the main bread earners.

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  So I would just say, structure it in a way, I think everyone needs to, yes, there is the commercialization of it, but Sherpa people do need that money. That's their living. So I don't think we can change, we can, you know, at one point, everyone's like, just barricade Everest, don't let any more people in. No, this is always gonna be attracting people. We cannot stop that. This is the highest summit of the world. But we can bring in regulation, right? But the stuff that you see out here in news, I will say that does happen, but that's only a very small time on the mountain. I can show you two hours of presentation of how remote and silent of this mountain

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  is in different parts of the year. So before I used, when I used to guide for Everest Base Camp, I've now moved everything to fall season. Like I only take clients towards the end of the year. There's not a one person on the trail. And it's so nice and pleasant. Weather is much better.

• 1:16:16Rich Roll?

  Then how come that's not the crowded time?

• 1:16:18Speaker 01

  That's never portrayed in the media. Because the weather season up on the top part, top part of the mountain, May is really the perfect time. Fall season can be cold up there. So a lot of, no, very few, if anyone is climbing the mountain at that time, it would be like the rough Europeans trying to do cool stuff, like in a two-person team.

• 1:16:42Rich Roll?

  So it's only in a very specific time window in May, when you see, you know, that like,

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  If you may, yeah.

• 1:16:47Rich Roll?

  The, the, the traffic jam going up.

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  So if you notice everyone's summit days, it's usually all like Edmund Hillary, Tenzing Norga summit in May 29th, I summit in May 26th. It's all towards that last week that people start summit in 1920. And, you know, with the current, the way things are planetary-wise, climate crisis-wise, the weather window is like, the year that I summited, there were only three nights you could go to the summit. Whereas even like less than 10 years ago, it was much wider window to go reach the summit. And You know, like the monsoon weather that happens in lower region in Bangladesh.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  And this, in my talks, I show this without the borders, is like, whatever is happening in Bay of Bengal, that, that kind of predicts how the wind is gonna form above Everest during the summit season.

• 1:17:41Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:17:41Speaker 01

  It's all connected.

• 1:17:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the interconnectedness of everything, which is, you know, very Tibetan Zen Buddhist, right?

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the other thing that really fascinated me is like, when you have the orbital perspective for off-

• 1:17:56Rich Roll?

  Like being on the summit.

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  Or just from space, just looking at the Himalayas, K2, which is a masculine entity and Everest, which is a feminine energy, they're kind of like the head and tail of this kind of backbone that's going all the way from Nepal to, it's, it's just so beautiful.

• 1:18:18Rich Roll?

  K2 isn't as high as Everest, but technically much more difficult. And in your case, that was, that was, there's quite a story around your ascent of K2.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we are currently film, making a feature doc about it, which would give the more inner journey of K2. But geopolitically speaking, K2 is in a very, it's one of the most dangerous zones of the world. Dangerous, I mean, if you're climbing K2, nothing is, nothing else can be dangerous. And I remember, so it took me, I was the first Bangladeshi to get a permit to climb the mountain, 50 years after Bangladesh was formed. So to get the permit, so you need two, one is a trekking permit and a climbing permit. And I needed to acquire two for K2 and also Broad Peak.

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  So I climbed Broad Peak before climbing K2, which is another 8,000 meter peak.

• 1:19:19Speaker 01

  People underestimate it, but it's such a long mountain. It's like it can, so many people have died in Bodh Pich. I saw with my own eyes, one guy just falling off like when he sat down just to rest. And he couldn't hold and he just fell on the Chinese side.

• 1:19:34Rich Roll?

  Fell, fell to his death.

• 1:19:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:36Rich Roll?

  Right in front of you.

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, on K two, the shit I've seen, I'm still waking up from it two years after. The more than, or yeah, literally two years after. So that's also another story, like I have PTSD and stuff that I have been dealing with. But K two, I've seen so many dead bodies in my entire career. Uh, actually have an album in my phone called I See Dead People. And so, sorry, it's.

• 1:20:01Rich Roll?

  Of all that, of, oh, oh my God.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:20:04Rich Roll?

  That's so heavy.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  Type of dead bodies I've seen on K two is crazy. It's like all broken because, you know, the body freezes overnight. It, it becomes super heavy, super hard. So it's very hard to, first of all, move it. Um, you need more than eight to 12 people to carry a body. But when the winds come and it's like tossing the body, the first thing that happened, it breaks the neck. So there's a lot of headless bodies on these mountains. Uh, majority of them are headless because this is the most, you know, like thinnest part of, um.

• 1:20:41Rich Roll?

  And they're just up there because there aren't eight to 12 people to retrieve the bodies. And so they just.

• 1:20:46Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:20:47Rich Roll?

  Persist up there.

• 1:20:48Speaker 01

  Usually on Everest, you need, so Nepal climbing scene is much more logistically advanced. Whereas compared to Pakistan, Pakistan is almost like 50 years behind. There's no logistical infrastructure to do anything out there. But in Nepal, usually your family has to come with the request. No one's going to move anyone's dead body unless you ask for it. Um, so for example, before I went, I left a will saying, if I die in death zone, death zone is 26,000 feet up, where human bodies basically stop reproducing any cells. You lose brain cells at a rate faster than it can be, uh, replaced. Uh, so your body is basically eating yourself out.

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  So you spend as less time possible in dead zone. So that 26,000 to 29,000 feet is the hardest push.

• 1:21:41Speaker 01

  Given also that you've already been on the mountain for almost so many weeks already. So your body's all dying. So I left a will saying, if my death happens in dead zone, do not worry about bringing me back because I'm already A, probably left with the best view. B, I don't wanna, you know, endanger my shepherd brothers bringing my body from up there because it's one of the most riskiest job to bring. Can you imagine holding a frozen body through a steep hill all the way from? Like, why would I let anyone go through that? And the cost of it is super expensive. But then I also knew that if I died below dead zone, my brothers would come and get me.

• 1:22:22Speaker 01

  So, I mean, Nepal's been my spiritual home from so long ago. So I had that in the back of my head. But to answer your question, the bodies aren't being brought back because the families probably preferred them to be there.

• 1:22:37Rich Roll?

  Sure. How many dead bodies are up there then?

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  Over 250 dead bodies.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  So up there, you're hypoxic. You're, uh, so this is also part of the trainings, like meditation and, you know, the mind training part of it, because I knew what I was gonna face up there. But in that low oxygen level, your mind is so fucked. It's like you don't have energy or the capability to make rational decision. So when you see a dead body, even from the side of your eye, automatically your mind starts this negative conversation. Am I gonna be next?

• 1:23:14Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 1:23:15Speaker 01

  Who, I could be next, or it's just spiraling down. And so to really bring myself out of the spiral and like saying, okay, do not focus over there. Sometimes it's just a hand. Like sometimes you'd be like, oh, is there trash? And I have pictures of this, like, no, it's a dead body of the back without the head. Like, it's this, it's kind of like being on a shroom trip where you're seeing stuff and you really don't know what the hell that is. And you look closely and it's like, oh shit, it is, it is what I think it is.

• 1:23:45Rich Roll?

  In terms of, of making sure your mindset is dialed in for those, you know, kind of super acute situations, how, how important is or has been your, your meditation practice? Like, what is the relationship between? Meditation, how you bring meditation into your daily life? And how does that inform like your ability to, you know, kind of navigate such heightened experiences?

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  I always say meditation or mind training stuff is 90% of the game. Cause I've seen world-class athletes, I've seen Olympians go up there.

• 1:24:23Rich Roll?

  K2.

• 1:24:24Speaker 01

  Even Everest, Camp 3, this woman, I won't mention her name, super famous athlete. This avalanche happening in a different mountain and she freaks out saying, oh, I left my daughter at home. I'm like, oh, all this time you didn't know your daughter was at home? No, it's just Everest gives you, mountains like Everest gives you an excuse to give up every single moment. So for your mind not to, because nothing is gonna go according to plan up there. You can prepare as much as you can and you know, there's a saying that as a mountaineer, you have a backup plan of a backup plan of a backup plan. But also go in knowing that none of it may not work. And you have to be adaptive next day if you wake up and see this. And a lot of people can't deal with that. So yes, of course, physical training is needed.

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  Of course, the high-altitude training is needed. All those is required. But if you don't have the mindset to deal with it, you're not gonna make it out. You're not gonna last out there. And forget about K2, like just getting to base camp of K2, 90 kilometers. Like, most people get sick just going in. And this is not with the tea house lodge situation like Nepal. This is all remote as part of the Karakoram.

