Bhutanese Tales of the Yeti

by Kunzang Choden

  He began to cut the tree trunks into sections of about three arm spans each and then he began the delicate and tedious task of actually splitting the logs into planks. First he drew a line across the center of the log, halving it and then quartering it. Each log would give four planks which would have to be evened out and then finally planed. Tikchung chopped along the line he had drawn in the center and then carefully brought his ax down along the marked line with a few easy swings of his razor-sharp ax. With each swing the ax would embed itself deep into the soft wood. He could not pull out his ax. He took the wooden pieces which had been made to be used as wedges. He hammered them into the logs with the heavy wooden hammer he had made. With every wedge that was hammered in, the crack in the log would open wider and he could finally pull his ax out. Then he would swing his ax until the wooden wedges that held the crack apart were loosened and he could pull them out. This procedure continued until the plank separated from the log. Where there were no knotty fibers it was easy and he worked quickly. The last log was full of knotty fibers and once he had hammered in six wooden wedges and yet the crack still would not widen. Sweating and tired he decided to break for lunch. He left the wedges in the log, collected his leather pouch and chili paste and went near a stream and ate his lunch. He slowly chewed pieces of the well-kneaded choydam, relishing the familiar, refreshingly clean-tasting dough that was lightly intoxicating. His arms ached and his back hurt so he decided that a few winks in the sun would revive him for the tough job ahead. He lay on the mossy bank of the stream and fell asleep immediately.

  Tikchung woke up, yawned and stretched; he felt much better. He washed his face in the stream and drank deeply of the cool water. The silence in the forest overwhelmed him and he began to whistle as he walked back to his work site. Suddenly he stopped in his tracks and his whistling went off tune. “Ya Lama,” was all he could say, again and again. He blinked and then actually rubbed his eyes. He was sure that the alcohol in his choydam had been too strong! There it was, an enormous creature standing on its hind legs and bending towards the logs he had been working just before he stopped for lunch. It had obviously heard him coming and was in a state of panic. But what was it doing with his log? It looked up at him. It had the strangest face; it was a lot like the big monkeys he had seen in Kurtoi and yet it had such a strong resemblance to the human face. Tikchung suddenly realized how close he had come to this strange creature and backed a few paces and then impulsively he began to run away. He heard a whistle-like call and turned back and looked at the creature. The creature was moving its gigantic feet but it was unable to move away from the log. Tikchung stopped and looked more closely. Now he saw what had happened; the creature was trapped. It had put its paws into the crack in the log and pulled out the wooden wedges. The split in the log had snapped back and its hands were trapped. “What is this creature and what should I do?” Tikchung weighed his options carefully. “What if I help to release its hands, it may kill me. Perhaps it is best that I leave it like this and go home.”

  Tikchung took one more look at the pathetic face that was held up to him almost imploringly and he was overcome with pity for the wild creature who had meddled with human work. It would just take a few moments and a few wooden wedges to release the hideous paws and then what? While Tikchung was torn in uncertainty the creature struggled furiously, trying to pull its hands out of the log. Tikchung was shocked beyond words to see that the creature was actually lifting the three-meter long and ninety-centimeter diameter wet wood with its enormous strength. Wafts of a most horrible stink filled the air as Tikchung drew closer to the creature after he had decided to release it.

  Tikchung approached the creature with great trepidation and his mind was riddled with fresh doubts. A few paces away from the creature he stopped and then he thought deeply. Finally he reasoned, “This creature must be a migoi and in all my fiftysix years I have never heard of anyone being killed by a migoi. People say a lhaende, perhaps it will disappear just now.” He approached it and the creature tried to move away but could not. It was grunting softly, in a strange way. Tikchung fixed his eyes on the creature and edged closer and closer until he could reach the log. Under the heat of the afternoon’s sun, he had stripped off the upper portion of his gho and was naked from the waist up. He could almost feel the hair of the creature touching his own body. Carefully he took his ax and sunk it into the wood again and again. Each time the ax bit into the wood the creature’s body jolted while its face cringed with shock and fear. Finally the plank fell away from the rest of the log and the creature’s paws, or were they hands? were freed. It quickly made a few clumsy strides away from Tikchung, stopped, shook its hands as if to restore the circulation and then stood very still looking at him. Tikchung too stood very still staring at the creature.

