Thamel

Over a chain linked fence on one of the many winding streets a sign reads, “Thamel: To / Homely / Atmosphere / and More / Enjoyable / Living. This is district of Katmandu known for everything tourist, backpackers, arms dealers, drug addicts and prostitutes, and some of best cuisine and nightlife Katmandu has to offer. The past weekend a dozen or more students met at a quite guesthouse restaurant called Café Mitra where we ate and drank in an open air garden complete with lotus pond, creeper vines and carved statuary. Eventually we made our way to the New Orleans Jazz club where Americans and Europeans were interspersed with Nepalese, Sherpas, and Tibetans watching a wayward hippy couple sing “We Shall Overcome” in cracked voices with guitar and harmonica accompaniment. The man, a thirty something struck me as strung too tight for this place. He emanated a tense enthusiasm as he encouraged the noncommittal crowd to chorus to “We will rock you.” Walter and I happily obliged in the fullest, most red blooded American hollering we could manage.

Just before midnight we moved down the street to another night club as taxies filled the streets in a midnight traffic jam and Thamel began to empty. Curfews are loosely enforced and armed police stand at every intersection directing the flood of cabs for the exodus. At the middle of an intersection a large officer, a hefty billy club in his right hand, puts a firm hand against a pale faced and gaunt European directing him off into more suitable corners of the city. All around us the formality and expected modesty of Nepal is lost in a sea of miniskirts, stiletto heels, and low cut blouses. The youth of Nepal fall against each other and in side streets and alleys old men escort stumbling and incoherent young girls through antique wooden doorways into narrow halls and dark rooms. And all around there is raucous laughter, Christmas lights, and blaring horns. Inside the Dragon’s Eye night club people cluster, dancing round a large Buddha head that stands at the front of a long empty wading pool. Cheap electric lights flash and outdated house music throbs at a decibel high enough to drown out any superfluous conversation.

There is a sort of beauty in the madness, the unrelenting rush of emotion and the complete absence that breaks from every pore, attended by smoke and alcohol. On the dance floor Padampa whirls round, his head wrapped haphazardly by a white bandana. Padampa is an unusual young man, probably twenty two with an indistinct accent, partly Russian partly English. Most days he is dressed in monks robes with a cleanly shaved head and endearing smile. His very presence exudes an infectious charisma. The rumor mill has spun a story, perpetuated either by Padampa himself or others, that he is the incarnation of the great Maha-Siddha of India, Padampa Sangye, progenitor of the Chod or Kusali practice (I will explain this further in a forthcoming blog). Now, in the heart of Thamel, sans robes, Padampa is thrown here and there amongst a mass of sweat and breath as though propelled by some hellish and beautiful wind. Part of me thinks this is freedom and wants to become part of it, to abandon myself and give away all control to the incessant heartbeat of everything that swims inside this haze. But this sort of abandonment is not freedom, it is a drug of choice, a temporary suspension of self. And besides that, I’m not much of a dancer.

Many Buddhist practitioners and seekers end up in Thamel and later justify recklessness or random choices as the purification of karma or transcendence of duality. For the most part this is of course complete bullshit. We arrive at such places through impulse or a lack of judgment the only practice involved is to see how we negotiate the pitfalls of every second step we take. As Chokyi Nyima observed, “Westerners love Vajrayana and tantra.” We have this insatiable desire, myself included, to experience the unusual and often perverse worlds of the great Indian Maha-Siddhas like Padampa Sangye or Virupa. The latter a mad saint who captured a loose ray of the sun and kept it from setting for days till the king paid his bar tab. Maybe we want magic and enlightenment and the enjoyment of every passion without question and without discipline or maybe we just want a quick ticket out of samsara. The magic of Thamel is that is shoves the impermanence and tedious balance of life right up in your face. As we leave Thamel the streets are nearly deserted except for a pack of Nepalese police on bicycles. In Bouda I walk the empty and silent circle round the stupa with Aksel, Walter, and Asha, the unsleeping eyes of the Buddha staring out into darkness. Loosing oneself in Tamal is nothing and those of us who come out maintained have accomplished only a little more.

