by Bruce Kirkby
But for me, in the resurrection of first light, the world felt blessed with hope. The air was cleansed, and in the village below, I watched the tiny figures of women gathering dung and children driving sheep. The stillness was only broken by the occasional bark of a dog. And the bellow of yaks. Slowly the great, hidden valley creaked to life.
It was three weeks after our arrival at Karsha Gompa that I witnessed something unexpected—perhaps magical—at sunrise.
When the first shaft of sunlight landed on the valley floor, like a spotlight on a darkened stage, it illuminated the six-hundred-year-old monastery of Pipiting, perched atop a drumlin at the geographic center of Zanskar’s plains. This extraordinary phenomenon—which I concluded could only occur for a few days each year, when the sun’s trajectory was perfectly aligned with a crack in the eastern peaks—offered a physical manifestation of Zanskar’s origin story.
Legend holds that the great valley was formed after Guru Rinpoche subdued a demoness and pinned her on her back, using Buddhist shrines to hold down her head, hands and feet. Finally, Pipiting, the most holy temple of all, was built atop her heart, the symbolic point upon which the universe pivots.II
Defying belief, the spectacle repeated itself at sunset that same day: a final shaft of sunlight piercing ragged spires to the west and lingering, as if by divine ordination, on the crumbling temple of Pipiting.
Moments later, the spotlight faded, and a purple dusk flooded the hidden valley.
* * *
All of the fundamental tasks of living took longer to perform at Karsha Gompa and demanded we pay attention in a way I was not accustomed to at home.
Dishes were washed by hand in the dented pewter basin on the path outside the hobbit door. Squatting on haunches, we scrubbed and scrubbed, but with nothing but cold water and a bar of soap, dishes never came perfectly clean.
Cooking water had to be gathered from the rusty fifty-gallon barrel, using a cracked juice jug. And before that, the barrel had to be filled, using a long, leaky hose attached to the monastery’s cistern.
Living in a tiny room reminded me of living aboard a sailboat: everything had a place and needed to be stowed after each use. A whisk of twigs was used to sweep the carpets, and we crawled around on hands and knees, plucking up bigger flecks by hand.
Dust was a constant enemy. Pulverized beneath the glaciers of the Himalaya, this “rock flour” turned lakes turquoise and rivers brown. It billowed beneath feet on trails and arrived through cracks in the walls and windows, drifting like snow across our room. We were forever wiping books, toys and tables. I often awoke to the feel of grit coating my front teeth. Despite vigorous scrubbing, dust stained our clothes, and they grew steadily darker.
The “toilet” was located in a cramped closet at the end of Lama Wangyal’s earthen passageway, just inside the hobbit door. Squeezing into the room was a challenge, for the ceiling was shoulder high and a tangle of homemade garden implements crowded the walls. A small hole in the dirt floor, roughly the size of a paperback, demanded accuracy. When one of my early attempts grazed an edge, Lama Wangyal grimaced and demonstrated how to rinse the fetid hole with boiling water, and then scatter fresh gravel across the floor.
While my aim improved, one challenge remained: updrafts.
The winds that raked the monastery cliffs often made it feel as if a cold blow-dryer was blowing directly upon my backside. Any crumpled toilet paper tossed into the void would inevitably come sailing straight back up, fluttering around the cramped closet like a poisonous butterfly. Eventually I arrived at a solution: wrap a few pebbles into each wad of toilet paper before pitching it. Et voila, it disappeared.
Every few days Lama Wangyal scattered a handful of straw into the abyss. And once a year, he emptied the chamber beneath, loading the “night soil” into a wicker basket and carrying it to the village fields, where it provided essential fertilizer in place of animal dung, which was burnt as fuel.
A spider’s web of electrical lines was strung across the monastery in 2007, after a diesel generator was installed near the administrative center of Padum. There was even an outlet in Lama Wangyal’s kitchen. But the network was notoriously unreliable, so in place of electrical appliances, we relied on more traditional measures.
