Tantrika

by Asra Nomani

  This was modern-day romance in India, the assertion of choice through kidnappings. There was so little personal liberty here. I wished him well.

  I hit the road again, cold from having given away my Nike jacket. The warmth during the day had felt so wonderful. Now, as day turned to night, I passed rocks and boulders, making a hairpin turn. I rode through a tunnel, so confining and so cool. My bike stalled when I stopped to read directions, and then it fell over. A cow with a full belly and dark eyes came up the hill. It was fall number 4, not that I was counting. The owner of the cow came running out to help me. The cow sniffed a yellow flag and a bush before walking away uninterested.

  On the road to Dharamsala, I rode through Kangra, once the seat of the Chand Dynasty, which ruled over the princely state of Kangra. I went to find the famous temple of Bajreshwari Devi. Muslim visitors of the past had a different mission than me. The temple had so much legendary wealth that just about every Muslim invader took the effort to swing through here. A Turkish invader, Mahmud of Ghazni, supposedly stole a fortune in gold, silver, and jewels in 1009. Another ruler, Firoz Shah Tughlaq, ransacked it in 1360. It rebounded. By the time the Muslim emperor Jehangir’s reign came, the temple was paved in plates of pure silver. Lonely Planet said the temple was in the bazaar at the end of a serpentine series of alleys flanked by stalls hawking prasad.

  I ended up asking directions at a bus stop where an eager young student wanted to practice his English. He told me to forget the Shakti pith. Come see his village’s Shiva temple. Why not? I spent my day with a village baba and the disciples he protected from Tantric spells. He looked younger than his forty-three years, his uncombed hair framing his easy smile. Mortal women weren’t allowed into his inner sanctum, plastered with images of gods and goddesses. He took ash from his havan, a fire pit, put it in the palm of his hand, and had a woman disciple drink the ashen water from his hand. As I headed out for Dharmasala, I followed his instructions and dipped the ring finger of my right hand into the ash and put a teeka on my forehead. He guided me, too, to drink ashen water that he poured into my right hand. It tasted wretched.

  This motorcycle trip through the Shakti piths, ending with this taste of ash as a gesture of hospitality, was important not so much for the places I visited but for the simple fact that I made the journey safely and peacefully. Bandits didn’t rob me on the Grand Trunk Highway. Pandits didn’t drug and rape me in darkened corners of Hindu temples. On the contrary, I, a Muslim, was greeted with hospitality and enthusiasm for the curiosity I expressed about this Hindu culture foreign to me.

  As I nosed my sleek Splendor away from my newest friends, I turned around one last time to wave good-bye to the half-dozen children who had led me through the narrow passageways between their houses to show me their village.

  “Ta-ta!” they yelled at me.

  “Ta-ta!” I yelled back, happy to adopt their colloquialism inherited from British colonialists.

  CHAPTER 16

  Dharamsala

  I RODE PAST SUNSET, again breaking my rule not to ride in the dark. The road through Dharamsala was a cluttered bazaar. I pulled over but didn’t even get off my motorcycle.

  “A sweater, please, bhai sahib,” I said, referring to the sweater walla with a respectful honorific for brother. It was something that I had learned from Dadi. Always try to relate to men as either my brother or father to deflect any connection to me as a sexual being.

  I continued on the road, winding around the mountain, wondering when I might reach this place called McLeod Ganj, up the mountain. Here, too, I didn’t have a plan. I had a few names of both Buddhist representatives of the Dalai Lama and regular Tibetan citizens, but I hadn’t called ahead to let anyone know I was coming. I wanted to leave with some lessons from Tantric Tibetan Buddhism, because it seemed to express itself in the modern day with more of the light of spirituality than the darkness of Hindu Tantra’s black magic, but I was leaving my experiences and lessons to fate.

