Tantrika (15 page)

From a distance we saw colorful Buddhist prayer flags fluttering like bursts of rainbow around a compound. They surrounded a
mandir
to the goddess Kali, known as Kunzum Devi. The son that Buddha left with his princess wife was named Rahul, and it was said the name Lahaul came from Rahul. Locals considered it bad luck for a journey if you didn't pull over, so the driver, a Sikh who didn't bow his head to Kali, also wanted to pay his respects. At a tent colony where the Dalai Lama supposedly stopped to eat, we had picked up a friendly Buddhist couple who said their car had died. The prayer flags flapped with a background of snow-topped peaks and clouds. We ducked under the fluttering flags to enter the
mandir.
White
dupattas
waved at us, tied upon a string. Devotees had stuck coins into the main shrine to the
mandir
in a way I couldn't even figure out.

The Buddhist wife told me, “If your heart is clean, then the coin stays.”

I took a five-rupee coin and tucked it next to the dark Kali statue. It stuck. The wife patted my head approvingly.

Our Star Wars–like experience continued, appropriately since Princess Leia seemed to me the ultimate Tantrika, as we nosed into a town called Kaza. It seemed right off the set of the 1970s movie with its narrow alleys and edgy locals. It was the major transport hub of Lahaul and Spiti, the administrative center of the subdistrict of Spiti. Lucy wanted to use the toilet in a restaurant where we stopped to eat. The waiter didn't know we were eating there and talked rudely to her: “The toilet is only for guests.”

Lucy didn't take the disrespect well. She would rather have starved than eat at the restaurant. She refused to eat, even though we sat down because it seemed to be the only decent place in town.

After seeing so little civilization, we found ourselves staring at acres upon acres of tent colonies that lined a valley below the mountain where our destination monastery of Ki sat, eight miles from Kaza. It was home to the Ki Gompa, a looming monastery built into the side of a mountain, towering above us. Ki Gompa was the largest and oldest
gompa
in the Spiti Valley. It was built by Ringchen Zangpo and belonged to an order of Tibetan Buddhism called Gelukpa. Ladakhis, Dogras, and Sikhs invaded the
gompa
three times in the nineteenth century. Fire damaged it, and an earthquake partially destroyed it in 1975. But it survived as a home to Buddhist monks who lived and studied there.

For the moment, we were just impressed by the candles we found in our tents.

We were tucked into a far corner of the thousands of tents strung beside each other in this expanse of rocky terrain at the foot of the mountain in which the Ki Gompa sat. Our neighbors were mostly Westerners, many of whom, like me, had found the Banjara Camp on the Internet. Our tent was spacious with luscious sleeping bags stretched over cots for our weary bodies. We bathed in a camp bathroom that came with heated water, a luxury. Our tents circled a main dining tent with afternoon chai and regular hot meals. We'd missed the first days of the initiation, but over the next several days we got into the pace of the hikes up a rocky trail to the monastery for the Dalai Lama's teachings. The trek began for
most around 7
A.M
. At the top, we saw a reminder of the twenty-first century: metal detectors through which we had to pass.

Lucy, Esther, and I hunted for places to sit among the thousands assembled in the monastery's rocky backyard, a part of the mountainside. A boy with “Teddy Bear” written on his shirt pointed a toy gun at his mother and shot into the air. Indian police frisked boy monks. The Dalai Lama sat like royalty upon a terrace festooned with golden banners. The truth was that it was difficult to understand the teachings. They were translated into English from Tibetan and broadcast through the radio into headsets we didn't have. Even when a young aspiring Western monk gave me his radio and headset, many of the Dalai Lama's teachings about mandalas and deities went right past me.

The parts I did catch reminded us of what made common sense. Some of us were just too busy or too self-involved or dense to remember the essentials. He told us that enlightenment was a mind full of confidence and clarity. He called it “the middle path.” I closed my eyes. I saw a light radiating within me. Rays shone down upon me. He was talking about three critical elements of the Tantric path: bliss, emptiness, and compassion. Strong compassion, or
bodhichitta,
had to stay with us throughout, along with bliss and emptiness. Bliss meant living with the teachings of Buddha and not the temptations and distractions of samsara, attachment. It had to be melded with compassion so that it wasn't selfish or self-indulgent. There was “conditional bliss” based on the senses and experiences, considered contaminated by attachment, greed, and, often, selfishness. Then, there was “nonconditional bliss,” which was based on emptiness or the imagination. I felt a bliss in the solitude of this moment. My
muladhara
chakra in my bottom pressed firmly against the ground.

