The Lotusland

Stars Over Key Gompa

Key Gompa seems far away now from the noisy and crowded alleys of Old Manali, crammed with what seems like millions of young Israelis with dreadlocks and dijereedoos slung over their muscular shoulders, screaming through the streets on Royal Enfields with their smoking bronzed girlfriends. I've tried at least 16 different interpretations of falafel since we arrived last week, many of them faithful representations. The late Sixtees are big among my young tribesmen: in small dope den-like cafes, Janis Joplin and Pink Floyd blare from speakers obscured the thick haze of pot smoke. For the most part, we've been enjoying watching the world go round and round from our second floor veranda in our guesthouse situated in the middle of an apple orchard. There's a great bookstore in town which we've been plundering practically every other day. "No Full Stops In India", "Journey To Ladakh", "Words of My Perfect Teacher", "The Life of Milarepa" - these are some of the titles we've been gnawing on. In the afternoons, we've gotten in the habit of walking through the large deodar forest which separates New from Old Manali. When the wind blows through the stately evergreens, they bend and sway langurously like sea anemones far below the surface, their pliable branches mingling easily with their unconcerned neighbors.

Some of you have wondered about what we're doing for food these days. With the exception of our time here in Manali, food has just been a functional part of life. We used to get excited about it, but then after so many disappointments and unexpected aftermaths, we've come to regard with a degree of equanimity. Of course there is one exception to this rule, and that is chana samosa. Chana Samosa was introduced to us in Sangla by a lean and limber guitar-toting Israeli heart-throb named Tomer who possessed all kinds of useful information about how not to get fleeced in India. However we will always remember him with the deepest gratitude for graciously initiating us into Chanasamosanana [pronounced chah-na-sa-moh-sa-nya-na] - Knowledge of Chana Samosa. For never more than fifteen rupees and often for as few as ten, you get two crispy fresh samosas squashed on a plate, doused in chana (chickpea) curry, plum sauce, yogurt, spicy mint chutney, onions and parsley. Of course, this is the ideal, but it doesn't usually stray far from it. For a while I was eating it like I used to eat burritos in my early twenties while living in the Mission: three times a day. Now that other options abound (like falafel) we've both cut back. But once we leave Little Tel Aviv (ie Manali), for my part, I intend to return to post-Tomer, pre-falafel regime.

What I really wanted to talk about was our visit to the medieval fortress-like gompa of Key, which, at an altitude of 14,000 ft, is perched on a giant conical sandstone eruption beneath a vertigious palisade. We arrived just in time for lunch, after a two hour jeep ride that involved squeezing 14 people (one on the roof) and dropping a mightily aged lama off on woefully barren stretch of road so that he could walk up to his solitary cave in the cliffs above. We were enthusiastically welcomed by our host Tenzin Namgyal (right), a young monk charged with looking after all the visitors. And he took care of us with such refinement and grace that I don't think it at all exaggerated to say that he brought the hospitality art to new and daring levels. He understood the notion of just the right amount of attention - not to little to make us feel neglected, not so much that we felt ourselves to be an imposition.

After lunch, he took me around on an introductory tour. The smoky kitchen was perhaps the most amazing room of all: its high ceiling supported by large wooden columns; the walls and ceiling completely blackened with soot; massive, what must have been hundred gallon vats over wood burning fires, bubbling with chai and Thanthuk - a thick Tibetan noodle stew - which would be ladelled out generously from buckets like the one you seen in the photo of Tenzin.

The 26 year-old Tenzin was doing his duty with genuine gusto and to good effect - but nevertheless he was hankering to continue developing his meditation practice which he will renew at the end of the summer when the traffic of guests died down. When I mentioned that Juliann and I were ourselves enthusiastic practioners, he looked like he might start hopping up and down with joy, and insisted that we return to spend the winter in his room - all the three of us. I must have looked at him a little dubiously because he reassured me with the classic Indian expression, "No problem," which can mean anything from no problem to unsolvable problem. I imagined how we would sit on cushions by a toasty stove, meditating quietly between chai breaks, and watching the snow fall silently in the evenings. Awakened from my daydream, he took my hand and led me out to the main courtyard to show me the view. So we walked around the courtyard holding hands like childhood friends, stopping to talk to this lama or that lama, and appreciating the expansive views of the Spiti Valley.

