by Jaimal Yogis
Anyhow, the very next day Sonam said he was going to make offerings to the hermits again, and I jumped at the chance to come along. The first time we’d made the journey, the hermit we’d been looking for wasn’t in his hut. This time I hoped would be different.
“I bery happy,” Sonam said as we climbed the now-familiar trail. “I tink we Tibet going togeder soon. See family! My family so happy you, make many many momo!”
Usually, this was my cue to shrug and smile. But momos, Tibetan dumplings, are my favorite Tibetan food, and on retreat I’d spent many hours daydreaming of going to Tibet with Sonam. Maybe even writing about the journey.
I asked Sonam if he thought we could sneak into Tibet to see his family. “No, no, no, too danger danger,” he said. “Many monk, dis Tibet going, no coming back. Dis many prison.”
We changed the subject. But the question clearly got Sonam thinking because he soon began telling stories of Tibetans who had bribed their way through security guards to safely return home. It took me a while to understand what he was cooking up, but I soon realized Sonam was saying he wanted to come to America with me where he thought he could get a job in a Tibetan restaurant. From there, he thought he could earn enough money to come back to India and bribe his way into Tibet. I could help him get to the US, he said.
“You bery good, Ja-ma. For you, dis visa no problem.”
I had a sinking feeling, my first inkling of postretreat anxiety. I knew this was a terrible plan. Getting the US visa alone would be next to impossible; getting a job in the US would be equally hard; saving money while living in the US would be even harder; and getting the Chinese visa (legally or illegally) would be nothing short of a miracle. But Sonam was excited in a way I hadn’t yet seen.
“Dis good plan! Dis good plan!” he repeated. “You help me?”
Again, had this been any other time or place, I think I would have reasoned my way through. But today I was thinking that Sonam had just sent his dead teacher to heal my broken heart in a dream. Maybe anything was possible. I put my arm around Sonam.
“Of course,” I said. “This good plan.”
We reached the huts in the afternoon and went straight for one that was made of weathered wood, torn blue plastic tarps, sheet metal, and mud. Sonam knew this hermit well.
“Dis lama mind many many color, bery beautiful.”
We knocked at the metal door, and a tall round-faced lama opened it right away.
“Tashi delek!” the lama said, using the traditional greeting that literally means “auspicious.” Then the lama immediately started laughing.
“How strange,” he said to Sonam in Tibetan. “Today I made lunch for three!”
It seemed as if we were entering a bad episode of Kung Fu: The Legend Continues. (“Ah, I’ve been expecting you.”) But it was true. The lama had made lunch for three: three servings of cabbage and rice.
While we ate, Sonam and the lama spoke in Tibetan, occasionally translating for me. How was the lama’s health? Was he getting enough food? Sonam then told the lama about his plans to go to America. I was almost positive the hermit would warn Sonam away from this complicated scheme.
But the lama began nodding and laughing. He looked a little too pleased.
“What’s he saying?” I asked.
“He say plan bery good,” said Sonam.
I raised my eyebrows and forced a smile.
“Great,” I said.
At the end of the meal, the lama wrapped my hands tightly in his and muttered for what seemed like a few minutes. I thought he might be telling me something important about my path and future, something like: You’re the one we’ve been waiting for. Sonam and you will change the earth forever! Sonam later translated what he said as: “Thank you for helping Sonam. You’re a good person.”
Still, it was a memorable moment. I’d read studies that Tibetan monks, when reflecting on compassion, could produce twenty times the amount of gamma-wave activity that ordinary people could, but experiencing that compassion was very different from seeing it on a graph. While gripping my hands, the lama looked into my eyes as if he was going to cry. I remember my whole body quivering. I remember knowing without the slightest doubt that all the prayers these monks recite every day—“May all beings find peace, and the causes of peace; may all beings find happiness and the causes of happiness”—work to transform their hearts.
6
My mind is like the autumn moon
shining clean and clear in the green pool.
No, that’s not a good comparison.
Tell me, how should I explain?