Plenty of folks in the camp seemed plenty freaky. An Indian police officer appeared more interested in selling his coffee table photo book on the Spiti Valley and impressing foreigners—“It's
yog,
not
yoga”—
than in doing police work. A Western woman in our camp scolded Esther one night at dinner for her definition of emptiness. “That's
not
how the Buddhists define it,” she said with a huff.

An Italian from the city of Assisi rescued us from the woman. His name was Ram Alexander—quite impossible, of course, that his mother
gave him the name of a Hindu god to go with the reference to the Greek conqueror. In fact, with his tuft of white hair and thick white beard, he was a long-ago disciple of a Hindu woman who became known as a spiritual master in ashrams around India. That's how he got the name Ram. Now he was turning toward Buddhism. He was a virtual encyclopedia on modern-day Tantra, actually believing in
dakinis
as realities, not just the wild fantasies of three oxygen-depleted women journeying through the Himalayan foothills. He even knew of a Tantric Tibetan Buddhist woman, Khandro Rinpoche, who had been accredited as an incarnation of a
dakini,
who had settled not far from Delhi in a place called Clementown and was lecturing in the West. We talked about ritual bathing in a nearby lake he said was frequented by
dakini
spirits.

As we parted, twinkling stars filling the sky, he said to me, “You're either going to be a great sinner or a saint.” It was a bit extreme, but his point didn't escape me. I could go down the dark path in this journey, or I could move toward light.

We found ourselves a new friend in the last days of the teachings.

In my wanderings through the monastery, I met a young monk who seemed to be a cross between the cook and personal valet to another incarnate, a young Rinpoche. First, I met the Rinpoche in his room, quite by accident when I was looking for the wife of the spiritual leader of the monastery. He and his wife seemed the perfect answer to my questions about how to practice spiritual Tantra as a couple. She was sitting with a nephew in the small room where the young Rinpoche was living. The Rinpoche had some chocolate tucked behind him. I tried but failed miserably to communicate my line of inquiry to her. She laughed a lot. Maybe that was my lesson on being a Tantrika. Be happy. Laugh.

This young monk invited me into the small kitchen as I was stepping through the Rinpoche's door to leave. A Polo toiletry kit sat on one shelf. Empty egg cartons on another. I had to share this find with my fellow
dakinis.
Lucy and Esther returned with me to meet him. He had studied in the western Indian state of Karnataka, thousands of miles from here, but he was from a village called Kibber, just seven miles from Ki. Part of the overland salt trade centuries ago, Kibber is considered the highest inhabited village in the world, at thirteen thousand feet, although a nearby
village is a rival to that title. Our monk friend taught me another word:
dukh,
meaning “suffering.” His mother, he told us, died when he was twelve years old. He was so consumed in
dukh
he became a monk, confirming my theory that many of us turn to the spiritual path because we're really sad. That last morning, we didn't see our young monk's face in the sea of maroon robes as we settled into a space beside a tree.

The Dalai Lama guided us through a meditation in which he talked about a mandala that monks had been creating since the start of the initiation, delicately using colored sand to create intricate designs with images of deities and other symbols of Tantric Tibetan Buddhism.

“Imagine now entering the mandala,” the Dalai Lama said. At that moment, heads turned upward for the sweep of a rainbow over the
gompa
and the drift of a cloud through the rainbow.

The Dalai Lama continued. “Enter from the eastern door. Repeat mantra. Circumambulate three times.

“You see the many deities. Imagine yourself as Kalachakra by going to the principal deity. Fold your hands. Then, say the mantra.” I didn't know the mantra. “Imagine giving the deity flowers.” He joked that once when he guided students through a secret mantra, “I saw the curtain open, so I said, ‘One of you should stand up and close the curtain.' All repeated what I said.” He laughed hard at his own joke. In fact, he giggled.