  Man and creature stood face to face, immersed in their own thoughts and then their eyes met and locked for one flashing second and their bodies relaxed, they both knew that the other was harmless. The creature suddenly turned and walked away towards the thick of the forests, slowly, without even glancing back once at Tikchung who stayed fixed to the ground and his eyes glued to the creature as it disappeared into the distance. He felt neither fear nor excitement even after such a momentous encounter.

  Tikchung began to chip off the uneven parts in the planks. As he did the smears of the migoi’s blood in the wood were chipped away and were soon lost in the pile of wood chips and shavings. At sun down Tikchung collected his tools and a huge bundle of firewood and headed home. As he passed the village water spout at the prayer mill some of the same women were there washing off the day’s mud and grime, from working in the fields and filling their water barrels for their evening cooking.They immediately picked on him, “Did you get very lonely and frightened in the forest, all by yourself?”

  “Since none of you women agreed to come with me I had to be content with a migoi for a companion,” Tikchung said as he passed the women. He could hear the laughing even as he entered his house at the other end of the village.

  The Ultimate Divine Test

  He climbed higher and higher into the thick forest.

  Buddhist practitioners believe that most of the terrifying situations and appearances are but creations of the mind; apparitions of ones’s own ego and ignorance. In order to overcome one’s ego and ignorance it is necessary to understand and control one’s mind. Ever since this philosophy was first expounded, hundreds of years ago, the quest to understand and control one’s mind has been an ongoing endeavor for many Buddhist practitioners. These practitioners search out places far from all human settlements, where the terrain has fearsome and terrifying (tsubchen, gigda chen) characteristics that will enhance the fears of the mind. It is also believed that occasionally certain spirits (nydag, shidag) guardians of a particular area will test the powers of the hermits by presenting frightening experiences. These experiences seem to occur somewhere between the thresholds of the natural and the supernatural worlds, impinging on the two worlds simultaneously. Only after subjecting the internal and the external fears will one be capable of practicing true meditation, discovering the ultimate truth, the nature of the mind. A young celibate monk, Gaylong Dorji was determined to discover the truth for himself. He sat in his meditation hut day after day, in deep contemplation; detached, tranquil and aloof from the rest of the world.

  It had not been easy for this young monk to get away from the trials and tribulations of the material world; to sever his physical attachments to his family and home. Just as he was ready to undertake his losum chusom (three years of solitary meditation in retreat), his mother died after a short but intense illness. He was not only the oldest son but also his age was the only one compatible with his mother’s age and he was assigned by the astrologer handle and to carry her corpse to the cremation ground. Thus, polluted, he could not begin his meditation until after the next solstice. Just a few weeks before the solstice his father became ill and he could not leave him with all the young children, his
brothers and sisters. Although these delays caused him much annoyance he viewed them philosophically, “These are but obstacles (ken) on my path to religion, which I have earned through my karma.”

  A year had passed since he had first thought of doing his meditation and still he was fully caught up with the mundane matters of the lay world, seeing off the dead, caring for the ill and looking after the young children. Finally after a year and a few months he was ready. He packed his few books and some food provisions and began to climb the mountainous terrain. There were no footpaths, for humans rarely went so deep or high up in the mountains. There were some animal tracks, but whether they were made by yaks or the wild animals he could not tell and he did care to know, all he desired was to be in the wilderness far away from all human distractions. He climbed higher and higher into the thick forest, but he was not journeying aimlessly, without a destination, he wanted to go to a certain meditation cave of a master he revered. He searched for the cave, looking for the landmarks as detailed in the book. He found the sheer cliff near the three tall hemlock trees, he could recognize the boulder that resembled the shape of a deer’s head but the cave was nowhere in sight. Perhaps the cave had filled up with earth and vegetation had grown on it; after all, it was many years ago that the master had used the cave. Gaylong Dorji was convinced that this was the place he was seeking and he was simply glad to have found the place even though he could not find the special cave. Not far from here would be the meditation house (tsamkhang) which the hermits had used over the years. Having reached thus far, there was no need to hurry now. He laid down his luggage. He took out a container of ritual libation he had carried with him and reciting by heart the words of the liturgy for offering (serchem), he sprinkled some of the liquid into the air and called upon the Buddhas, the lamas and the guardian deities of the area and placed himself under their protection and guidance for as long as he was there.

