Patan

The first explosion of the monsoon has come to Bouda. The streets and alleys have been washed and we have running water more regularly. This will be a brief entry, a conduit for showing you pictures from the beautiful city of Patan, the medieval capitol of Gujarat. First, in other news, the first week of class has begun and I have moved in with my Tibetan family, Samten and Choedon. They escaped from Amdo, the eastern most region of Tibet, and were recently married seven months ago here in Nepal. Choedon works at a local shop and is studying English, so we manage broken conversations regularly. Samten works as a Thangka painter who is quite skilled in his trade and clearly brings in most of the family's income. He and I don't converse much due to the language barrier but Choedon acts on occasion as our translator. They are fascinated and enamored of America and my less than convicted attitude, as to our country's innate virtue and magnificence, does not dissuade their enthusiasm. Much of the time we have brief conversations interspersed with the World Cup, which blares from every flat (with a TV) day and night. Finally, as a matter of complete trivia, Crocs are the official apparel of the Tibetan monks. Enlightenment not guaranteed unfortunately!

Our guide through Patan, south of central Katmandu, was a jovial Nepalese artisan, educated in engineering in the states. He led us through the North of Patan beginning with nearly fifty of us in an narrow street adjacent to the bridge over the Bagmati River where we left our tour buses. The temples, he explains were constructed by the artisan guilds that continue their craft to this day. While India and Nepal are full of the gaudy new cement temples so prevalent in India, the old Newari style remains vital by necessity, Nepal being an active earthquake zone. Temples have been leveled and swiftly recreated throughout history due to the continued flourishing of these artisan guilds. Every temple depicts a montage of ages, a large archway of hammered bronze may have been fitted several hundred years prior to the carved wooden struts supporting the temple roof.

First Days

4:30 am is what Matt, the young Brit in the room next to mine, calls monk-o’clock. First are the deep rumbling sounds of chanting voices then slow drum beats begin followed by a crescendo of blaring horns and symbols smashing together. I lucked into staying at one of the nicest joints in Boudha outside the high-end budget traveler’s lodges. Tharlam Guest House is swanky for a monastery, with 24/7 hot water and consistent internet access. The guest house is less than a quarter mile walk to the Boudnath Stupa (left) and just around the corner from the Garden Kitchen. The one place in town with truly reliable meat dishes and a good cup of “filtered coffee” (i.e. not Nescafe).

So far my days consist of walking tours around the Katmandu Valley. Day 1 walked across town to Kopan Monastery. Stopped at a nearby tea stall and talked to some of the locals about politics regarding potential fracturing of Nepal into numerous Nepalese states, there is currently anxiety about a Federalist move to split the country and even more concern that such a divide would occur along ethnic lines. We also discussed America and the great king of Nepal who brought the country to new prosperity two hundred some years ago. Day 2 walked the Gokarna circuit, which runs through the frantic streets around central Bouda to the town of Gokarna and then through the blessedly tranquil hills overlooking the Katmandu valley. The route climaxes along a bamboo lined track below the Kopan and Pulahari Monasteries and finally returns to the little island of Bouda. Gokarna is home to an old Newari style pagoda temple (above) reverencing Lord Shiva’s incarnation as Mahadeva (lit. Great God). I have come to expect that such temples are never as the guidebook portrays. They generally offend the old Anglo sensibility of “preservation as a virtue” and hold rather to the modo, “all things must pass, decay and generally fester.” Despite this, the architecture is stunning and the metalwork simply brilliant. A yogi sits in an alcove by the temple amidst a jumble of offering bowls, ritual substances and objects. By him stands a bronze lock box suggesting donations in Nepalese and English. An adjacent shrine holds the footprint of Lord Vishnu, embedded in some doubtlessly dramatic decent to earth.

Thanks to India most of the false mystique of Asia has been drained from my imagination. Consequently, Nepal comes through more vividly, a rich mixture of intense devotion, mild fatalism, unabashed capitalist tendencies, relentless pre-monsoon heat, and a maze of cultural diversity. Yesterday (Tuesday, June 15^th), I met a group of fellow students who will attend Rangjung Yeshe this summer in Sanskrit, Tibetan, or Buddhist Studies. We walked out to Pashupatinath, a vast Shaivite temple complex on the banks of the Bagmati river (above). Chris, our guidebook, took us along a side route that among other things avoids the 500 rupee entrance fee. Our first stop, a magnificent three foot orange shiva lingam. These protruding rocks are occasionally painted (as in this case) with vivid colors and graphitied with Sanskrit characters. The lingam represents the power and virility of Lord Shiva and is worshiped as the tangible manifestation of the Godhead. In this small section of the complex, isolated from the larger structures that run along the Bagmati, a kind faced priest officiates, walking here and there amongst visiting devotees with a constant gentle smile radiating from his taut, narrow face.

We meander our way down to the main complex past a deer park enclosure, along the centuries old stone steps to the river. Sadhus (Hindu renunciates or spiritual entrepreneurs in some cases) recline against small shrines, “Hello! Photo!” they call out. Sadhu photos generally run 100+ rupees. We pause by the bridge running across to the large, Hindus only, pagoda temple. To the east, burning ghats (below center) stand above the Bagmati. These ghats are the classic disposal method of the Hindus of India and apparently Nepal as well. Large piles of timber are stacked carefully on top of the square stone platform. The body is laid on the timber and a tepee shaped bundle of dry hay is placed over the corpse. At the time of our arrival a cremation was nearly concluding, a pile of smoldering ash all that was left. From the mourner’s balcony an elderly man gazed down fixedly, though too far away to disclose any emotion. Beside the ghat a man with a ten foot long steel pole beat the remaining ash and a young boy enthusiastically bundled water from the green Bagmati and hurled bucket loads across the steaming stone. Just up the banks of the river stands the hospice, alleviating any doubts for its guests of what the future holds.

Malinowski classified societies between two poles, those who seek through funerary rights to preserve the corporeal form and those who desire its annihilation. Psychologically, Malinowski believed we produce elaborate funeral rituals and corresponding belief structures (specifically those of immortality) to counteract our deep seated fear of death and an insatiable desire for life. Despite witnessing just the tail end of the cremation process, the nonchalance and general resignation, the lack of pomp and ceremony seems to suggest more complexity than obliteration, fear and trembling.

Moving on from this bit of tangential self-indulgence. We walked from the ghats up to the supposed caves of the great Buddhist Saints Naropa and his Teacher Tilopa. Monkeys cannonball off the stonework structures along the Bagmati and the stench of the river rises to the nostrils. We’re at the end of the dry season with the monsoon rains just about to set in to wash the ash and filth from the beleaguered river. Two gaudy painted caves surrounded by ragged sadhus signified arrival at the site of holy pilgrimage. By a raught iron gate barring Tilopa’s cave stands a militant looking sadhu, dreadlocks stretched round his shoulders in a dingy brown shirt and camouflage pants. As I take a picture of the brilliant orange cave he stairs at me exuding a emotion halfway between disgust and fascination. I can’t help wonder, would it mean something to him if I asked to take his picture rather than clicking a shot of this misplaced cave. Perhaps the whole dynamic strikes us both with simultaneous revulsion and curiosity. Below us in the Bagmati a half naked renunciate pounds his shirt on a river rock spreading thin white veins of soap into the dark green water.

Non-Dualism in Old Town Harappa

There is a backwoods Buddhist legend about the Sixteenth Gyalwang Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje. On a visit to India he went on a walking tour of the streets of Delhi. His entourage was an eclectic band of monks and disciples. At some point in this expedition the Karmapa asked to borrow a bowl from a monk. Taking the offering bowl in his hand he proceeded to bend down and reach into a storm drain. There he retrieved a healthy portion of fouled water. The Karmapa held this out to his disciples and said, “Whoever would drink from this bowl, drinks the nectar of my enlightenment.”

This morning, at the end of semester, I am sitting at our dining room table with fresh black coffee and a warm homemade apricot pastry. The pastry is flawless, a

delicate butter crust rolled in cane sugar that has perfectly caramelized under a custard topping made from raw vanilla bean. On the very top sits half of a freshly poached apricot. The whole thing looks like a fried egg sunny side up, but as sweet and buttery as baklava with enough tart to entice the palate. This is the world I love to live in, creature comfort surrounded by thoughts and language and occasional rock-climbing. A dualistic world. A world that has clearly defined the sacred and profane. This is not the world the Karmapa pointed at. That is a world I have not clearly known, beyond the point of exoticness, at arms length.

It was our second day in Mandi, an ancient city of the long deceased Harappan Empire in Northern India. Four hours by car south of Dharamsala. We went to the ATM early that morning to get rupees for our taxi to Rewalsar and the return trip up the Kangra Valley to Bir. Down a side street, groups of venders were setting up. Phosphorescent diesel trucks out of the 1940s and 50s had arrived with shipments of produce and were unloading bushels of radishes, onions, potatoes, and peppers. We walked across Indira Gandhi Square to the little alcove with the ubiquitous blue and white sign, glowing with the proclamation ‘State Bank of India.’ Allie, stepped into the small security booth and pulled the thin glass door shut behind her. I waited outside and listened to sounds of rickshaws down the alleys and watched the crowds of young men as they began to form around the square. One nearby cadre kept their eyes keenly on us, analyzing our gestures, posture, trying to divine our patterns of speech. All in the same manner we would watch them but without our mannerly and awkward self-consciousness.

Distracted, my eyes fall on a storm drain a few feet away. Its grate sunk deep into the cracked cement, surrounded by dust, old newspaper, and snack food wrappings, I peered down into the recess. The water was a sickly grey and brown, a cross between wet mud and rotting flesh. Indistinct bulbous chunks protruded from the thick muck, which really could no longer be classified as ‘water.’ I immediately saw the Karmapa, a worn offering bowl in his outstretched hand. “This is amrita!” he exclaimed, “the nectar of my enlightenment. Who will drink it?” My stomach made summersaults. I tried to imagine what it would be to drink this substance below my feet. My mind would have none of it. The interior defense of separation that lives inside all of us, that sets our boundaries, firmly proclaimed, “this is the point you do not go to.” But then that is the point of Tantric Buddhism, to collapse boundaries. Looking through that storm drain I thought, if one had the capacity to disrupt the part of the self that qualifies and distinguishes all the instances of experience into good (an irresistible pastry), bad (septic water), or inconsequential (blogs), what kind of person would that be?