• 1:25:33Rich Roll?

  And if you have to define what that mindset is, the mindset that is gonna allow you to succeed in that environment, what is that?

• 1:25:43Speaker 01

  Number one, positive, and that there's a solution to everything, no matter how things are turning out. And that, you know, there are some days when people wake up and then things, it's doomsday, nothing, like people give up. But really, patience is the biggest thing that you need up there. And.

• 1:26:02Speaker 01

  Wise decision making skills.

• 1:26:04Rich Roll?

  But you can't make those wise decisions unless you're in a calm, neutral state, right? So, so much of it is about adaptability and, you know, being able to have some equanimity or neutrality amidst, you know, chaotic, shape-shifting circumstances.

• 1:26:23Speaker 01

  The other thing that really, it's not formal meditation, but really helped me was having a connection to Goddess Chamuluma. That started months before that through His Holiness Dalai Lama, and He told me who she was and really, whether you're in a dream state, physical, like waking state, like having that connection with her, and she will welcome you if you reach out. And you'll hear many Sherpas say this over and over. They've had so many dreams about her. The Kamritta Sherpa who I was just talking about, who is the highest record holder, 30 climbs, he quit his 26th, I believe, 26th or 27th push because he woke up with a dream in Camp Four, I believe, where the goddess was telling her, "No, you're overdoing it."

• 1:27:08Speaker 01

  And she backed off. Like, that's how respectful Sherpa people are. And I, I also think it's important to state here, like, in the Western media, especially in Western media, in all media, but especially out here, people just say, "Oh, these Sherpas." Like, Sherpa has become, and I have been called a Sherpa in my life, "Oh, will you be my Sherpa?"

• 1:27:29Rich Roll?

  Right, it's a monolith.

• 1:27:30Speaker 01

  But it's a derogatory term because not all Sherpas are climbers, not all Sherpas are porters. Sherpas are also doctors, Sherpas are also engineers. So, for the current generation, so, I know it's said in a good way, positive way, when, like, someone told me, "Oh, you want to be my Sherpa?" Like, "Oh, you're someone who's going to guide me or help me." That's how it's said, but from their perspective, or if you were a Sherpa person, like, a lot of my Sherpa friends, they don't want their children to be ever going back to the mountains. They don't want to do that work, and they don't want to be identified with that work anymore because they started as a porters, right, for the British? And then the kid did all the work.

• 1:28:13Speaker 01

  It's hard work that they've never been recognized for. So, Sherpa is the ethnicity name. But it's also the culture name, so it gets all muddled up. There are many other ethnicities that are working in the mountains. There are magars, there are gurus, there are rai. The media just portrays everyone as Sherpa people. And it's important because in Nepal, there's so many different ethnicities. And unfortunately, there's a class system, there's kind of like a hierarchy. And so Sherpa people don't like, from their angle, they're very proud people. And so calling a rai a Sherpa or a different ethnicity a Sherpa, it's kind of insulting.

• 1:28:56Rich Roll?

  That's interesting. I didn't know anything about that. I mean, I, you know, I suspect the use of the word, there's no, there's no intent to, you know, be using it in a negative way. It's just a, you know, it's just a lack of education around that.

• 1:29:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I won't mention people from a certain country, but there's a specific group of people that also use that term, not from Western world. In Asia, there's one country that treats Sherpa people as like, as if they're slaves. Like the term Sherpa means, oh, you're supposed to be helping me. But, so yeah, this, I have a great article on it I can send you later. But just really, because there's the new generation of Sherpa people, they're all in New York. They're, they're, they want to be Uber drivers rather than being in the mountain. They don't, they don't look at that job as, you know. So what I'm trying to say, the many Sherpas that are just engineers or doctors

• 1:29:50Speaker 01

  are in so many different professions that are, I guess, from an angle looked more respectfully at.

• 1:29:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, understood. With respect to your, your K2 attempt, the thing we haven't talked about is the fact that you had a really severe case of COVID prior to that, like not.

• 1:30:15Rich Roll?

  I mean, not that long before you made the attempt, right?

• 1:30:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, so originally I meant to go in 2021. Because I wanted to time it with 50 years of this independence. In 2020, March, sorry, end of February, March-ish. I was coming back from Hawaii after doing like 19 back-to-back talks, 17 or 19. And I was very tired, my immune system was down. And I hopped into a flight back to LA. And as I entered the plane, I instinctly knew that half of that plane was coming from Asia. And they were all affected. And, and then that was the night that.

• 1:30:58Rich Roll?

  Was this in March of 2020? When was this?

• 1:31:01Speaker 01

  March of 2020.

• 1:31:02Rich Roll?

  So this was like.

• 1:31:04Speaker 01

  Before America officially closed everything.

• 1:31:06Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:31:08Speaker 01

  And then hospitals didn't know what to do. They didn't know anything about COVID. But there was this one night when, I believe it was Trump, who called all Americans in Europe back to come back to the country. And that group had just come in. And in LAX, I was stuck in this group of people, just back from Europe with the Italian virus. I forget which version of it was like the first one, the lethal one that was killing everyone in Italy. So everyone was coughing and I think I was exposed to it for a long time. And so I got COVID, I went flatline.

• 1:31:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, your heart stopped, actually. It was that bad.

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  But I entered, you know, doctors or my friends, everyone out here was freaking out. But I had, that was one of the most profoundly enlightening time for me when I went out. I was, you know, a practice called, are you familiar with Tibetan Book of the Dead? So we, we study, I have a long way to go still, but we prepare for death from, it's part of our practice. And if you study the Tibetan Book of Dead and a lot of the things that are there, it didn't actually work out for me of what I, I thought it was going to be a tunnel vision. You know, like the typical description of the. But it was for me, and a detailed version of it will be in my book. But it was a profound, kind of like.

• 1:32:34Speaker 01

  A floating light and I it was I could feel it was me, but there was no physical version of me and my teachers, all four of my main teachers were there and I could hear their voice and but I couldn't see them, but I could feel them and it was just vast as the ocean and you know, Holiness was speaking, Dalai Lama was speaking, Dilgo Khenpo Rinpoche, who's my root teacher, he was there and this one line from my another teacher, Karmapa, he said, you have work to do still and I was so I was because I had suffered so much physically, I think that light really was healing. So I didn't want to come back.

• 1:33:19Speaker 01

  But Karmapa, I think me, was it Dilgo Khenpo Rinpoche said something from the side, no Asphaya, a very gentle way, he was trying to bring me back. But then Karmapa was very like sharp and just says things that just jabs you in the heart. And he said that and I that's when I woke up.

• 1:33:37Rich Roll?

  You snap back into the body. So you you literally flatlined?

• 1:33:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:33:42Rich Roll?

  Did they hurt you? How long were you flatlined?

• 1:33:44Speaker 01

  It's not finished. Then I got diagnosed with pneumonia and my heart wasn't like it was they didn't even tell me that I had pneumonia because my Chinese doctor who I was who I had prescribed, she's a herbalist, she was coming to see me and she said, if we told you that your heart was really struggling, like with everyone dying in the hospital, like people were dying at this time. They didn't know what the hell to do. Said, I don't think you would you had so much and I think I was like I had a lot of anxiety at that time. I was all alone, like all my relatives, everyone was at home and.

• 1:34:21Rich Roll?

  And and lockdowns were happening at this point?

• 1:34:24Speaker 01

  And then they won't keep me in the hospital.

• 1:34:26Rich Roll?

  You're in Venice, so far away from home, yeah.

• 1:34:28Speaker 01

  And also, people treated me like I was I could kill them because they didn't know what what the hell was going on. They didn't know at that time that if you come, you know, you like even getting grocery or anything.

• 1:34:41Rich Roll?

  Right. This is when we were spraying our our our produce and all that kind of stuff, right?

• 1:34:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:46Rich Roll?

  Early, early days.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so long story short, it was a huge recovery, 18 months recovery, but my left side.

• 1:34:54Rich Roll?

  Hold on a second, you're jumping ahead. So you flatlined. Do you know how long you flatlined for?

• 1:35:01Speaker 01

  Uh, no, but it it should be there. Several seconds, I think.

• 1:35:06Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:35:07Speaker 01

  But for me, but for me, it was a long time in.

• 1:35:11Rich Roll?

