Devotion, etc. (Part I)

When the monsoon arrives it delivers enough force to reduce an umbrella to a tattered web of cloth and aluminum. The torrential outbursts produce flowing rivers through my favorite Bouda café, Flavors, where I write. Tonight the storm has abated just in time to allow the neighborhood to gather inside a concrete fenced yard. On a building wall people wrestle tack white sheets of plastic. They set up a projector and speakers and presto! Germany vs. Argentina, live from the BBC. Samten and I heckle each other back and forth as I route for Germany and he for Argentina. Almost a month into the trip, language study and the World Cup aside, there is the persistent desire to take in the religious experiences that surround one here, which are varied, vivid, stained with smoke and turmeric paste, and entirely irresistible.
It is possible to differentiate the moments of mundane life in Bouda from the periods of focused devotion, but the lines between the two are hazy and any clear demarcation remains an enigma. It is as likely one will see two housewives bustling round the stupa hashing out the day to day as it is to witness a twenty something Tibetan, his hair slicked with gel, wearing the latest Rolex knockoff with hands palm to palm in prayer, his face etched with devotion.
I have a sort of awkward devotion myself. Enough skepticism in my blood to prevent encompassing humility before any of the myriad sacred edifices. Yesterday after hearing the story of Swayambhu Stupa, which is said to have self arisen from a great lake which filled the Katmandu Valley, a young classmate said, “They don’t really believe that right?”
I looked at him intently and said, “What?! You don’t?” Everybody laughed.

While many of us as members of a post-modern industrial nation smile at such fantastical notions, I find it intriguing and instructive to think about how people order their lives. Somehow the devotion and belief which is directed towards these sacred structures seems more complicated than a matter of simple belief or incredulity. However, in the west we often think in terms of historical realities. If you believe that Jesus walked on water then it means at a certain specified time and place a man named Jesus of Nazareth took a stroll across the Galilee. But here, as in India, time is less static as is the space which occupies the temporal plane. People appear nonchalant about jeweled lakes and magic temples, flying yogis and statues that eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They are a matter of fact to the extent that they order the practice of faith, but their lives and myths are not fixed in stone, though they may be carved in granite. These icons shift and change with the needs of people and their stories are as varied as the sands of the Ganga.

Back to spiritual calisthenics. I have made every attempt thus far to immerse myself in Buddhist devotionalism, this week receiving a protection ceremony from Lama Wangdu. Such ceremonies are something many western seekers as well as Tibetans have performed regularly by the old rolly polly, Tantric Chӧd master. Then, aside from accidentally trespassing through a Hindu sanctum, I have had the opportunity to attend two weekly talks by Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, the abbot of the White Gompa, before he left for Europe and the States.


The temple, where the talks were held, is a rectangular structure with benches running lengthwise where monks sit to perform puja (ritual acts of offering) and meditation. At the head of the temple behind where the Rinpoche sits, three fifteen foot high golden statues are stationed behind panes of glass. The central figure is Shakyamuni Buddha (the historical Buddha Siddhartha Gautama); to his right is Padmasambhava, the Indian Tantrika of the eighth century who Tibetans considered the progenitor of Buddhism in Tibet. Padmasambhava is depicted with piercing eyes a thin curling mustache (which in any other circumstance would appear comical in the extreme), a skull cup filled with offerings, and the katvanga, a long spear holding various symbolic objects. To the left of these two figures sits Yeshe Tsongyal the consort of Padmasambhava. She was a critical force in the development of Tibetan Buddhism. A proselytizer of the Buddhist teachings and seen by Tibetans as the incarnation of the goddess Vajra Yogini. The 19th century prophetic visionary Jigme Lingpa is said to have had a vision of Tsongyal at our very stupa, just down the road from the monastery.

Rinpoche’s talk follows in the next blog…