—Han Shan
Sonam and I walked down the hill, singing the same old songs, and Sonam said: “I so bery happy. We going America. Dis big building, bery clean. Dis many many work. Tibet going—see family. My family saying, ‘Wah wah, Sonam!’ Dis many many hugging hugging. ‘Wah! Wah! Sonam! Sonam!’”
Seeing Sonam beam, I couldn’t help but feel that we’d done right. Yes, this was insane. But my anxiety from the hut was already fading into the forest. And what if the plan really could work? I mean, a high lama had blessed our idea. Maybe I’d actually be flying home with my new best friend. Maybe everything would work perfectly.
Everything did seem kind of perfect for a while. Over the next month, I maintained a supercharged meditation and writing regimen, finished my thesis, and still had time to volunteer at the magazine. The frustration about Sati was gone—well, just about, which was better than I’d dreamed possible at the start of this trip. And, of course, the moment I was feeling that I didn’t need any relationship at all, Sati’s long-awaited email arrived.
“I have some time to come and visit!” she wrote. “Any chance I can catch you before you leave?”
“With Jyanth?” I wrote.
“We broke up,” she replied.
I still wasn’t sure Sati would actually come. Feeling about 73 percent unattached to the outcome, I told her I’d love to see her, and then Sonam and I got down to business on our plan.
Puzzle pieces were falling into place too. Tara, a Human Rights Watch fellow, and Tyler, a Canadian traveler, volunteered to help our cause. Previously, Tyler had been studying international law while teaching break dancing to Bollywood stars. And having a human rights star and a lawyer-to-be—one who could do the robot—made us feel legit.
Every night we performed pujas—ceremonial offerings and chants—which Sonam said would clear away all karmic obstructions to our success. Word spread around McLeod that Sonam was going home with me, and I occasionally saw other monks in town give me the thumbs-up.
I still had nagging doubts. Of course I did. But with Sonam’s ceaseless optimism and Tyler’s and Tara’s brains, each doubt that raised its voice became an unruly child that I sent to time-out.
“Dis every night dreaming America,” Sonam said often.
What could stand in our way?
The day finally came when Sonam and I took our eighty-six-page visa application on the bus to Delhi. Tyler, Tara, and a small parade of monks from Sonam’s monastery accompanied us to the bus stop, and one senior monk even wore an American flag T-shirt.
We waved to them through the windows, hearts full of optimism. But an hour into the bumpy ride—on a road on which there were no guardrails, and many rusted cars lay at the base of massive cliffs—our bus screeched to an uncomfortable halt inches from the edge.
Locals are used to this sort of thing happening. So as we all hobbled off the bus and saw that a tire had nearly fallen off, I seemed to be the only one who thought we’d just evaded death. Nobody, including Sonam, seemed bothered when the bus driver and some local mechanics began removing one bolt from each of the other three remaining tires in order to repair the fourth.
I considered trying to hitchhike back to McLeod to splurge for a taxi. But Sonam said, “Dis OK, Ja-ma, many many happen.”
I wanted to remind Sonam that “many many people die.” But I thought of a Tibetan saying: “If you lose your leg, be gra
teful you still have your head.” I sighed and got back on the bus. If we died, at least I’d die with Sonam.
We made it to Delhi—land of stadium-size slums next to air-conditioned Starbucks—and, just like my last visit, it was about 112 degrees. Delhi still smelled of diesel, laundry detergent, burning trash, and a combination of spices I couldn’t place, which struck me as more nauseating than usual because the sixteen-hour bus ride had left me ill. I was officially edgy and agitated for the first time since the retreat. I then added frustration to this as I realized my seemingly bulletproof retreat love was just another passing state. And as the icing on the cake, when we arrived at our shanty motel, I reached into my backpack pocket and found my passport had been stolen from my backpack while we’d been napping on the bus.
“Noooooo!” I whined, wilting in the hot lobby. “Come on!”
I hated Delhi. I really hated Delhi.
“Ja-ma,” Sonam said, “dis passport easy replace. US embassy already going.”
“You’re right,” I said. I closed my eyes, said a few silent motherfuckers, smiled through gritted teeth, and then tried to switch back to pleasant mantras.
I kept these going at the motel for a little while, sort of proud of myself for a decent mental recovery. But I still had to make a police report to get my new passport. And when I crossed town—this time without Sonam, who also needed to run errands—to report the theft, a gang of police officers smoking cigarettes outside the station tried to sell me cocaine.
“Come, come, American!” they guffawed. “Cocaine, cocaine. Good cocaine. You like cocaine, boss?”
Having visions of entrapment schemes, I decided to report my passport lost. And walking past a slum on my way back to the motel—throat dry, drenched in sweat—I gave a few rupees to some homeless kids and began to wonder if Delhi might be a whirlpool portal to hell. In a split second, the city could suck you under to the lowest level of the inferno. Suddenly you’d be in an Indian prison for buying cocaine you hadn’t ever seen, and you would do anything, anything to get out.
No, no, I told myself. Get it together, Yogis. It’s the heat. It’s just the heat.
I got back to the motel and suggested Sonam and I have rava dosas for dinner, a favorite dish that was impossible to find in McLeod. Sonam agreed. And after an evening meditation, the temperature had dropped to a tolerable ninety-two. Walking through a beautiful historical quarter, sampling dosas and drinking sweet lassi, convinced me that Delhi was not a whirlpool to hell. I was back.
We slept soundly, doing one final puja before bed. But when we finally arrived at the embassy the next day and the line to get our application review was six hours long and full of people who had been previously rejected even though they had more legitimate reasons than us—one young woman had been accepted to Yale—I was beginning to wonder, again, if I should have warned Sonam against all of this. Had I been an irresponsible friend? Had meditation made me go nuts?
No, not again. We’d come so far. And we believed! We’d chanted!
So when we finally got to the window, whispering mantras, and the American embassy worker glanced at our huge packet of official papers with official stamps from the Dalai Lama’s own office, he gave the packet one more official stamp without even looking at our faces: REJECTED.
The next twenty-four hours are blurry. I think I blocked them out. Sonam said he wanted some time alone at the motel. All I remember is wandering zombielike between air-conditioned shops, haggling for a few last gifts for my family, avoiding the lepers and beggars, wishing we’d never come.
I also remember we went to a terrible restaurant that night, and Sonam, for the first time since I’d known him, ate meat. It seemed that after all those pujas, the rejection had shaken his faith.
“Today I bery sad,” he said. “I sorry, Ja-ma. Bery sorry. Dis plan no good.”
That night, I felt angry. Angry at the cruel universe. Angry at myself. Angry at the Buddhas and God. Spinning prayer wheels and visualizing bodhisattvas was lovely in the Himalayas. But down here, compassion suffocated in the dust and heat and open sewage. Maybe you were better off never coming down the mountain at all. Maybe you were better off escaping as far as possible from refugees, from poverty, from corruption, from disease. The world was rotting and nothing could be done. We went to bed silently, without our normal chants. I dreamt restless dreams of war.
The next day, Sonam was up early doing his ceremony before the sun rose. When I heard him, I rolled over and had that feeling of not knowing which city I was waking up in. When I remembered, I realized I needed to get out of this whole country—now, maybe today. I couldn’t handle another sixteen-hour bus ride, another shower with a coffee can, another hole-in-the-ground toilet. I wanted fast internet. Saturday Night Live. Toilet paper.
I expected Sonam to still be downtrodden too, but he looked as if he’d regrown himself in a fresh vat of stem cells. He took a break from his prayers.
“Ah, Ja-ma, many many sleep. Dis good resting.”
“How are you, Sonam?” I asked sluggishly. (For months in McLeod, I hadn’t touched coffee, but I suddenly needed one like I needed air.)
“Ah, dis morning, I bery happy!”
Oh no, here we go again, I thought. Anything but the happiness train. Couldn’t we just wallow? Couldn’t we be victims of a cruel universe for the morning?
“Dis visa no problem,” Sonam said as if the month of failed work was just a dash of salt he left out of a cake “I tink later, you me Tibet going. Dis time no good.”
I rolled over in bed and curled up into the fetal position. I saw that I was clinging to my wallowing and spent about ten minutes criticizing myself for doing that, which heated the wallowing to a nice boil—right where I wanted it.
Part of me wanted to stand up and shout: Nobody is going home, Sonam! Nobody is reuniting! Do you know how big fucking China is? Tibet is not going to be free!
But I didn’t.
I resolved not to say anything until I’d had caffeine. Sonam and I walked through the hundred-degree morning and had that sweet coffee and milk at a street café the size of a closet, and Sonam managed to make me smile as he played tag with the slum children who were selling malas and packets of chewing gum.
I still felt bad. But my mood improved with the third coffee—downing them like tequila shots seemed appropriate—and during our rickshaw ride to the bus station, when Sonam said, “Ready, Ja-ma, ‘Country Roads,’ one, two, tree,” I faintly, then louder, began to sing into the dust.
Life is old there, older than the trees.
Younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze.
Country Roads . . .
My last week in McLeod, Sati and her friend Kavita arrived to go trekking with Sonam, Tyler (the break-dancing law student), and me. It had been nearly six months since I’d seen Sati, and her almond eyes were still flecked with sparks of jade. Her lemon-wedge smile was still alluring. She was as smart, funny, sarcastic as ever. Still solving all problems of the world. There was chemistry between us, and I kept expecting to fall madly in love again.
But after all this time engaging with the Sati in my head, it struck me now that the Sati I’d been pining after was not this one in front of me. The Sati I’d been trying to love and failing, the Sati I’d been chasing, the Sati who had haunted my dreams, was an idea, a hologram I’d believed could fill the fissures in my heart.
Sati was an exquisite woman. But even with all her compassion and wit, Sati could not glue me back together. We were two ripples on the sea that had drifted together and crossed through each other. Exchanged molecules and skin and ideas. In a way we’d always be together. But the winds had sent us in different directions now. Wholeness was the sea around and inside, pushing forward. Buoying us up.
Inside an ugly motel with red woolen blankets, Sati and I cried and talked about this into the wee hours of the morning. We agreed that we still loved each other. We always would. But we also agreed it was time to be friends, for now anyway,
while life was crazy and undecided, which would likely be always.
The next day, Kavita, Sonam, Tyler, Sati, and I hopped a bus to higher mountains. Sonam wanted to wear his sandals on the whole trek, but Tyler convinced him into an old pair of Nikes. None of us had real mountain gear. So, looking like some troop of ill-prepared ravers, we hiked over glaciers and through ancient villages, past hermits’ caves, telling jokes, building fires, and eating channa masala from a can.
Sati and Kavita both struck up quick friendships with Sonam. And Kavita asked us on the trail, “Is he always this happy?”
“Yes,” Tyler and I said in unison.
“Almost spooky, isn’t it?” Tyler added.
One evening, we were all sitting around the campfire. Sati and Sonam were comparing Tibetan and Indian curry. Looking at their faces glowing orange in the light of the embers, I thought how grateful I was that Sati had left me. In breaking my heart—as I’d broken hers—she’d forced me up the mountain, a place I may never have come had I not been broken.
If that hadn’t happened, I would have never met Sonam, who had widened my narrow path. In his quest to find family while finding himself, he had shown me how to live fully and that it’s OK to be human. It’s OK to desire and love and strive so long as you accept that you will fail and wilt and crash too. Even if you succeed, you fail. We all fail. We all die. Even the most wealthy, successful, gorgeous people cannot avoid leaving it all behind. But Sonam gave me a certain comfort even with death. Each moment, after all, is a loss, a transition, a change, a dying.
The following week, when I got on another fragile Himalayan bus to Delhi, this time to fly to San Francisco, it seemed both surreal and appropriate that Sonam and Sati were there to say good-bye. I kissed Sati, trying to enjoy it as our last, and embraced Sonam. He gave me a handmade silver ring with the Sanskrit symbol “om” on it.