  Right, your your experience of it was different from like.

• 1:35:14Speaker 01

  The medical.

• 1:35:15Rich Roll?

  Actual amount of time, yeah. Uh, but it wasn't like they pronounced you dead or anything like that, but like, did they?

• 1:35:21Speaker 01

  When I woke up, they had a.

• 1:35:23Rich Roll?

  Put the, what do they call those things?

• 1:35:24Speaker 01

  Ready. What do you call them?

• 1:35:26Rich Roll?

  The paddles.

• 1:35:26Speaker 01

  Paddles. They had it ready. They were about to zap. And I was so disappointed seeing, like, I was just hanging out with my teachers I hadn't seen for a long time. And then I'm out into this reality. I was disappointed to be alive again, to be very frank.

• 1:35:39Rich Roll?

  And so what do you make of that experience?

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  I don't know yet. But that experience didn't stop there. It prolonged into an 18 months long recovery where my entire left side was.

• 1:35:53Rich Roll?

  You had Bell's palsy.

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  Yes. But also.

• 1:35:56Rich Roll?

  Paralysis.

• 1:35:57Speaker 01

  My kidney was stopped, not functioning well. My spleen had gone, like, entire left side was dysfunctional. I couldn't walk to the kitchen by myself. Everything was really hard. And that was my physical injury. But that period of 18 months was probably the most inner work. So the left side is related to mommy wounding, or not necessarily wounding, but mommy side.

• 1:36:24Rich Roll?

  So it's all coming up. It's all.

• 1:36:26Speaker 01

  Everything came up.

• 1:36:26Rich Roll?

  Spilling out, yeah. And you thought you thought you had healed.

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  I thought I was healed.

• 1:36:32Rich Roll?

  So this is like a reckoning.

• 1:36:35Speaker 01

  But also at that time, I was still in contact with her. And so it was aggravating me a lot every time she checked in. And so that is, that is the time when I cut her off from my life, 2020, when I was healing. And I was, so this is a time when a lot of. You know, from 2020 onwards to now, I've somehow gotten connected to a lot of shamans and healers around L.A. And now I know why my teachers send me in because I was, I really struggled in L.A. And I was always like, every time I would talk to my teacher, I was like, is my karma over now? Can I go back? Like, can I leave?

• 1:37:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, haven't I done, haven't I done enough? Like, we're done with this, right? So from that perspective, there is a, there is a, you know, this idea or this perspective that, you know, COVID is this gift, this very challenging gift that's been delivered to you, and this very long recovery as a way of slowing you down, like to your point earlier about, you know, being impressed with the idea of patience, right? Patience is something you resist. So you, you contract this virus, you have a very difficult time for a long time, but this is forcing you to stop, right? So that you can actually confront this thing and finally heal it.

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think healing has to be, like, it's not like we reach a summit and just remain there. It has to be step by step. And up to that point, whatever healing work I had done, especially concerning my mom, was from the time that she had left me to then, whereas I never addressed the little girl that, that was there when she existed and was still in our lives. So, and I, that moment and or the period made me realize how entire, like, since 29 to now or then, I was overcompensating, not just for my parents, in every work that I did, because I was still functioning from a wounded, wounded state.

• 1:38:43Rich Roll?

  So the hyper-performance, like, all of that is like a product of this unhealed wound?

• 1:38:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, the short version of why I go, went to, how I went to the top of all mountains is unresolved childhood trauma.

• 1:38:58Rich Roll?

  It's true though, right?

• 1:38:59Speaker 01

  Which is majority of people with in on top of their game.

• 1:39:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:04Speaker 01

  But so that period made me and I was finally ready to like just heal like I'm just done. You know, and so I really used that time to deep dive into every work that I could have done. And like my teacher, root teacher said that, you know, you've cleared almost 20 years of karma in that one year, 2020. And had I not like before I moved, so I moved to LA permanently right before pandemic, end of 2019, not knowing that the pandemic was gonna hit. Before moving here, I was almost for years, I was just tug, tug, tug, tug, tug every continent.

• 1:39:46Speaker 01

  Like I was performing, performing, performing, achieving, achieving, achieving.

• 1:39:50Rich Roll?

  Running away, running away the whole time, kind of.

• 1:39:52Speaker 01

  Not necessarily running away. I think the environment in Bangladesh, being the figure I was, I couldn't really do the work. You cannot do the work where you've, you can't heal in the place that you got sick. So I think it was, it was all meant to happen. I was sent here so I could heal properly. I could create the community or find the community of healers and practitioners who would help me, you know? So it's been, I mean, and I'm still healing. Like, I don't think we are, like I said, we don't reach a summit and just exist.

• 1:40:24Rich Roll?

  What are, what are some of the modalities that have been most helpful?

• 1:40:28Speaker 01

  Well, somatic therapy, I did, I went to therapy since I was a, you know, late teenager. But, and talk therapy does help, but I had a lot of stored trauma in my body. From 2020 with this physical illness and all the work that I did, like my body is so light now.

• 1:40:49Speaker 01

  Like, I can't tell you, Rich, like in 2020, up to 2021, I was carrying so much baggage in my body. My, everything cleared up. Like, I look younger now than I looked in my late twenties. Because, because I just let that out. And, you know, there are many ways I've done it. And it's a bit esoteric, I mean, very esoteric. So I went to all kinds of practitioners. But the other cool part of it is like when I, because I couldn't go back to Nepal at that time. No traveling was happening. But when I ended up going to Nepal in 2022, I hadn't even discussed anything with my Tibetan teacher, Dugu Kenzi Yang Sirin Pichhe.

• 1:41:34Speaker 01

  But he, when he saw me, he told me the version he saw. And it just, it was literally like he watched me throughout the whole thing. He knew everything that I was going through and he was doing his prayers for me. It's just crazy. From the time that I entered the dream state, or not dream state, death state and came back.

• 1:41:53Rich Roll?

  Like, this was all just divinely orchestrated? And he knew how it was gonna unfold the whole time?

• 1:41:59Speaker 01

  No, I mean, they were worried as hell. Like, there was no guarantee of, even the medical system here. Like, it took me, like, I had to figure all of it out. Bangladesh has a better medical system than America, I have to tell you. Like, if I was in Bangladesh, I would get VVIP treatment. And just the way insurance and shit works here, it's crazy. Anyway, that's a whole nother topic. But, um, what was I gonna say? So then, 2022, summer is when I ended up climbing the hardest mountain on the planet.

• 1:42:32Rich Roll?

  I mean, during that 18 months, when you're trying to physically heal, you have kidney issues, a variety of issues. You have the Bell's Palsy, all of these things that you're trying to heal. Was there, was there lung damage also?

• 1:42:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Lung was the main, my left lung was main. And I didn't feel it till Camp Two in K2. It hurt like hell, but they're still great.

• 1:42:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, you have to have unbelievable lungs to do something like that and to go in impaired, you know, still trying to, you know, that's, that's like wild, man.

• 1:43:07Speaker 01

  You know, the stitches that you Trying to breathe in. But what happened was in K two, I there were boulder sized, like humongous rocks that were falling and just knocking people out like while you're hanging. And mind you, I'm also filming at this time with another guy, like Mingma Sherpa and myself. We film our entire like two people camera team.

• 1:43:27Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:43:27Speaker 01

  If climbing K two wasn't hard enough, like filming the entire journey was a much harder task. But I had this rock fall coming and that's when I had a second or an episode of major panic attack and just PTSD rush after a long time. And I thought I had dealt with it. Uh, and you know, first, when you experience that, it's like guilt and just anger. Or for me, it was like, why the fuck is this coming up again?

• 1:43:57Speaker 01

  And in high altitude, it's very hard to, you know, your mind, the air energy within you. It's very hard to control that. So I had to actually go back down to base camp and just like, sit with myself and have a talk and just, just come back again. I feel like now, and then the last episode was in this March in Antarctica. Uh, another incident happened that uh resurfaced some things like just um. I didn't know till coming to L A and going to somatic therapy that I was uh living with survivor's guilt for a long time. Um, even though, because I've, I've, I've not killed them personally, but I survived.

• 1:44:36Rich Roll?

  Just the people that you survived on these.