What precious days we spent at Key! Where time is marked by the beating of drums, ringing bells, the clash of cymbals, and the warm guttural chanting of red-robed monks! Where in the mornings we drank hot chai and ate bowls of tsampa soaked in butter tea! Where in the afternoons we watched the vast shadows engulf whole barren valleys in a moment only to be deluged again by the sun. At night, after our bowls of Thanthuk, we sang Leonard Cohen songs (Juliann [aka the human jukebox] and little me) on the lofty temple roof looking out on the valley floor thousands of feet below, welcoming the stars which, little by little, grew brighter until they blazed with a kind of holy intensity. The opening line of the Buddha's Fire Sermon drifted into my mind "the whole world is on fire," and I reflected how indeed it is true:  Even even in the midst of such happiness, time burns on, experience burns on, conditions rise and fall away like ashes in the wind, until what is becomes what was and what remains is the futile attempt to recreate it by writing about it.

The Donkey's Lament

If you look very closely you'll be able to spot the flock of a hundred odd sheep, goats, and yaks.   The photo was taken just outside of a little village in the Pin Valley called Mudh.   On our way out to the pastures, we watched the billy goats chew their cud in that slow, deliberate, and at times almost menacing way so characteristic of billy goats.

On our way back to our guest house , we came upon a small family sitting by a stream in one of their fields making chai over an open fire.   They invited us to sit down which we did, but only after the three customary refusals.   The tastiness of the chai and the warm and unobtrusive hospitality of our hosts caused us to forget (almost) the fact that the stream from which the water was being drawn was full of goat shit.   We learned that the young woman in the group was a nun who was helping her family with the fields before returning to the nunnery across the gully.

After Juliann had finished her second cup, we paid our respects and departed.   A little ways on, we stopped to watch a lone donkey  standing absolutely still in the middle of the local cricket field.   Then, as if suddenly beseiged by some invisible demon, the donkey erupted into a fearsomely spasmodic braying, braying which seemed at that moment a direct expression of the most heart wrenching and inconsolable despair.   I have been moved by the dukkha of donkeys before - especially the mangy, plastic bag eating varieties that I observed on a beach near Santa Marta, Colombia.  But there was something different here, something approaching a kind of cosmic lamentation.   We could do nothing but watch the convulsing donkey, now galloping furiously towards no visible landmark,  disappear into the distance.

Chai in Tabo

Tabo is a small, lower Spiti Valley village which is home to a thousand year old monastery which, on the outside,  resembles some of the desert housing of Tatooine.   Inside the main temple is another story - exquisitely rendered  worlds of buddhas , guardian demons, White, Red and Green Taras, dakinis, devas, levitating Bodhisattvas and not a little yab-yum.   Outside, we sat under the shaded portico of one of the smaller temples, waiting for the key-holding lama to come by and let us in.   As we sat there we were soon joined by a couple of local women with their good humored smiles which spread out when they weren't exclaiming in high pitched sing songy voices or intently mumbling Om Mani Padme Hum ("The Jewel in the Lotus").   A few minutes later we found ourselves nestled into a crowd of grandmothers, mothers, and a couple of babies.   According to our experience in Spiti, whenever a crowd of more than fifteen people gathers, someone invariably shows up with a huge kettle of chai and begins distributing it liberally.  So no key-bearing lama.  Instead we sipped chai to the warbling lull of thirty grandmas absorbed in their endless repetitions, "The Jewel in the Lotus. The Jewel in the Lotus. The Jewel in the Lotus..."

The Heart of the Confusion

I was rereading the introduction to Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism and I just couldn't resist passing on just a few more of Trungpa's sage words, as upsetting and disappointing as they can sometimes appear.

"The heart of the confusion is that man has a sense of self that appears to him to be continuous and solid.  When a thought or emotion or event occurs, there is a sense of someone being conscious of what is happening. You sense that you are reading these words.  This sense of self is actually a transitory, discontinuous event, which in our confusion seems to be quite solid and continuous.  Since we take our confused view as being real,  we struggle to maintain and enhance this solid self.  We try to feed it pleasures and shield it from pain.  Experience continually threatens to reveal our transitoriness to us, so we continually struggle to cover up any possibility of discovering our real condition.  "But," we might ask, "if our real condition is an awakened state, why are we so busy trying to avoid becoming aware of it?" It is because we have become so absorbed in our confused view of the world, that we consider it real, the only possible world.  This struggle to maintain the sense of a solid, continuous self is the action of ego."

