I studied Anthropology in the late 1980s and early 1990s and got as Far as UCSC in my studies

However, I was running two businesses and then my wife and I were both trying to get a degree in Anthropology from UCSC but within a few years we broke up and our dreams of becoming research Cultural Anthropologists researching the Tibetan Culture and Tibetan Buddhism ended while we all regrouped and tried to find a way forward for ourselves and our children.

We believed then that Tibetan Culture and also Tibetan Buddhism had a lot to teach the world.

For me, this belief has not changed.

Imagine this, a culture that has survived for thousands of years between 8000 feet and 15,000 feet elevation and believes in compassion rather than wars and killing as a way of life.

I know of no other civilization that can make this statement.

Of course I realize that their remoteness protected them until the invention of the fighter planes and bombers and tanks. Once these were all invented it was only a matter of time before either Russia or China invaded them and took over the place.

But, in some ways Tibet was a real Shangri-La like people write about. I found this to some degree even when I visited Dharamshala, India up in the mountains where the Dalai Lama and thousands of Tibetan Refugees live now when I went there with my family in early 1986.