• 1:44:38Speaker 01

  No, my best friend died. I mean, I've lost really like close people on the mountains and I somehow survived. And uh in twenty fifteen, in the earthquake, um, that gave, you know,

• 1:44:52Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:44:52Speaker 01

  the biggest avalanche that took my best friend Dan, my biggest climbing partner, brother of life. And um, you know, just visuals from the bodies and everything. Nima was, Nima, who was my climbing partner, died in a motorbike accident. Like all these deaths happen and people just left. And coming from that place of losing so many people already in our life, in my life, um. Yeah, but what I was gonna say in Antarctica, I feel like, because it's in Arag, have you been to Antarctica?

• 1:45:22Rich Roll?

  No.

• 1:45:22Speaker 01

  Everything is slow, like time stops, there is no concept of time or space. So things are already happening slow mo in your mind, or at least for me it was. But I think this time, because of the work I have done in the last three years specifically, I was able to bounce back way faster. Half of my mind could, you know, I get paranoia and anxiety kind of feeling in half of my mind and half of my mind is like, no, you've done this before. Like there was discourages aspect where like, no, just breathe in, do this, do that. So I was able to process the whole thing. I was actually talking to Conrad about it because we have similar, you know, incidents about losing people and stuff.

• 1:46:06Speaker 01

  And it's just, it's we're never gonna like be at a place where never comes back.

• 1:46:12Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:46:13Speaker 01

  It's just how we manage it and how we deal with it on a daily basis.

• 1:46:17Rich Roll?

  Your, your commitment to this healing journey though is really inspiring to me. It is, it is, and you know, as I said earlier, I'm, I'm kind of processing this experience that I had in Dharamshala. And I'm very confronted by this idea of the mother's love for the child because I have a very tricky and challenging relationship with my own mother, which, which is, you know, trifling in comparison to like what you've had to contend with. But it's been an impediment to me kind of embracing what the Dalai Lama had to share, like it's a block, right?

• 1:46:58Rich Roll?

  And that block obviously is exactly what I need to be seeing because that's where the work sits, right?

• 1:47:05Speaker 01

  I was just gonna say that that's probably why he said it in the first place.

• 1:47:09Rich Roll?

  And this is a thing, this has been a thing like, you know, for many, many years. Like I, I know that I have to heal this thing, right? But I've, I've lacked like the proper.

• 1:47:24Rich Roll?

  Way to approach it. Like, I don't, I don't really, like, there are many times where I thought that I had kind of transcended this issue. Clearly, I have not. It's that same thing when you think that you've kind of managed it, and then it comes up again. And this is like my mountain to climb, right? And I'm trying to figure out how to do it. And then here you arrive, who, who, you know, has had this exact same experience, except super heightened in comparison to mine. And I'm like, oh, my God, this woman is going to give me all the answers that I need to figure this out for myself. It's like unbelievable.

• 1:47:59Speaker 01

  Well,

• 1:48:00Rich Roll?

  And it all, and it, and it like, I can't help but think, like, this is part of some kind of design that, that exists outside of myself. Like, there's a, there's a divinity and a mysticism to it. That's quite extraordinary. And when I think about all the things that you've done, you didn't sit down and say, here are my life goals, and I'm going to write it out. And here's how it's going to happen. Like, no, this has been this unbelievable, fantastic, mystical journey that you've been on, that is deeply spiritual. And patient zero is like the Dalai Lama, who says, go to the mountains. And like, you go, and then look at all these things that have happened. It's really quite extraordinary.

• 1:48:43Speaker 01

  Thank you. I, as you were talking, I just, I wonder if there's a lot of it stored in your body, which I know it is.

• 1:48:53Rich Roll?

  So much of it is.

• 1:48:54Speaker 01

  But when those blocks, you, what helped me in my journey is removing those blocks, because when those blocks are still in your body, our nervous system cannot function properly, 100%. So there's no point forcing yourself to release it before you. Somatic therapy changed my entire life. Thank you, LA. Because I didn't even, are you familiar with that term?

• 1:49:16Rich Roll?

  No, but you're going to tell me who I'm going to go to, and then I'm going to go. And you're going to be, I'm not going to say, I'm not going to say you're going to be my Sherpa. I know, I now know better than to use that word, right? But maybe you can be my, my guru or my teacher here.

• 1:49:31Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:49:32Rich Roll?

  Can I enlist you?

• 1:49:33Speaker 01

  Healing, healing sister in your healing journey. We're all healing in some way.

• 1:49:38Rich Roll?

  I'll go with that. But you're gonna, you're gonna help me out, right?

• 1:49:42Speaker 01

  But I can assure you that what he said to you was meant for you.

• 1:49:46Rich Roll?

  Yes, I know. Right? And I'm like, sitting with it and I'm like, what am I supposed to do with this?

• 1:49:52Speaker 01

  Did it make you angry?

• 1:49:53Rich Roll?

  I know I'm supposed to do something. No, I think, you know, I think when, when, and I was talking to my wife about this like right after the experience, like when he's like, well, you know, in order to like, experience love and give love, you have to just, you know, embody the mother's love for the child. And when I think about, when I, when I reflect on, you know, my own mother, I don't experience compassion. I experience resentment and, and misplaced anger and all of these complicated like emotions that, that obviously are impediments to the solution, which is love, right? And so how do I break down those impediments?

• 1:50:37Rich Roll?

  How do I like, how do I deconstruct that wall and find a way forward? Like, this is really like, this is like the biggest thing that I'm trying to do right now. And then suddenly you appear.

• 1:50:51Speaker 01

  That's really interesting because it's very similar. Like when I was telling you that he was telling me to do this and in my mind, I was like,

• 1:50:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I was just like, fuck that.

• 1:50:59Speaker 01

  But over time, the more I sat with the one minute practice of imagining myself in her womb and what she was going through and the trauma she came from, the generational trauma she till today carries. Reflecting on that being her, not as was fear, not as rich. Take your mom, embody your mom at where she was. Do you know much about your past history, like your grandfather's and?

• 1:51:27Rich Roll?

  A little bit, but I could learn more.

• 1:51:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that really helped me generate compassion towards her and ultimately get, really forgive her. Like I really, from the bottom of my heart, want her to leave very peacefully. Like I don't want any kind of suffering and I know I mean that and, but I wasn't, I never felt like that even 10 years ago.

• 1:51:51Rich Roll?

  And how do you feel, you said you feel lighter, like what is, what is the feeling that you have? Like knowing that, like really owning that.

• 1:51:59Speaker 01

  There was a lot of chronic pain and I would get injuries all the time. And I think I've cut that pattern. Um, I released the, all this stored trauma. And like, I think it was T R who said, how the fuck did you? T R is our.

• 1:52:16Rich Roll?

  He's the guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:52:18Speaker 01

  My trainer. He's like, how the fuck did you climb all this mountain with all this trauma in your body? Your leg is separated from, like this thing, he only fixed after K two, which is post twenty twenty two. This is last year mainly, but um, so yeah, just energetically, just so much lighter, like, it almost feels like I've lost fifty kilos, like from my, like this backpack I was carrying is just out. And, and more free, just, mine was very free, just, I'm, I'm under no captivity.

• 1:52:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:52Speaker 01

  And maybe you can draw yourself a map on what that freedom might feel like and have a goal like, oh, I'm doing this. Because this is what's gonna give me your ultimate freedom.

• 1:53:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I like that.

• 1:53:05Speaker 01

  I will also say that doing that work towards my mom, like when I, um, not just mom, parents, anyone who's hurt you, like when I started, you know, step by step, doing that work, it changed my entire pattern of people that I used to attract to. Because when we still have our, that mother wounding and operating from that mother wounding or father wounding. So I'll just give an example, I had a lot of narcissist people around me. Therefore, with the wrong agenda, starting from my previous trainer to like, only friends because they could gain something from me, because that's what my mom was.

• 1:53:47Speaker 01

  So I was attracting all these people because somehow I was probably also codependently, you know, trying to recreate. Friendships, like they were all versions of my mom.

• 1:54:00Rich Roll?

  Right, you're seeking validation and acceptance in people you perhaps look up to, right, to solve that wound. But I would also imagine, I wouldn't be surprised if also those abandonment issues show up in any kind of attempt at a romantic relationship, where you're gonna push people away before they can push you away. Anytime it feels like perhaps the relationship is teetering, you're gonna be the one to break up to protect yourself.

• 1:54:30Speaker 01

  Fight or flight mode.

• 1:54:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, right, is that right?

• 1:54:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I dated my mother for, I think, 15 years, in all seven continents, literally, a version of my mom.