  The one-room wooden house was small but almost luxurious for a hermit. It had been constructed with wooden beams and planks joined together. It was sturdy and warm. It had been built on a small flat piece of land on top of a cliff. The western wall of the house was just a few centimeters away from the edge of the sheer precipice of the rock. The whole area was surrounded by larch and hemlock trees which were festooned with long strands of moss, which swayed ominously with the slightest movement in the air. Although the tall trees that grew thickly together made the place dark and damp, sunlight reached the house from all sides in radiant sprays of light that gave the place a dream-like character. Looking down from the cliff he could see the mist traveling up the mountain sides in all sorts of formations. They moved up towards him, sometimes slowly, the shapes changing several times before they dissipated and at other times they rushed up with a furious speed, as if sucked up by a certain powerful energy. He watched these energetic almost phantasmogoric movements with fascination and a certain morbid interest as he thought, “This place indeed has much potential for tsub and gigda (fearsome and terrifying characteristics). This is surely the best place for a hermit to test his power.”

  He laid out all his ritual objects on the make-shift altar, lit a butter lamp and filled the seven bowls with water and rice and arranged them in a row in front of the altar. He sat cross-legged, erect yet relaxed, on the uneven planks of the floor. He focused his eyes directly on the floor, following the line of his nose. His meditation had begun. He would sit in contemplation for three years and three months. He only stopped to make himself some tea once a day and do his ablutions when the need arose.

  Days merged into months, and months grew into years. Gaylong Dorji’s clean-shaven head was now covered with shoulder-length hair, his cheekbones protruded sharply above his sunken cheeks and eyes sparkled with a fierce intensity from his pale face. He was tranquil but alert; in such a state of alertness everything takes on a lucid clarity. It was his third winter in the wilderness; it was snowing heavily, a bitterly cold wind howled as it whipped against his house, a snow storm was ranging. Above the noise of the wind he heard a sharp and shrill call which sounded more like a whistle. It was unmistakably a whistle but it seemed to be imbued with a certain wildness. The sound he heard seemed to blend in with the sounds of nature’s fury, and yet he could hear it repeatedly as it drew closer and closer. He experienced neither fear nor anxiety and he continued to sit in curious anticipation. He felt the presence of somebody around the house. He could actually hear the crunching footsteps as they crushed the fresh snow. Whatever it was, it went around the house several times before it went away.

  The storm continued into the early hours of the morning. Gaylong Dorji went out of his house with the first light of day as usual for his ablutions. Even in the wilderness, this painfully modest man needed the privacy of the half-light of early morning. Snow had piled high all around his house and the trees were bent low, weighed down with the thick layers of snow on them. He noticed that there was a distinct track that had been trodden on and leveled out all around his house. He guessed that the crunching footsteps he had heard during the night must have caused it. Suddenly, infused with the enthusiasm and excitement of a young boy, he began to trace the strange footsteps. He laid his own feet in the huge footprints which he guessed were those of a migoi and he began to follow them. In the early morning light a strange scene was played put; the pale, thin and austere man with hair flowing down his shoulders literally skipped and jumped to follow the tracks of the migoi. His feet only filled half of the footprint, for they were gigantic. The footprints went all around his house. The guardian spirits of the area were probably testing him. He had heard from the other hermits that the spirits often appeared in the form of fierce growling tigers and stubborn prowling bears who refused to move away. But he had never heard of a migoi repeatedly circling the hermitage!