  When I arrived, I rode past a garbage dump. It wasn’t what I had imagined. I drove through town to the Himachal Pradesh guest house but decided to stay instead across the road at a guest house run by a Tibetan. I had taken a liking to the Dalai Lama. When I had returned to Delhi from Pakistan, I had gone to Buddha Park for a teaching by the Dalai Lama. It was a hot and sunny morning, the Dalai Lama sitting on a dais in front of thousands of disciples. Early in his talk, he spotted an elderly woman in the front, chin dropped to her chest and head slightly askew in a wheelchair. The sun was emerging from behind clouds, and the Dalai Lama gestured for an aide to go to the woman and stand with an umbrella over her to protect her from the sun. This act seemed to be the embodiment of the gentle compassion that we should show each other. When the Dalai Lama finished, he shook the hands of elderly women and monks who lined up to see him off, leaving each one of them laughing and smiling in his path. Later, as I sat for the evening session, I looked for a man whose name I had gotten from Mrs. Amy Wen, a dear family friend in Morgantown and the mother of my childhood friend Pauline. Mrs. Wen’s niece had married a nephew of the Dalai Lama, and the nephew advised me in an e-mail exchange to find his eldest uncle. Somehow, I had ended up sitting beside him, a distinguished-looking man in a jacket. I’d told him about my project.

  He had told me, “Read the sutras. Read The Way of the Bodhisattva.” I’d never heard of it, but I plucked it off the bookshelf at Khan Market and read in iambic pentameter this Tibetan Buddhist classic on how to be compassionate.

  I didn’t know what I’d learn in McLeod Ganj. Would I learn from the Dalai Lama? He was supposed to be in town. It was Halloween when I arrived. I daydreamed about passing out candy in one of the Tibetan schools. I felt as if I was living a masquerade party, pretending to be a great female spiritual seeker. A monkey walked by my veranda at the guest house, delighting me in the surprises of India.

  In my walk through town, I noticed advertisements posted for Tantra teachings by Dudjom Tersar Ngondro, also known as Rigdzin Namkha Gyamtso Rinpoche, to be held on the rooftop of the Tenwang Hotel. He even had a Web address, www.flamingjewel.org. Flaming Jewel. Sounded dicey. He was born in a nomadic highland of Tibet and was supposed to be an incarnate of a hunter of treasures hidden by Padmasambhava and his Tibetan consort, Yeshe Tsogyel. I ventured up to the rooftop and stumbled onto a young man with long sleek black hair and a golden robe sitting on a veranda. I chatted with him, thinking he might be our teacher but not knowing. He asked, “Where are you from?”

  I told him about my travels from America. “And you?” I asked, able to come up with little else in striking conversation.

  “Tibet,” he said, as if I should know.

  I figured it was time to join the class. A young woman with a mane of dark hair made room for me beside her. She picked up the brochure I put on the ground beside me. It had the guru’s photo on it. Turned out it wasn’t a respectful gesture to put a guru’s picture on the ground. She had gone to a cave where Princess Mandarava had supposedly meditated on the road from Delhi. I had stopped there with Lucy and Esther on our ride back to Delhi from the Kalachakra initiation. The daughter of a king, Mandarava refused the many offers of marriage that came her way, wanting instead to meditate and retreat in the forest. One day she met Padmasambhava when the yogi who came into her kingdom. They went into meditation together. The king was angry and had Padmasambhava burned in a fire. The yogi emerged unscathed and withdrew with Princess Mandarava to caves that surround a lake now called Rewalsar Lake. The king of Tibet, King Sron Btsan Sgampo, heard about the wisdom and marvels known to Padmasambhava and called him to Tibet to spread his dharma. He is said to have left for Tibet from Rewalsar. Some consider it the most sacred site of Buddhism in Himachal Pradesh. Legend says that the spirit of Guru Padmasambhava still lives on the islands floating in the lake.

  Esther, Lucy, and I had passed the base of the mountain, where we had once dodged an avalanche and wound our way around the mountain to Rewalsar. The lake was now a collection o
f Pepsi banners and guest houses. We had circled the lake counterclockwise and gotten caught in a rainstorm when we saw a sign that said, “Princess Mandarava’s Cave.” An elderly woman with a shaved head waved us into a small alleyway to a doorway. I entered a small room and then through another doorway stepped into a room with cave walls. The woman was a nun at one of the gompas there, taking care of Princess Mandarava’s cave. Her Hindi wasn’t fluent. My Tibetan, nonexistent. She gestured to all of the photos of various lamas, it seemed to test to see if I knew their names. I knew not a one, though one looked like the incarnate I’d met at Ki from Karnataka. I fumbled an answer and was relieved she seemed pleased. I sat and meditated in Princess Mandarava’s cave and imagined the presence of this spirit of yesteryear.