• 1:54:42Speaker 01

  Till I started doing work. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, not, like I said, like my work, work people, trainers, people around me, so many of them were versions. And then the people who would actually be the right, mutually benefiting relation, those people started pouring in from.

• 1:55:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cuz you have to heal yourself. You have to be the person that those types of people would be attracted to before those people come into your life.

• 1:55:07Speaker 01

  And then also, every now and then, the universe is gonna send you a version of her again to see.

• 1:55:13Rich Roll?

  To test you?

• 1:55:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:14Rich Roll?

  How's that going?

• 1:55:16Speaker 01

  It had, I was like, oh, yeah, now I know my boundaries now.

• 1:55:21Speaker 01

  No, I laugh at now when I see a version, like two years, even two years ago, I'd fall for this shit. But now I know better.

• 1:55:29Rich Roll?

  I love how you frame your climbing in the context of humility. Like, people like to say you conquered a mountain, and you're always quick to say, like, nobody conquers a mountain, like, it's a surrender, you surrendered to the mountain. What are, what are some of the lessons that, you know, we can learn from your experiences on, you know, being on such, you know, incredible peaks?

• 1:55:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, from the very beginning, I found that word. And even now, media says, "Wasfia conquer this." I hate, I just, my whole body is like, "Why do you still use it?" Because the view before the summit is like, "Everyone's begging the mother to go up for even a split second, even if it's like one second, please give us a, give us one moment on the summit." As soon as you come down, you're like, "No, I freaking conquer." Like, the ego steps in. And some of our mountaineers' egos are bigger than the mountains they climbed themselves. So I feel like, not just with mountains, but any part of nature, like even with the environment, climate crises, especially in America, I hear often, "Save Mother Earth." Like, oh, please.

• 1:56:39Speaker 01

  Like, Mother Earth can just toss you out in a fraction of a second. I've seen it over and over. I've seen earthquakes, avalanches. Anything and everything that you knew could be gone in a fraction of a second if a tsunami comes. So we know, we need to be healing ourselves. We need to be saving ourselves. And Mother Nature will heal herself by itself. So like, so having this ego state of higher ego state over the mother,

• 1:57:10Speaker 01

  I feel, is really wrong. And another practice is, I think, when the internal elements within us are balanced and when we are calm, and this is a very Buddhist practice as well, the external elements settle on its own. When so many of us humans are functioning in anger, jealousy, all this negative greed, whatever you want to call it, that creates a lot of these outer dimensions.

• 1:57:38Rich Roll?

  The microcosm produces the macrocosm.

• 1:57:41Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:57:41Rich Roll?

  I, I, I've read that you said, you know, mental health is planetary health. Like, there is a nexus between like how we treat ourselves and, and, you know, the outer manifestations of our interior world is what's creating what we see around us that needs to get fixed.

• 1:57:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:58:00Rich Roll?

  Which is also a very Buddhist thing, right? Like, the way you, the way you save the world is you save yourself. Or if you want to fix the world, fix yourself.

• 1:58:08Speaker 01

  If we all focused on mental health and our own health, I think half of the world's would, world's problems would be gone. Like, we don't have to do anything. If we were in full control of our mind and our bodies.

• 1:58:21Rich Roll?

  It's empowering to hear that.

• 1:58:23Speaker 01

  I truly believe that.

• 1:58:25Rich Roll?

  But mental health right now is not, we're not doing well with that, are we? Collectively.

• 1:58:30Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:58:30Rich Roll?

  At least in the West.

• 1:58:32Speaker 01

  Well, in the East, it's a shame to talk about, like, what? Mental health? Like, I think in West is ahead a little bit. L A is for sure. But yeah, that's, that's my focus too. I was just thinking, coming up here, my podcast is gonna be called Climbing Inner Mountains.

• 1:58:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, that's what we've been doing today.

• 1:58:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. But it's, like, nothing impresses me, like, your world, like, whether you've gone to space or whatever, if internally you haven't done the work.

• 1:59:02Rich Roll?

  If you're a mess, yeah.

• 1:59:05Rich Roll?

  What does your relationship with gratitude look like?

• 1:59:08Speaker 01

  Oh, every moment, every day. It's honestly, like, this past couple of months have been hard, not even the last year, like, to really go back to a state of gratitude. But I think, like, again, going back to karma, like, there's positive karma, neutral karma, negative karma. And when we don't have gratitude, it often goes automatically to negative because we're, we are not appreciating what, what, like, this, the fact that we can sit with food, three types of drinks, and with such a nice environment, talking to you. This means already that both of us and those people associated with us have done a lot

• 1:59:52Speaker 01

  of good work in the past, good merits for us to come. Sit in a time like this, when so many people in the wars or in the rest of the world are suffering, that we can have this positive experience. Rejoice. We use that word specifically, and rejoice automatically when you look at other people's good things, good achievements, and rejoice on it, especially on things that you don't have. That's what multiplies your positive karma. And enough people don't reflect on that, that there's a way around multiplying your positive and, you know, putting the negative, like, subduing the negative karma.

• 2:00:32Speaker 01

  I think we should do a course in that, but

• 2:00:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, I'm interested in in the formal practice of cultivating it when you when you notice like you're not experiencing it, like, is there something that you do or like a

• 2:00:46Speaker 01

  4am every morning to 6am, I have a two hour period.

• 2:00:49Rich Roll?

  Two hours.

• 2:00:50Speaker 01

  Before heading to the gym.

• 2:00:51Rich Roll?

  Walk me through that before you go to the gym. Wow.

• 2:00:54Speaker 01

  Well, now he has made the time 5:45, so I have to be at Kohl's at 5:45.

• 2:01:00Rich Roll?

  Be where? Oh, at the gym. Okay. So you get up at what time?

• 2:01:04Speaker 01

  Usually I'm on the mat by 4, 4am.

• 2:01:08Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 2:01:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I haven't been sleeping properly, I must say, but 4am and that's, you know, that's practice has been going from Dharam Sala days. So the first parts, I mean, it's not same every day, but usually it's the several texts that we study and it's different every, every, like right now I'm finishing certain practices. So it's more the mantra chanting, so clearing your speech. So the, you know, we have so many mantras that we do, but and I'm not the most highest expert to explain mantras, but I would say that it really refines your inner karmas and it really helps me and we all have different

• 2:01:51Speaker 01

  body types. So what speech practices are going to do for me might not do the same for you, if that makes sense. So then after that, I have sitting meditation, which is, which is both analytical and just like, we call it inside meditation, I guess, here, which is vipassana. And then sometimes visuals, like, so let's say, I'll just give a stupid example. If I'm working on a certain project, really planning it out visually and how morally

• 2:02:29Speaker 01

  Ethically rightfully I would do, but also projected visually. And then, you know, people who are not familiar with Tibetan practice might get confused with it. But like the deity practices we do, I'll just say like, it's almost like having those deities are avatars. So these are, the deity practices are more in, which is called the tantric practices. And it's hard to explain over a podcast, but the specific deity that I'm practicing with is ultimately the avatar within me. It's the energy quality. So I'm trying to develop that within myself. And at the end of the practice, the deity merges into my, my heart chakra, which is my, where my mind lives and we become one. And then, yeah, and then closing ceremony and.

• 2:03:14Rich Roll?

  Wow. And are you doing this with the council of a, of a teacher or a guru?

• 2:03:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, everything has been passed on. So I have four main teachers. Both Dalai Lama and Karma Pa are so busy now. So Karma Pa is often considered as the second most important Lama after Dalai Lama. But I don't think you can hierarchically put it like that. This is again, the Western media description of it. Karma Pa is the second Lama in Tibet, which is not true. Often they portray him like that, but Karma Pa, Pa is father, karma is action. So father of all actions. So he comes from the action family. We have five different families. I, I am of the action like do, do, do.

• 2:03:59Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:04:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. So.

• 2:04:00Rich Roll?

  So this makes him the perfect teacher for you.

• 2:04:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. So he was my, I found him second after Dalai Lama. But he's the Noah of all times. Like he literally saved me from earthquakes, saved me from gun violence, saved me, pulled me out.

• 2:04:16Rich Roll?

  He's the one who, who, who talked you off getting on a plane, right?

• 2:04:19Speaker 01

  Yes. So he's the, he's clairvoyant like.

• 2:04:24Rich Roll?

  And that, you were going to Kathmandu and that's when the, that's when the earthquake was, right?

• 2:04:29Speaker 01

  To me, Dan.