Feast of the Black Mother

By the time you reach the steps to Dakshinkali with their green canopy that stretches down to the ravine below, the sound of clanging bells fills the air. The ravine is verdant. At its base are the convoluted remnants of what will be a river again soon, if the monsoon persists. The lower reaches of the stream is filled with refuse and thousands of Himalayan crows dig their hooked beaks through the debris. Aksel and I join the crowds crossing a concrete bridge to the temple proper. Young Nepalis snap photos along the guard rail. To our left is a slaughter house where the headless carcasses of goats and chickens are cleaned, skinned and plucked. Under a tall oak a Shaivite sadhu with orange bands of string is blessing a family and tying the strings round their necks and arms to seal the blessing of the mother goddess Kali Ma. The goddess herself sits inside a small open air temple, a small deity of black stone no more than eighteen inches tall. All around her the floor is streaked red with blood and bells reverberate in our heads, a dizzying cacophony. Everywhere the air is filled with the iron sent of death.


The day before, Aksel and I arrived in Parping. A hill town with fewer tourists than monks and monasteries. We immediately set out for the hilltop overlooking the valley. Up top we hung prayer flags and wandered the random pathways that run through the green forests above Parping proper. Besides piles of trash and strew paper prayer cards, we discovered a funky old Shiva shrine with a rusted trident, diminutive lingam, and a rasping bell. On our decent in search of a self manifesting image of the Goddess Tara we had the good fortune to encounter one of the caves of Guru Rinpoche. It was late afternoon and no one was about, a seeming rarity for sites like this. The cave is a narrow dark space glowing with the light and heat of butter lamps and humming with the sound of buried wasps. In the furthest recess, carved in the smoke black rock is a fearsome likeness of Guru Rinpoche, holding a skull cup and flanked by guardian deities. The cave has the ability to tear the breath from your lungs and reverberates with a tremendous presence I have not experienced here in Nepal or perhaps at any other place I have visited. The little room of the Guru inspires a sense of awe which combines the affect of standing alone before the stain glass windows of Saint Chapelle and watching the Atlantic thunder before an approaching hurricane.

Such an experience could only lead to heavy drinking. That evening we sat in an open air bar downing liters of Carlsberg in front of a full size confederate flag tacked to the wall that gave endless entertainment. Meandering the blacked out streets Aksel offered prostrations in total earnest before the only illuminated object in town, a golden statue of Padmasambhava. The statue stands fifteen feet high above its throne, towering above the main street with a Hello Kitty offering plate sitting at its feet. Despite the rumors of the violent alcohol induced fits of Nepalese men we only met one person as drunk as us. He was thrilled to meet us.
"You American!?" he shouted clasping our hands.
"Yes!"
"America is great!"
"Yeah!"


The next morning came far too quickly and after another jaunt to the cave we slogged the monsoon soaked corn fields to the stairs of Dakshinkali. Saturday is the big day for sacrifice, the objective being to make the river junction below the temple run red with blood. We were only witness to the death of one goat that was pacing the inner enclosure round the altar as we arrived. A narrow pathway runs round the inner sanctum where the goddess sits and rows of bells are hung across from a sign that reads, “Watch Out for Pick-Pockets.” Next to the bells is a low wall covered in butter lamps, the customary offering for Buddhists. Aksel and I wedged ourselves into the throng beside these lamps where we had a clear view. He began saying prayers for the goat. I just watched.
In short order the officiates of the event began rounding the goat towards the gate directly across from the alter and flicked scented water on its head. Meanwhile two young Tibetan girls lit butter lamps and a monk tapped their heads with a traditional Tibetan text and chanted mantras. This was presumably for the sake of the goats soul since the worst death a being can have is one filled with fear and suffering. Buddhists believe that a traumatic transition into the next life leads to grim conditions for future rebirths. For this reason Buddhists will often ransom livestock at such temples to ensure their reprieve. Our particular goat was not so lucky.

As the girls light their lamps, one man takes the goat by the head another clutches its hoofs and pulls its body taught. The man with the blade then unceremoniously cuts the head clear off. The body is then lade on the stone floor to bleed and shake spasmodically as blood is collected and pored across the alter of the goddess, appeasing her thirst. The goats head is set upright and burnt offerings placed on its crown. Then business returns to usual. Mops are brought and the pools of blood are channeled into drains that run out to the river. An elderly woman walks up t the goddess and wipes her clean. The goat's carcass is taken to the adjacent butcher and presumably the meat returned to the family who made the offering. So the goddess is fed and the family as well and I can reflect on the merits of vegetarianism.

Devotion, etc. (Part II)

The White Gompa is where Rangjung Yeshe Institute for Language and Buddhist studies is located and the following is interpreted from a talk Chokyi Nyima gave there on June 26^th. I decided to post the highlights of this talk as a matter of potential interest for those of you curious about or affiliated with the Buddhist community.

The talk referenced the work of Atisha (982-1054), a legendary philosopher of Northern India who traveled across Asia and wrote numerous treatises on Buddhist practice. Atisha was the abbot of Vikramashila Monastic College and is considered significantly responsible for initiating the Buddhist revival of Tibet in the eleventh century. Atisha wrote eight points on the fundamentals of the Buddha’s teaching and the following is a brief explanation of those points as taught by Chokyi Nyima.

A Buddhist, by Rinpoche's definition, is a person who first, contemplates unceasingly the impermanence of all relative existence and the inevitability of death. Secondly he or she, “Continually looks at their own mind with the desire to become more giving, calm, loving, compassionate, and wise. That is a practitioner.” Atisha/Nyima summarizes the fundamental points to be considered by such a practitioner as follows:

1) The pinnacle of learning is the realization of selflessness. This is a foundational Buddhist teaching, the absence of any inherent self-existence to any and all phenomena, from the smallest atom to the most complicated multi-cellular organism. Sentient beings are said to traverse the realms of samsara (perpetual birth, decay, and death) eternally, due to a basic ignorance of this reality. Consequently all are bound to an un-satisfactory state of being, characterized by the afflictive emotions anger, craving, and ignorance. These mask the enlightened nature. Seeing through these afflictions and realizing the selflessness of all arisen things is what Atisha calls the pinnacle of learning.

2) The Buddha taught that one should be disciplined in matters of action, speech, and thought. Yet the highest form of discipline is the taming of the mind. Shantideva compares the nature of mind to an enraged elephant that careens here and there, completely beyond control. Taming of the mind then is likened to tethering the elephant, bringing it under control so that one speaks and acts with cognizance.

3) There are three personal qualities. First, the intrinsic qualities or the “trainings of the past.” These are individual, natural gifts that are said to be resultant from positive developments from past lives. The second is “training,” which includes intensive studies and beneficial habits developed over the course of one’s current existence. The third quality is “training in meditation” that also applies to one’s present life but is specific to spiritual developments. However, above and beyond all these qualities, the most prized is the genuine desire to benefit all living beings. This pertains to the Bodhisattva vow in which one vows to place the welfare of all other sentient beings before one’s own.

4) “The body is the retreat hut and the mind is the retreatant.” Practice is not so much a matter of where one is but how one engages the mind. As such, the supreme oral instruction is one that always directs one to looking inward, toward uncovering the true reality of mind.

5) The Buddha’s teachings are often referred to as medicine. Atisha therefore speaks of the ultimate remedy, which, echoing his first point states: Nothing whatever has any inherent existence. Such realization is believed to be a cure for the kleshas, “disruptive emotions.”

6) The supreme form of conduct for Atisha is to act in discord with worldly beings. Buddhism characterizes humans as bound by the eight worldly dharmas: desire for praise, gain, renown, and pleasure; desire to avoid blame, loss, disrepute, and pain. As such Buddhist practitioners should remain aloof to such concerns, should pay attention without distraction, and should not be lazy or careless. In excellent, slightly broken English, Chokyi Nyigma described television, entertainment, and alcohol as forms of distraction. Speaking of alcohol, “People don’t care about taste,” he said, “people want drunk!” He laughed, “I not understand.”

7) The supreme siddhi, “power,” is the lessening of negative emotions. There are many magical powers spoken of in Hindu and Buddhist Tantra, such as the ability to levitate, cover immense distances in seconds, manifest physical objects and otherwise control the natural world. It is my person view that Buddhism developed such concepts as a response to popular trends in religion and in order to survive as a religious institution. There is still a self consciousness of this in the fact that the supreme siddhi has nothing to do with magic but is control of one’s own consciousness, a remarkable feat in and of itself.

8) Atisha’s eighth and final point is that the highest sign of accomplishment the dissolution of desire. This again refers to the eight worldly dharmas but is intended to encompass all experience up to and including the desire for higher states of meditative concentration. The sign of accomplishment as a practitioner is effectively to have genuinely renounced all desires. As to what that looks at I will judiciously (or more accurately due to personal ignorance) refrain from comment.

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…

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.