                                                                                                               - Chogyam Trungpa

The Samsaric Umbrella

We met Anand Baba (Father Bliss) while sipping chai in a little stall in Gangotri  while I was practicing my Hindi.  Gangotri is the last town on the way to the glacial mouth of the Ganga known as Gaumukh or the Cow's Mouth.  Built quite spectacularly over a series of polished granite waterfalls, it is one of the four cardinal pilgrimage sites for many Hindus, who believe it is the abode of Shiva, the god of destruction.

Anyway, after complementing me on my language skills,  Anand skillfully steered the conversation Englishwards which is how I came to learn a little bit about him.  Originally from Nagaland, he had left his parents and siblings as a teenager in pursuit of The Truth.   Judging from his wonderful smile and palpable serenity,  he seemed to have found no small measure of happiness, though he made no claims to sainthood.    I asked him how he got to Gangotri and he said he walked from Rishikesh, which is more than 250 kilometers away and 3000 meters down.   Equipped with two blankets, his orange cotton robes, a pair of plastic flip flops and his trademark stainless steel sadhu pail, he walked until he was tired whereupon he would lie down for a nap.   When food is offered he eats.  When there's no food, he enjoys the view.   I expressed my admiration for his ultra-minimalism.   He modestly mentioned that many of his friends do the pilgrimage barefoot.

While he was talking, I was thinking about how I might successfully persuade Juliann to give up one of the ten books that we (meaning Juliann) had managed to accumulate during our own sojourn in Rishikesh.  The time I had tried to suggest that it wouldn't hurt us to lose the multi-vitamins and the backup bottle of  Eucalyptus  Moisture Mist  (12  ounces!)  didn't go down so well at all - only after I had performed 10 Tibetan-style full prostrations did she agree to rescind her threat to buy a second bottle (A GLASS BOTTLE for crying out loud!) of almond oil to brace ourselves against the dessicating winds of Gaumukh.    I realized that to regain any moral high ground I'd have to give up the violin I picked up in Dehra Dun, which would be absurd.

Gangotri   is a small place so we found ourselves running into Anand Baba frequently.   As a sadhu (wandering renunciant)  he relies on the kindness of strangers to live.  There are many beggars, criminals on the run, and other shady types who dress up as holy men for a living and so naturally we were wary of being taken in.   But there was something really special about Anand, something about his unobtrusive and helpful happiness that made him so lovable.   One day while I was having a shave in a tiny little barber stall which was in the process of being repainted baby blue, Anand wandered by and immediately set about tucking in my billowing shawl to prevent me from getting wet pain on it.   He never asked for anything and seemed satisfied with what people offered him.

So we wanted to take care of him, if only in little ways.   Also I must confess that I had seen a couple of these elderly sannyasin couples (he with his gnarled fingers gripping his walking stick resting on his shoulder with a bundle tied to the end;   she, also in orange, walking behind toting the trident and aluminum pail), thinking that, on the off chance that Juliann and I should decide to go all out at some point down the line,  it couldn't hurt to plant some karmically fertile seeds of generosity to go towards retirement.  So every now and then we'd offered him a few rupees which he occasionally would refuse and often, when he would accept, he would share the small donations with his shaggy and toothless brethren.

We ran into him one final time on our way to the bus stand after having spent ten days in an ashram on the far side of the river.    This time he refused to accept our parting largess. Somewhat sheepishly he suggested that he really could really  use an umbrella.   Is an umbrella too much to asked for?  I didn't think so either so we were looking at the options. There was the 80 rupee model ($2) or the deluxe 120 rupee one.  At first I showed him the standard which he examined with a somewhat anxious look which I misinterpreted as miserly disdain for our admittedly meager offering.  So feeling somewhat guilty, I gave him the deluxe model to examine, and was surprised to find his discomfort increase.    And suddenly it dawned on my why. While we were busy examining the umbrella walla's wares,  an unruly crowd of fifty hairy orange-clad faux-babas had formed, each noisily making his bid for our patronage.  We quickly said our goodbyes and fought our way out of the undignified crowd that was quickly devolving into a melee.   Looking behind me, I caught the now fragile-looking Anand, who,  wearing a forlorn smile,  waved to us with his new umbrella.