• 2:04:30Rich Roll?

  What's that?

• 2:04:31Speaker 01

  To me, Dan who passed, who was the first dead body to come.

• 2:04:34Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 2:04:35Speaker 01

  My last text to him.

• 2:04:37Rich Roll?

  Called you and said, don't get on the plane.

• 2:04:38Speaker 01

  Karma Pa did, yeah.

• 2:04:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:40Speaker 01

  He knew. I didn't even tell him.

• 2:04:43Rich Roll?

  He didn't, he didn't know that you were about to get on a plane. He just said, come, come, come back.

• 2:04:48Speaker 01

  No, I was fighting with him. He said, don't go. And I said, why? I have like, I, I was very stubborn. Still am.

• 2:04:56Rich Roll?

  That's shocking.

• 2:04:56Speaker 01

  But I was fighting. I was like, oh, I'm not gonna miss my flight. But also a number of, so Karmapa and Dilgo Kencirinpoche, they're both kind of similar age. So I kind of have a very friendly best friend version of it. Like, not a lot of people would fight with these Dalai Lamas, but I always argue. And they kind of love it because debate is part of the Tibetan culture. I think you went and visited or saw some.

• 2:05:24Rich Roll?

  We did. We saw a debate. We got to spend a lot of, a lot of time with, with some of the monks, who I just love. I loved hanging out with those guys.

• 2:05:33Speaker 01

  So even Dalai Lama, he would always say, come in, come in, challenge me, question me.

• 2:05:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:38Speaker 01

  If there's part of my teaching that you don't, he told me personally, if there's anything in the text or teachings that I give, don't just believe because I'm the Dalai Lama. Question the Dalai Lama. You must question the Lama. And if it's not working for you, don't practice it. Like he would, so.

• 2:05:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah, that is part of it. I remember this debate. This debate, it was funny. It was Arthur Brooks and all these social scientists, you know, and then you have like the.

• 2:06:03Speaker 01

  The Lamas.

• 2:06:04Rich Roll?

  The Lamas on the other side. They're kind of laughing the whole time, like, you guys are so up your ass in your head, you know, like, it was very entertaining, actually. Go ahead. Sorry.

• 2:06:14Speaker 01

  No, I, no, I was gonna go into my teachers. We were talking about.

• 2:06:20Rich Roll?

  We were, we were talking, well, we were talking about how he talked you off the plane and that you have this jocular relationship with them where you, you push back and debate and argue.

• 2:06:29Speaker 01

  And then he hung up when I was like, no. And then, and then he, the text I got is, come see me. And then I texted Dan saying.

• 2:06:39Rich Roll?

  And you were where at this time?

• 2:06:40Speaker 01

  Almost near the airport. So I have.

• 2:06:43Rich Roll?

  The Dharamshala Airport?

• 2:06:44Speaker 01

  No, no, no, in Bangladesh. Dhaka, so Dhaka to Kathmandu is less than an hour flight. It's like, it takes longer to get to my home in traffic than get to Nepal. It's literally, like, if India allowed us that 30 minutes of road on, over land, it would just be a small car, car, short car, car ride. So I go back and I forgot where he was and I call his assistant and he's like, oh yeah, come to New York. I said, wait, what? He's in New York? I'm gonna fly to New York to meet him? And next day, I got a Qatar flight.

• 2:07:18Speaker 01

  Woke up in Qatar, like it was a layover. When my phone started, Qatar or Dubai, somewhere in those two hubs. And then my phone started beeping with the messages of the earthquake.

• 2:07:33Rich Roll?

  Earthquake.

• 2:07:34Speaker 01

  But I had a flight to catch. And when, by the time I landed and saw him, he was already in meditation. So when, when the earthquake happened, both Dalai Lama and Karmapa went into deep meditation. And, you know, they don't say it, but they try to take on as much of the suffering

• 2:07:52Speaker 01

  that they can. And so I think it took us three days to, took me three days to see him.

• 2:07:59Speaker 01

  And by that time-

• 2:07:59Rich Roll?

  You're just hanging out in New York, waiting him, waiting for him to be done, meditating?

• 2:08:04Speaker 01

  No, I, I knew by that time. I would kind of just, because I had already gotten Dan's news and I knew. But then when he, when I saw him, I didn't know. Like I was angry, but I was also, I guess, fighting with guilt. Cause I was recreating the whole scene of if I was there, I could have maybe saved him. He died basically in base camp, doing nothing, you know? He wasn't even climbing. And so I was replaying it, which is again, a version of survivor's guilt. Cause it was his big sister, and though he was older than me, I was like, we would always watch each other out on the mountains. So, yeah, it was just, I had, and then I had, so I saw him and then I went back to Nepal

• 2:08:49Speaker 01

  from America and I ended up staying there. And there were 360 plus aftershocks after that. So it was a very tragic time, but one of the most powerful time in my life, where we spent almost a year rebuilding. We all from poor, from poor to rich, to all walks of life, people. And only in Nepal this could happen, coming out, living under tents, holding each other, random strangers, just out in the street, while the aftershocks are happening, like everyone watching out for everyone. Amount of community collective work that happened post earthquake. And I've been in other earthquakes, like in Bangladesh, people wouldn't have behaved like that.

• 2:09:32Speaker 01

  So just like seeing people who just lost everything, still like going and recovering. Or, you know, just doing what was necessary at that time was very powerful.

• 2:09:44Rich Roll?

  Do the mountains still have the pull and the allure? Like, do you feel like you still have some things you want to do there? Or do you feel like you've learned what you needed to learn from those experiences?

• 2:09:59Speaker 01

  I think till my last breath, I would wanna return to the Himalayas. There's this longing of like, this is the longest time I've been away from Himalayas. My ashes are supposed to go to the Himalayas, so I have a connection there that.

• 2:10:13Speaker 01

  It's more like, it's almost like therapy, every like annual therapy kind of a pilgrimage. Like if I'm not in touch with the rocks and the vibration that you feel.

• 2:10:24Rich Roll?

  What is it that's so unique about the Himalayas? It makes them different from other mountains, irrespective of like how high they are?

• 2:10:32Speaker 01

  They're just so alive. They're like living beings. So there's this territory within, so Everest and all these mountains, it's almost like curves out in the Nepal side. Like almost like an embrace like the mother. And when you put a camp in there and sleep on the ground, let's say base camp on glacier. If you're, I'm not talking about this crazy people who are just like doing stuff. But if you're in tune with your body, you'll, you'll, within three days, you'll be attuned with the mother. And I, there's a chapter in my book called Avalanche Lullaby. And it was about an episode in my life where post Everest, I couldn't sleep anywhere. Like in Bangladesh, I had insomnia, never struggled so much with sleep.

• 2:11:15Speaker 01

  I would be up all night till I went back to base camp the next season. And, you know, officially speaking, you're not allowed to stay in base camp without a permit. But I have enough Sherpa friends where I just put up. It wasn't sneaking, it was, I mean, all the official people knew that I was coming. So, but I stayed there just to sleep. And while you're lying down, whether it's morning or evening, it just goes from.

• 2:11:48Speaker 01

  So it's like a whole lair in the embrace. There's so many big mountains, just avalanches happening. And that was so calming for me because I slept with that sound for so long. Like thou became my lullaby. And it's only in that lullaby that I could fall back into sleep.

• 2:12:03Rich Roll?

  You can't fall asleep unless you're listening to avalanches.

• 2:12:08Speaker 01

  But it was so sweet. It's not like the wrathful, even though they were wrathful, they could take it, the whole village. But that sound was so pleasing and so I felt so protected in her embrace, I would say. And also, a lot happened while I was climbing Everest. Like my entire Camp Three, which is on the Lothse face, went off with an avalanche and right before summit push. So I had to recreate. So if people aren't familiar with how the climb goes, you basically don't climb the mountain all at one go. You acclimatize, you go from Camp One, Camp Two, carry. I'm talking about people who are actually carrying their shit. And then you go back, carry more stuff.

• 2:12:53Speaker 01

  But this is a, that's why it takes so long to climb these mountains. And so by the time we reached Camp Three, it was almost summit push time. And summit push time is a window. We never know when that's going to come till much later in April. And then we do several, you know, satellite. So we, there are two main satellite readings that you can do, very costly. One is Swiss, one American. So I bought the American one, someone else bought the Swiss one, and then we exchanged. And anyway, long story short, I saw that there was one window on twenty six. The second window on twenty seventh was a no go. And twenty fifth could be a window.