  Perhaps the spirits realized that this monk was not to be scared off easily so they had grander plans for him. A few days later an earthquake occurred. He heard the rumbling and crashing sounds as if the entire hillsides were breaking loose, the trees seemed to crash and then he recognized the whistle, a sharp shrill one, exactly the same whistle people had warned him about . . . the migoi’s call. All at once he felt his hut being pushed towards the precipice. He felt himself being tossed about in the hut. He could actually make out the heavy breathing and the occasional grunt of a creature as it pushed and heaved against his hut. Unperturbed, but perhaps slightly amused, he called upon his tsawai lama (first teacher) and said “Look what they are doing to me. I take refuge in you. Guide me.” Then he sat in determined meditation, oblivious of the destruction of the world around him.

  As dawn broke, Gaylong Dorji took his break. He was rather surprised to see that everything was intact. The hillsides that had crashed and rumbled were tranquil and pristine as before and the trees stood tall and undisturbed. The only evidence of last night’s destruction was his own hut which had been pushed towards the west and leaned precariously over the precipice. The unmistakable footprints of the migoi were all around the house.

  Undaunted, Gaylong Dorji continued his meditation in the tilted house. Not only had he overcome all forms of fear but he realized too that there are no limits to the kinds of tests that the spirits present to human beings. He wondered whether the migoi, a lhaende, appearing to him was the ultimate divine test.

  Part 3

  Kurtoi

  Kurtoi

  To the east of Bumthang lies the region of Kurtoi. Strictly speaking, only the northern parts of today’s Lhunsti district should be known as Kurtoi or upper Kuru. But we use the name in a very broad sense, Kurtoi for us means the entire Lhunsti district. We also refer to Kurtoi as thasa (warm areas) or simply shar which means east. The Kuru Chu or Kuru river, after which the region is probably named, is the only other river in the country, besides the Manas, that rises north of the great Himalayas. It originates on the north-western slopes of the 7,455 meter high Kula Khangri. The river, after it enters Bhutan through a narrow cleft between high and
rugged pine-clad mountains, runs deep and rapid, making a dramatic descent of about 1,500 meters over an interval of 64 kilometers!

  Kurtoi enjoys the special status of being the original home of the present royal family of Bhutan. It is also known to be the home of the most celebrated weavers who developed the technique of weaving the prestigious kushuthara, an elaborate and intricately brocaded fabric for the women’s dress. For the people of Tang, in Bumthang, Kurtoi used to be the place we turned to for all the crops and vegetables we could not grow under our cool temperate conditions. Some of the areas in Kurtoi enjoy such favorable environmental conditions that they are considered to be blessed. They can grow all the nine basic crops, the dru na gu, which includes rice, millet, mustard and some pulses besides the five original grains, barley, wheat, peas, buckwheat which are said to have been gifted by the Buddha Avalokitesvara (Chenrizi) to the first people.

  Following the ancient practice of tho tsui or search for rice (tho: rice, tsui: search), the people of Tang would go to Kurtoi every winter to get their rice by gleaning, bartering and even begging. They took with them all sorts of produce from Bumthang; dried peaches, pears, turnip leaves, dried cheese, river algae and specially the fermented and aged yak cheese, zhoydey, excellent for flavoring all sorts of foods. They brought back rice, chili and some pulses. Both ways they had to carry everything on their backs and travel for three to four days and cross the 4,100 meter Rodong La. The recent introduction of motorable roads and the easy access to markets has made the practice of tho tsui an aspect of history.

  My family would also go to Kurtoi most winters. We had our own paddy fields there so we did not go for tho tsui, we went simply to be in the warm climate. I will never forget one of my childhood trips to Kurtoi because that was the time when my excitement and curiosity about the migoi was roused to such a height that I almost sensed its presence!