  Back on our rooftop retreat, I asked the woman next to me, “Do you want to be a dakini?”

  She looked at me. “Who wouldn’t want to be a dakini?”

  The man with whom I’d just had my uncomfortable chitchat stepped forward as our incarnated teacher. I felt like an idiot. We slipped into a lesson. “Visualize on the right your father, on the left, your mother. In front of you is your greatest enemy, worst enemy. The reason we visualize our worst enemy in front of us is that this is a path of patience. Our parents have been inconceivably kind to us. They cannot be objects for patience. They are people who are kind to us. They let us practice. If there is somebody in our life who harms us, and we are angry, then we have lost a great opportunity. Our own worst enemy is considered to be kind to us. Imagine all sentient beings at our side and behind us. We do this to benefit them.”

  I thought of an oppressive man that I loathed. I tried to send him the same affection I felt for my mother and father. It wasn’t easy, but I made the effort.

  A place called the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives was a magnet for the Westerners who come here to study Tantric Tibetan Buddhism because it hosted daily classes taught in English. I sat in a morning session. It was an earnest group of students asking long questions with many independent clauses. I wasn’t sure I could stomach these teachings. But I found my way into the office of the Venerable Achok Rinpoche, director of the Library. He was a robust, bespectacled man, sitting behind a desk in a neat office. I wanted to know more about Padmasambhava, known to many as Guru Rinpoche, and his consort, Princess Mandarava.

  Library Rinpoche was surprised to hear their names.

  “You know about them?”

  I nodded.

  “Guru Rinpoche looked outrageous,” he said. “I would say he was a crazy human being. She must have been a crazy human being, too.”

  I wanted to know if there were any Padmasambhava aspirants among the Buddhist adepts of the modern day, such as Library Rinpoche. At the Kalachakra initiation at the Ki gompa, the Dalai Lama had led us through such an intimate meditation with a consort sitting in a mandala, I wondered, as blasphemous as it may seem to think such things of a monk, if he had a consort. I hedged my curiosity with Library Rinpoche.

  “Would you want a consort?” I asked him.

  “If I have a consort, enjoyment is there, but I might have to live with squabbling, hate, and jealousy. It may not be easy for me, I would say. Padmasambhava, and also Tantric saints, had sexual practice. It didn’t affect his emotions. He was still a free man. I’m afraid I’m scared. I have enough to go through. It is easy to strike me.”

  He had left his family at the age of three. The goal of the practice is a divine state of enlightenment. “I didn’t know if it was attainable.” He remembers his mother and father squabbled. “Relations between people have to be honest.”

  He continued, “Whether you have honesty or not, that question must be answered by yourself. The divine knows exactly how much you’re honest.” He reflected on the emotions that interrupt relationships. “If you can rationalize and concentrate, you can control hate and jealousy. These are the worst traits.”

  Padmasambhava and Princess Mandarava faced great humiliation and harassment from her father. “They just didn’t care. You get most crazy.”

  Would he seek the Tantric path? “I don’t practice Tantra. I have too much attachment to the privileges of my position.”

  It was true. To fully adhere to the Tantric path required a certain nonattachment to samsara, the worldly life that I symbolically left when I drove out of New York, even if it was with a moving van packed with belongings. “At least you are honest,” I said.

  He laughed. “I have a few good virtues.”

  I wondered aloud, “What does it take to learn Tantra?”

  Across his desk, he answered, “You have to be a little crazy. Are you crazy?”

  I nodded. Riding alone from Delhi to Dharamsala on a motorcycle certainly qualified me as a little bit crazy.

  To me, Library Rinpoche was definitely a little crazy. He looked at me with his crooked smile as we talked about searching on the Tantric path. “Maybe you’ll help me?”

  I hoped he wasn’t serious. He answered the question with another crooked smile, perhaps sensing my discomfort with such a proposition, and offered me an assurance he was content on the celibate path. “I’m not really looking.”