• 2:13:34Speaker 01

  And if I, if I can touch base on Camp Three. So me and Nima, we were already up there. We had our supplementary oxygen that we were going to carry to Camp Four and then go for the summit push. Food was there and it took weeks, you know, to, it took weeks to bring them up. And then Nima just came in to the tent and it's like, Didi. Didi means sister, older sister. We're not sleepy, uh, we're not going up tonight. So do you wanna just go to Camp Two and sleep there? Cause the idea is as much as you can, you sleep at lower realms. Like, there's no point losing your stuff. And I just shrugged and I don't know what. I just said, yes, let's go.

• 2:14:15Speaker 01

  And as we, we were rappelling down Camp Three to Camp Two, we heard this from the top and I thought it was an avalanche and it was an avalanche. But it happened on another side of the mountain that made us humongous, like building sized rock. And we're watching it come straight, took my camp, took the next camp, to Sherpas where it had to be airlifted out with their backbone injury. And so my entire camp-

• 2:14:43Rich Roll?

  How long after you had left Camp Three did that happen?

• 2:14:45Speaker 01

  We were still on the rope, coming down. And then next day, Nima and I, uh, when we go back to the place, because we were like, okay, if we could have, say, one oxygen cylinder or something, nothing was there. And then a cracked, uh, amulet, the one His Holiness had given me for Everest, that was just there with a crack and broken.

• 2:15:10Rich Roll?

  Everything else is gone, except this amulet.

• 2:15:13Speaker 01

  Uh, the, the, there was some like little stuff left, but the main stuff, like food, oxygen, everything was taken. So I took those broken pieces and later gave it to Dalai Lama. Like, yeah, this happened and that happened. And then he just looked at me and he was like, time for a new one. And he went back and gave me another one.

• 2:15:35Rich Roll?

  I keep asking this question, but like, what, so what do you make of that? Like, what, what does this, what does this mean to you? The way this series of events unfolded?

• 2:15:44Speaker 01

  Well, I think that was Chomolungma's way of, cause the first night that people started going up, it was a total shit show. I would have died in that line. There were over 250 attempting and I didn't make that, uh, crowd. A lot of people died in that crowd. By the time I reached, the night of me reaching the summit, I crossed over seven dead bodies. Out of which there were people from that same season who I had tea with. And those people died in the just just previous summit window. So that was the time when I was like, okay, I was looking at them. But also, I must say, when I went back to Camp Two, automatically, it was very depressing.

• 2:16:27Speaker 01

  Like, I still didn't know if I would make it. I had to go back to base camp. My supplies came on a helicopter from Kathmandu. And we, me and Nima, had to re-carrie back. Can you imagine the energy loss, the mental thing? But as soon as I reached back to Camp Two and settled my mind, I'm gonna go. I felt like someone, like a mother, a goddess, fearless energy was like, you're gonna come up and was just pulling me. We reached Dead Zone, um, Camp, which so Dead Zone starts above twenty six thousand feet. So Camp Three above, technically speaking, is Dead Zone.

• 2:17:06Speaker 01

  You spend as less time there and you have basically no appetite in Dead Zone. I went into Camp Four. I was so hungry after eating my food that I ended up eating Nima, the next camp, next tents, all the Sherpas leftover food. And all everyone was like, Dee Dee, what happened to you? Like, I had this newfound energy that I couldn't explain. And then throughout the night of climbing, I felt like someone was pulling me, like just this big energy. And it was, as cliched as it can sound, that climb itself was probably one of the most profound spiritual experience for me. And I'm so happy that it happened because if I was in that shitshow line before,

• 2:17:51Speaker 01

  I wouldn't be having this experience. And the other thing that happened, Nima.

• 2:17:56Rich Roll?

  But hold on a second.

• 2:17:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:57Rich Roll?

  So profound, how and why?

• 2:18:01Speaker 01

  Because I was constantly, like, I knew mother was there, she was protecting me, she was pulling me. And then my entire life, at that time I was only twenty nine, but my entire life flashed through the last couple of hours of reaching the summit. And everything from very life-altering moments to insignificant memories like random people crossing in Heathrow Airport or like just. But it was happening at a rate faster than the speed of light, like everyone just passing, passing. But the overriding feeling throughout that was of gratitude, like I was so, I was like bursting with gratitude, I was like, wow. And, you know, there was this last ridge line before the summit.

• 2:18:44Speaker 01

  So I studied the mountain, obviously, like the maps, and so I had, I knew of what was there, but you're at nighttime climbing it. You know, you have no concept of how high, how high you are, high, low, you are, you're just going up, up, up. And then all of a sudden, from my right side, from literally below me. You know how sometimes you fly in the plane and you can see the curvature of the earth? So just like that, the curvature of the earth and the sun started coming up and I looked down and I was like, holy shit. Like, how high I was and, and I knew that was Tibet. So the mountain summit literally goes on the border of Tibet and Nepal.

• 2:19:26Speaker 01

  So on that, on the summit, that side is Tibet and this side is Nepal. So I was even joking, like, you know, with Nima, it's like, oh, if you fall, like, in this place, we have two places to die, two countries to die in. We have a choice. If you fall on the right, you fall in Tibet. If you fall on the left, you die in Nepal. And Nima was like, yeah, don't fall on the right, Didi, we can't get your body out from China. So we were just joking nonstop about that and. Then we finally reached the summit at the time when sun was literally sunrise was happening. And I got to watch that from top of the world with Nima alone. There was no bloody single person.

• 2:20:07Speaker 01

  But I must say here, Nima, if it wasn't for Nima, he was one of the very few there were at that time. This is twenty twenty, twenty twelve. He was one of the eighteen Sherpa people to have learned English. And he was pursuing the international guiding certifications. He was very skilled and ahead. So he climbs like a ninja, like without rope or anything, oxygen. And he had seen what could have happened on the balcony and other places. So he brought extra rope with him, which is abnormal because the ropes are already set up. So when we hit a traffic point, he detoured me through a rope and we basically bypassed the traffic. And that's how I could, and I was fast and I was so surprised, like, how is this happening?

• 2:20:52Speaker 01

  It's the mother, you know, she's the goddess of inexhaustible giving. And then I bawled my eyes out on the summit, just like, and Nima was like trying to, because like your cornea is gonna freeze. Like, just don't cry right now. But it was just overwhelmingly. I don't think I've felt gratitude in that way ever before.

• 2:21:16Rich Roll?

  You were being looked after. And you were being looked after by the great mother. Who was expressing love for you when you needed it most.

• 2:21:31Speaker 01

  And then I did a naughty thing after that.

• 2:21:33Rich Roll?

  What'd you do?

• 2:21:35Speaker 01

  So I was banned from Tibet in two thousand and seven, five years before the climb. And it was because of a book that I was carrying. It was a meditation book called Art of Happiness with a very smiley picture of Dalai Lama. And I got caught.

• 2:21:51Rich Roll?

  That'll do it.

• 2:21:53Speaker 01

  So the officer, he ripped it, looking at me like this. And then he threw the cover like this on my face. And this is, I mean, yeah, it's a Buddhist meditation book, but it's a spiritual scripture for me. So I found it, I mean, he just literally ripped the cover with my teacher on it and threw it. And threw my passport, threw the rest of the book. And the last line he said was, "You can never step into Tibet again." And I was so pissed with that line. So I carried that cover to the summit just as a backup, knowing that the border of Tibet lied over there. And after watching sunrise on top of the world, I was like, Nima, are you ready? Do you feel good?

• 2:22:37Speaker 01

  He's like, I think you're doing very good. Let's go. Because, you know, you have to also remember that summit is only half the way and you still have a mountain to go down. So we rappled down Tibet side.

• 2:22:50Speaker 01

  And I put the cover of Dalai Lama inside Tibet. And I said, I stepped into Tibet again. And then I gave a picture of me holding a picture of him. So there's a picture of Dalai Lama holding a picture of me holding a picture of him inside Tibet.

• 2:23:04Rich Roll?

  That's hilarious. What was his reaction when you told him that story?

• 2:23:07Speaker 01

  He had so much. He was like, wait, what did you do? Like, he was just so shocked. And but then I also took a zoom lens to, I took a three, like 180 panorama in several sections as far as I could. And I also gave him that, like, the view of Tibet from top of the world and just how much the glaciers have gone out. And I don't think I've ever seen Kundun this sad when he was looking at those pictures. Those are in his home, all of those.