The Dalai Lama invited us to enter the secret mandala created by the monks. Witnessing it would be a step toward liberating ourselves from negative feelings. “Make your life meaningful.” His words echoed my father's guidance to me over the years. “You should develop the wonderful view of
bodhichitta,”
the Dalai Lama told us. “You will be able to help others and fulfill your goals even if you are a nonbeliever. Try to benefit others. Especially try to help others who are weak and suffering.

“You have come to such a remote place, so after receiving this Kalachakra initiation you will have to make the effort to continue the practice of
bodhichitta
and the meditation on emptiness.

“Buddha has said, ‘I have shown you the path to nirvana, and it is up to you to follow it.'” Birds swooned overheard in a blue cloudless sky above the monastery. The hum of the monks filled the air. My mind wandered to the places where I found calm. The West Virginia forest
monastery. The meditation room with Safiyyah. Nurturing Jaz and her babies.

I was sitting with Esther and Lucy on the grassy lawn that had become our home many of these days. Before we knew it, the Dalai Lama was gone. A voice over the loudspeaker told us we could form a line to see the mandala handmade by monks using colored sand. The monks went first. Before we knew it, they shoved and pushed and scrambled up the steps that led to the room with the mandala inside. The scene quickly disintegrated into insanity. Indian police officers in street clothes hit long sticks into the air above the monks' heads. One smiled as he thrashed into the air to wave the monks back.

Tibetans then tumbled forward. The stampede turned into a virtual riot. Mothers tossed wailing babies into the air for the Indian police officers at the base of the stairs to pass to the officers up the stairs. Nothing in the air felt sacred.

I stood on our small lawn of grass and watched the stampede in amazement. A familiar face slipped toward me, Barbara Sansone, a spiritual tour guide from Mill Valley, California, outside San Francisco, whom I had met before departing for Kathmandu at the very start of my journey. She was the first person who spoke the word
Kalachakra
to me. She wasn't enjoying this chaotic scene. She disappeared.

I pulled a large women in Tibetan dress up a stone wall to the safety of the grassy lawn. I looked behind me. A thin old Nepali man with a weathered face was lying on the grass behind me, his head in the lap of a foreign woman who was plaintively throwing her wide eyes into the air searching for help. “Water! Get water! This man is dying!”

No one came forward to help. Everyone seemed more interested in seeing this blessed mandala. I crouched by the man's feet to wait for her instructions. “Rub his feet!” she told me.

I rubbed his feet. I felt him contract his toes in the palms of my hands. I told the woman, as she rubbed water on his forehead, “He responded!”

His eyes were glassy. His face was calm. There was a shine to his skin. He was still. A moment passed. The woman looked over at me. “He is dead.”

We said nothing, but we both felt as if we were poles of female energy guiding the man into death. As I thought about it, I knew my reflections
were something I probably would have mocked a year earlier had I heard someone else expressing them. But this was the first time death had literally slipped through my fingers. The woman's left hand was on the man's silvery head. She extended her right hand toward me. I extended my left hand toward her. My right hand was on his feet. We clasped hands, creating a circuit between the man and us.

I studied the man now. His face was thin and leathered. He had wrapped mala beads around his left wrist next to a watch. He wore bright sweatpants below his trousers. We searched for an ID and found a hidden wad of 500-rupee notes inside a secret pant pocket. He wore a long-sleeved blue sweater with a ski pattern of zigzags and dots across the chest. We slowly eased his arms out of the sweater so a doctor could check his heart rate. We unbuttoned a shirt he wore with a white tank top underneath. The woman introduced herself to me as Isabelle.

I continued looking for ID cards. I found only a red ribbon from the initiation and a nut. Isabelle asked two Buddhist nuns to do a
puja
for the man. They told her they didn't know what to do. We suggested to a Buddhist monk who finally came by, after Isabelle's requests for help, that maybe the man should be taken somewhere calm for his body to lie in rest. The monk returned to tell us that all the rooms in the
gompa
were taken by
Lamaji,
the Dalai Lama. Isabelle and I looked at each other in disbelief.