  The evening set in. He said, “Will you give a prayer for me?” That was a cue for the door. I said my surah from the Qur’an for protection and blew a phoonk, a breath of protection, in his direction.

  Volleyball was my ultimate release, the play that had taught me so much behind the Lincoln Memorial after my divorce.

  I was so happy to find volleyball on a blacktop court on the campus of the Library. I made a twenty-something friend, Kelsang Tsering, who worked in the Library. He was a classic new generation of Tibetan Buddhist born in India, singing Bollywood songs and practicing his English on Westerners. He joined me on the court, and I played with ten other young Tibetan Buddhist men. I loved the game even if this was the gentlest game of volleyball I’d ever played. The Tibetan boys only hit hard once. And even then they giggled. I went for a pass. I felt a rip in my right knee, followed by an excruciating pain. I hobbled to the side. My knee locked, and I couldn’t put any pressure on it. I remembered something my friend Kent had told me. “Don’t ever let them see you in pain,” he’d said one afternoon when I stumbled as we left a New York Yankees baseball game.

  In retrospect, maybe that was ego talking, an important element of competition, and maybe not appropriate to recreational play in the middle of the Himalayas. If I hadn’t pretended to be so strong, I could have gone straight to the hospital. Instead, I was about to endure a painful dharma lesson. I sat on the side until all the men cleared out after the last game was over. Kelsang invited me over for dinner. His cousin was cooking. We hobbled together through the Library dormitories. I couldn’t even contemplate going up the mountain to my guest house. I decided to take the risk with this stranger and spend the night in his dormitory room. I slept not one moment. Kelsang slept peacefully on the floor below. It reminded me of the nights I had lain awake in emotional anguish while the man I married slept calmly beside me. I tried to awaken my new friend but failed. I tried to meditate through my pain.

  By morning, my knee had swollen into a balloon. I winced from the shooting pain that flew through me. Kelsang got a taxi to take me up the hill to McLeod Ganj. I resorted to my strategy to go into five-star hotels when I needed help. The road was so bumpy I wept from the pain. I limped into the Surya Resorts. Kelsang left me in the lobby to go to work. I crumbled into a chair, weeping from the pain. A Thai woman from a tour group studied me sympathetically and gently handed me Tiger Balm. Another taxi came. The manager told a dark-skinned, scrawny Indian man to accompany me to the hospital, and I went back down the hill again, tears to accompany me on this trip.

  This stranger carried me into the Tibetan Delek Hospital. I knew this hospital. I had come here the day before to visit the doctor whom I had met at the Kalachakra, tending to the boy who had just had a seizure.

  I had asked the doctor, “Do you practice Tantra?”


  He had looked at me from behind his desk. “I don’t practice Tantra,” he said. “I am still not compassionate enough.”

  That was hard to fathom from a man who spent his days healing refugees, monks, and children, but his reflection made me contemplate the extent of personal growth I had to achieve before aiming for such noble pursuits as personal enlightenment and divine love.

  I couldn’t even bite my lip through my own pain.

  As I entered the hospital again, I realized I didn’t even know the name of the man who was helping me. He wrote his name, PAL SINGH, in capital letters on a Surya Resorts business card. He stayed with me, later bringing me an omelette for breakfast. To me, he was a lesson in compassion embodied. He was a stranger with such virtue, refusing any money in return for his kindness.

  The nurses shot me up with the painkiller morphine. The pain drained from my body, and I felt light as a feather. “Now I know emptiness,” I told the young doctor with dark hair over his ears and wire-rimmed glasses. “Is it wrong to cry from the pain?” I asked, my cheeks still wet from my tears.

  He smiled. “Pain is a reminder that you are still in the birth and rebirth cycle.” So much for pretending to be Princess Mandarava.

  They moved me to a ward where I stayed for two nights, befriending the Tibetans who were the other patients. In one corner, three monks cared for an ailing monk. On the second afternoon, a woman with long wheatish-colored hair walked into the room with three men. She saw me, clearly not a Tibetan, and asked, “Why are you here?”

  I told her my story, riding my motorcycle up from Delhi and landing in the hospital after tearing my cartilage playing volleyball. There was a pause. I asked her, “Why are you here?”