• 2:23:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was very sad. But yeah, that was the naughty thing I did. And then we came back.

• 2:23:48Rich Roll?

  Did he ever reflect back to you, like, his thoughts on what you accomplished?

• 2:23:55Speaker 01

  Not yet.

• 2:23:56Rich Roll?

  You know, this idea that he's like, go to the mountains and then you go and you, you, you go to the mountains and then some, and then you go back to him. What does his, what does he say to you about like this, this arc?

• 2:24:09Speaker 01

  He never takes any credit. And he doesn't, like, when, anytime I've gone back and said, remember when you told me da, da, da, da, da, da? And because he counseled so many people. And also, it's a very Tibetan thing, thing to not, you know, just everything, don't, don't take credit. None of my teachers ever want credit. But, uh, so I, I, in my twenties and thirties, I was, I had this karma with authority figures in pretty much every single country. I was getting into trouble with the army, the intelligence, and a lot of this shit show that was happening in China, inside China. So he would, one was concerned that A, this young girl is gonna get into a lot of trouble

• 2:24:53Speaker 01

  and probably get killed. I already got banned and da-da-da, profiled. And so he was always, you know, I was going to him for protection and said like, can you do something, almost like, can you call up the gods to remove this, this, this? So he would, he would be very serious and then wanting to know what happened back in Bangladesh when I would go back. And then somehow, something, oh, it was basically after Everest, every single politician to intelligence, they all became my friend because they had to claim me for their parties, right? And so when I went back and told, told him that he was just going from his home to Sukkhalang, which is the temple, and we met in, in the street, and I was like, oh,

• 2:25:33Speaker 01

  there's, there's no more trouble anymore. Like, I don't know what happened, like, da-da-da-da-da-da. And he looked so disappointed, he made this very disappointed face, he's like, oh. Like, he made a disappointed face and said, I must go back into prayer now to cause you more trouble, huh? Because the whole concept is if there are no obstacles, then you're not gonna learn anything.

• 2:25:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:58Speaker 01

  So what's the point?

• 2:26:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:01Speaker 01

  But I, to answer your question, to go back to your question, I think my memoir would be the good way to let him know and that, because there's so, every chapter has him in some way or other. So I think I gotta finish it soon and give him a copy.

• 2:26:17Rich Roll?

  The clock is ticking. You've been working on it for a while, right?

• 2:26:20Speaker 01

  No, because I know why, because a lot, in my, the first book proposal I got was after Everest, twenty, when I was only twenty-nine. I'm gonna be forty-two this year, and my story hadn't finished at that time. So this one is now finishing at forty, when I leave for K2.

• 2:26:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:37Speaker 01

  And that's where it should, because I hadn't gotten the healing, the mother wounding stuff we talked about, all of that work only happened in twenty-twenty.

• 2:26:47Rich Roll?

  There's so much more I wanna talk to you about, but I'm gonna have to release you back to your life. But I'm not gonna let you go, I think, until we kind of land this. And the way I wanna land it is, is with a little reflection on what you might be able to share about

• 2:27:06Rich Roll?

  The many transformations that you've undergone. Like, somebody can look at your story and be inspired by all the things that you've overcome to achieve all the things that you've achieved. And I want to leave people with some thoughts on how they might reflect on where they are in their life and what's standing in the way of them achieving some aspiration for themselves and how to go about, perhaps manifesting, that dream or that goal.

• 2:27:39Speaker 01

  When I share my stories, I think one of the most important thing for me is to really make people realize that we're all climbing our own mountains regardless of whether we are an A-lister, like we spoke about, or whatever circumstances we're in. We're all suffering and we're all climbing our own mountains. But having a purpose, having honesty and really working at it, there's no mountain high enough for us to climb. If I could do everything that I've done from the background that I came from, anything is possible. It truly is. It's not a cliche line. But we gotta work hard for it, you know?

• 2:28:22Speaker 01

  We really gotta be prepared and train ourselves for it. But there is a way out. And we only get one chance at this game. None of us know when we're gonna exit this planet. The likeness of me dying on a mountain is way less than me dying in the streets of, let's say, Taka City or L.A. City. I don't like civilization and I don't function well in... But just to give that, like, we all come here for a very short time and we must make this a very purposeful time. Don't ruin it. It's like what the Dalai Lama told me in different ways in our first meeting.

• 2:29:01Rich Roll?

  What do you say to the person who says, "I don't know what my purpose is," or, "I don't know how to find purpose," or, "I know my life could be larger or more expansive, but I don't even know where to start?"

• 2:29:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that I think, I mean, that's how I was questioning in my mind when His Holiness gave me the purpose lecture on my first meeting. But I think we all need to go on our own journey in our own ways and really dive deep into understanding what karma is. And I don't mean, again, karma is, even though the word means action, what is the purpose that we came in? But no one else can find it out for you. We all have to find it on our own terms, in our own ways, and that journey will teach you so much, like it did me. You know, I had to find my own purpose. And oftentimes, you know, we go through journeys and it never makes sense, but ultimately in the end, it all makes sense.

• 2:29:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it doesn't make sense when it's happening. Later on, you look back and you're like, oh, yeah, of course. But you don't get to see or have that feeling when you're in it. It's not, it's just sort of rigged that way, isn't it? That was beautiful.

• 2:30:17Speaker 01

  That was so, I don't normally get to talk like this with a lot of people in L.A., so.

• 2:30:23Rich Roll?

  How do you feel? Do you feel like we did it? Do you feel okay?

• 2:30:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we covered them a lot in the short time, but I think we could talk for days.

• 2:30:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think there's more. I think we're gonna have to do a part two at some point. Yeah. In the meantime, I'm gonna, I need to go to this somatic healer.

• 2:30:40Speaker 01

  We can do all our somatic work and come back and have a different episode on the inner work.

• 2:30:49Rich Roll?

  You really inspire me with your example. We didn't even go into all of your activism and the kind of moral compunction and, you know, ethical way that you go about showing up in the world to speak truth to power and to address the causes that are important to you. So I think that would be something we could go into next time as well. I just think it's a, it's beautiful how you do that. It's really powerful. It's inspiring as an example of service.

• 2:31:24Rich Roll?

  And I'm just so glad we had a chance to meet. Thank you for what you do and for coming here today to share.

• 2:31:30Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 2:31:32Rich Roll?

  And you need to get that book done. And you need to get that documentary done, right?

• 2:31:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're working on it now.

• 2:31:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, good. If people want to learn more about you, where's the best place to direct them? To your website, to your Instagram?

• 2:31:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I gotta step up my game on Instagram. That's all my LA people are disappointed. But yeah.

• 2:31:52Rich Roll?

  It's all Maya, right? It's just an illusion.

• 2:31:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. My Instagram is Wasfianazreen. Website is wasfianazreen.com. Either of those. Facebook, same. Wasfianazreen.

• 2:32:07Rich Roll?

  People still go to Facebook?

• 2:32:08Speaker 01

  I have, I have so many people.

• 2:32:11Rich Roll?

  Maybe globally, right?

• 2:32:12Speaker 01

  Huh?

• 2:32:12Rich Roll?

  Globally.

• 2:32:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:14Speaker 01

  No, I mean, all my American, all the Nat Geo people are there. It's a different crowd.

• 2:32:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:20Speaker 01

  But it's, it's a, Instagram is short attention span. Facebook is more like long version.

• 2:32:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cool. Thank you.

• 2:32:31Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:32:31Rich Roll?

  Appreciate you. What is the, what is the word that you use in closing that is, it's not a goodbye, but it's this word?

• 2:32:41Speaker 01

  Oh, it's in Bengali. Ashi?

• 2:32:45Rich Roll?

  Yes, it starts with an A, right? What does that mean?

• 2:32:48Speaker 01

  So in Bengali, we don't, we have this culture of saying, "Ashi", like, "I'll be back" or "coming back shortly." So we never, we don't say goodbye. We say "Ashi".

• 2:32:58Rich Roll?

  All right, so let's end it with "Ashi".

• 2:33:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Thank you so much.

• 2:33:03Rich Roll?

  That was great.

• 2:33:18Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast. Podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors who keep this podcast

• 2:34:02Rich Roll?

  running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com/sponsors. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis. And thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and

• 2:34:45Rich Roll?

  website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants.