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?