When the chai masala ran out, Lama Wangyal demonstrated how to grind cardamom, cloves, cinnamon bark and fennel seed using a mortar and pestle. Christine lifted the heavy stone mortar again and again, until her forearms ached and her face was coated in powder. Bang. Bang. Bang. At home, the task would have been accomplished in seconds, with the flick of a blender switch.
There was a notable absence of intrusive sounds in this life. Apart from chanting, wind, livestock and the occasional boiling of a kettle, we lived in silence: no beeping phones or microwaves, no vacuums, radios, televisions, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, blenders, horns, engines, humidifiers or shavers.
And as the urgency of modern life faded, time stretched out in a reassuring way. There was a serenity to our days, a whisper of a half-remembered paradise.
Christine was happy, as happy as I could remember. At home, during the dark days of postpartum depression, she’d tried all types of healings and interventions. But no matter what she did, modern life seemed to have a way of heaping more stress on. Now, she was laughing frequently and worrying less.
“I feel like I’ve loosened the reins,” she admitted. “I’m usually such a should person. I should do this. I should do that. But I’m trying not to put any expectations on myself. It’s certainly not my typical way. But at the monastery, it just feels right.”
When I remarked that this might just be the most peaceful period I could remember in my life, she reminded me, “We’ve only been here a month.”
* * *
The weather had been cloudless for weeks, and that night I asked Bodi if he wanted to sleep on Lama Wangyal’s roof with me, under the stars. There was a long pause, and given Bodi’s instinctive resistance to any change, I suspected he might refuse.
But he surprised me, suddenly blurting out, “I’d love to.”
Lama Wangyal did not share our enthusiasm.
“No good, Mortub,” he barked when he found us dragging our sleeping bags to the clay roof. Realizing our minds were set, he retrieved a yak-hair blanket from a steel storage trunk and spread it beneath our bags. Then he pointed to the abyss beyond our feet, a precipitous drop of more than fifteen meters off the front of the house. “Carefully, Mortub! Carefully!”
I made Bodi promise that if he needed to go pee during the night, he’d rouse me before getting up. Then we bundled up, pulling on ski hats and puffy jackets, crawling inside thin sleeping bags. After reading Tintin in Tibet by headlamp, we lay back and stared up at the darkening sky. Bats were already pouring from their roost, the air filled with the faint clicks of their echolocation. Somewhere a dog barked.
When the first star appeared, Bodi pointed excitedly. More and more materialized. Soon the Milky Way stretched between the horizons like a glittering splash of lime and ice.
Unable to spot Orion, the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia or any other familiar constellations from home, we used a guidebook to learn new ones. For the first time I saw Sagittarius, Capricornus and Aquarius. Scorpius hovered on the western horizon with a pair of smouldering embers for eyes—the planets Mars and Saturn.
We lay in silence with shoulders touching, and I marvelled at the infinite universe and our own human insignificance. Then a shooting star etched an ephemeral line across the southern sky.
“DAD!” Bodi screamed. “Did you see that?”
The Perseid meteor shower was nearing its August zenith, and soon flaming trajectories criss-crossed the sky. Bodi giggled and squirmed with delight.
I put an arm around Bodi and pulled him closer, but in the process, my sleeping bag caught on a jagged stovepipe. Down feathers billowed into the night like escaping moths. Catching as many as I could, I stuffed them back in and later ran a piece of duct tape over the tear. Then
I cuddled Bodi in a tight spoon. Eventually he fell silent.
I was certain he was asleep, and was drifting off myself, when he whispered, “This is going to be the best night of my entire life.”
I. The monks also ate a communal dinner in the courtyard, but to give Bodi a break from the crowds, we usually cooked our own supper at Lama Wangyal’s house.
II. This Zanskari legend parallels a popular Tibetan myth, in which the demoness Srin Ma, who once ruled the plateau, was subdued by King Songtsen Gampo, and pinned on her back with twelve temples, all built upon her extremities. The thirteenth temple, constructed atop her heart and meant to forever suppress her malevolent impulses: Lhasa’s Jokhang.
9 LOST HORIZONS
If there was a schedule of events at Karsha Gompa, it remained opaque to us. Some mornings the horns sounded at 5:45 A.M. Other days, not until 7:30 A.M. Puja generally lasted an hour, but occasionally the chanting stretched on for three or four.
One chilly morning in early September, we arrived to find the assembly hall deserted. Where was everyone? Our family was milling in the courtyard, confused, when Christine spotted young Purbu from our class sprinting up a distant flight of stone stairs.
“Where is puja?” she yelled. He pointed upward and kept running.
We followed, navigating steep stairways and narrow passages, eventually arriving at a squat temple I’d never noticed before. Adding our sandals to a pile outside the doorway, we pulled aside heavy blankets and slipped in.
Rows of lamas filled the hall, which appeared ancient and cramped, with tiny windows set in thick mud walls. An army of golden statues filled the altar, the most notable a ferocious blue-faced demon wearing a crown of skulls. The six-armed Mahakala was Karsha’s wrathful protective deity, and this chapel, known as Gonkhang, or “protector’s shrine,” was dedicated to him.
We were slipping toward the rear when Lama Wangyal spotted us and leapt to his feet. Shouting over the chanting, he directed our family toward a portal in the wall beside the altar. I felt embarrassed for disturbing the ceremony, but none of the lamas appeared perturbed.
“In, in, in!” Lama Wangyal yelled and motioned impatiently.
Pulling open a wooden trap door, Christine and I got down on hands and knees and crawled through. Bodi and Taj followed. Inside was a small chamber heaped with treasure. Shelves and cabinets housed countless relics: conch shells, silver daggers inlaid with turquoise, a brass stag carrying what appeared to be Christian angels, yak-hair boots, desiccated animal horns, and soda bottles crammed with incense sticks. A pair of skin drums hung from the ceiling, and strings of dried geraniums adorned a photograph of the Dalai Lama. A candle flickered before a small statue of Loepön Dunde, Karsha Gompa’s founder.
Behind a wooden lattice lay a collection of hideous masks with bulbous eyes and bloody fangs. I was about to investigate when I felt a tap on my shoulder. One of the Lost Boys had been silently watching from the doorway, and he now explained the area beyond the lattice was a prison for bad spirits and strictly off limits. The masks only came out during the depths of winter, when the monks performed Karsha Gustor, a mystical 1,300-year-old dance.
Crawling back into the main temple, our family sat cross-legged against the back wall. The chanting was different from what we’d grown accustomed to, song-like in nature, with one melodic voice soaring above the rest.
Resonant throat singing, or overtone chanting, is common in Tibetan Buddhist ceremony, occurring when a singer creates two stable notes while simultaneously letting a third note flutter over top. The extraordinary sound—part diesel engine, part bullfrog—was being created by the fresh-faced but perpetually melancholy Lama Tsering Sundup, who we’d dubbed Broken Angel.
As we listened, Jimba Sonam, the broad-shouldered disciplinarian, began stalking the aisles, pausing before each lama and holding out a hand. Most shook their heads and averted eyes, but a few relented and handed the intimidating man a set of mala beads.
What was happening? Was the monastery in need?
I fingered my own mala beads. While I treasured Lama Wangyal’s gift, this seemed the perfect opportunity to practise the Buddhist ideal of non-attachment. I resolved to donate them and raised my hand, but the disciplinarian had already moved on.
Eventually he spread the rosaries on a table before Lama Mortub, the monastery accountant. A thick wad of cash materialized from Lama Mortub’s robes, and he methodically counted out bills, creating tottering piles atop each set of mala beads. Then the disciplinarian returned the rosaries to their respective owners—along with a Monopoly-like stack of money.
That evening, Lama Wangyal explained that whenever a significant sum of money arrived at the monastery—either through donation or an estate—all the monks, including novices, were entitled to a portion, the size varying according to age, stature and position.I To ensure fair distribution, ten lamas had been selected at random (those who volunteered mala beads) and they were responsible for dividing the monastery’s newly acquired funds to an umbrella group below them.
Thank goodness I hadn’t handed over my mala beads!
As chanting resumed, money was counted and recounted. Lamas shuffled through the aisles, demanding to see what others had received. Intense negotiation ensued. Bills were passed back and forth, some held up to the light and refused for being too dirty or wrinkled. Such monetary focus felt wildly out of place at a religious ceremony, but Bodi and Taj had other thoughts and eyed the passing bills with interest.
“Can we get some rupees too, Dad?” Taj whispered. “I think they are handing them out instead of tsampa.”
As the commotion continued, Lama Sundup, the throat singer, retrieved a book of scripture from its cubbyhole above the altar, delicately placing the volume on a prayer table before the Head Lama. Printed by hand on long sheaves of paper and stored between wooden end plates, the 108 books of Kangyur are believed to be the directly translated words of Buddha. After carefully unwrapping swaths of protective cloth, the Head Lama gingerly divided yellowing sheets into equal batches, which Lama Sundup distributed amongst the lamas.
A traditional Tibetan book of scripture, with loose sheaves held between end plates of wood.
Abruptly, chanting ceased, and in a cacophonous uproar, every lama in the room began reading aloud. All were reading different Sutras, of course, and it seemed yet another example of Tibetan Buddhism’s admirable focus on efficiency: if an entire book must be read aloud, why not split it up and get everyone reading at once?
Taj elbowed me in the ribs.
I glanced at my watch. We’d been sitting cross-legged for an hour, and Christine was ready to leave as well. Not wanting to offend the monks, I decided to see the ceremony through to the end. Christine shook her head and slipped out, taking both boys with her.
After forty-five minutes, the reading slowed. The monks returned their pages to the Head Lama, who methodically rebuilt the book of scripture and returned it to its place in the cubbyholes.
Thank goodness. Puja was finally over. I shoved my tea bowl in a pocket and was trying to stand on sleeping legs when another book was retrieved. I sat back down. Once again the Head Lama cleaved the aging sheets into piles. Reading resumed. An hour later, they started in on a third book. Finally I gave up and limped from the Gonkhang.
Lama Wangyal did not return home until after dark. The monks had read twelve volumes aloud, he told me, looking exhausted.
The celebration marked the beginning of yarne, a three-month retreat during which the monks refrained from leaving the monastery. Established by Buddha, yarne originally took place during monsoon, and was meant to prevent monks from inadvertently stepping on insects while collecting alms. But in recent years, many monasteries, including Karsha Gompa, had begun splitting yarne in half, observing six weeks of retreat during summer, then another six mid-winter.
The wintertime retreat was more difficult, Lama Wangyal explained, for then the monks read all 108 volumes of Kangyur aloud.
* * *
I was standing outside the hobbit door with Taj and Bodi when a horde of novice monks descended, breaking over us like a wave, laughing and leaping, a blur of hands and singsong voices. There was little Nima, rugged Nawang, Skarma, Purbu, RamJam, Jigmet and tiny Norgay in his brown robes and orange cap. The curious boys pushed buttons on my watch and inspected the Tintin book Bodi held. Several hugged my legs, and I squeezed their shoulders in return, wondering what path had led them here to the monastery at such a tender age.
Abruptly, I realized Taj was in tears.
Shorter than the boisterous novices, he had been overwhelmed by the melee. So I hoisted him atop my shoulders, and as I did, the monk boys froze, mouths agape. Apparently, they had never seen a “shoulder ride” before, and as the possibility crystallized in their minds, the pack went berserk. After failing in initial attempts to hoist classmates upon their shoulders, the boys began scrambling atop a stone wall and then leaping onto others from above, like cowboys mounting a rodeo bull in the chute. They charged up and down the rocky trails, classmates on shoulders, squealing with glee and jousting. It was a miracle no one fell in the frenzy.
But even if one had tumbled and skinned a knee, they would have shaken it off and carried on, for the monk boys were practically feral in their toughness, routinely leaping from rooftops two or three times their height, tumbling down rocky slopes and whipping each other with sticks. At one communal lunch, I’d seen Purbu heave a boiled egg toward Nawang. It was meant as a gift, but Nawang didn’t see it coming, and it smashed into his nose with a thud. But the seven-year-old didn’t flinch. Instead he rubbed watering eyes, then peeled the egg and ate it.