Blue Sky Kingdom

by Bruce Kirkby

  I felt a surge of resentment.

  While part of me wished we could have enjoyed the ceremony in peace, I knew our family held no special claim over the monastery. No, what really irked me was the insensitive use of cameras.

  Photography raises many dilemmas for the modern traveller. If I yank out a camera, will I make my subject uncomfortable? If I wait, will I miss something? Do I really need a photograph of this? Or would it be better to just sit and observe? Will the presence of my lens alter events or separate me from the experience?

  Of course, everyone answers such questions differently but, until recently—at least in my estimation—unsettling photographic situations seemed isolated. But the recent advent of social media seems to have changed all that, creating an urgency to document every detail of a journey. Images often appear to hold more currency than the experience itself, and this hunger is inciting increasingly disrespectful behavior.

  No one in the tour group would have approached an elderly stranger on the street at home—much less in a cathedral—and pushed a camera to their face without first asking permission. So why did it feel okay here?

  Perhaps I was being unnecessarily ornery? Lama Sundup was already laughing again, and none of the other lamas appeared perturbed. Who was I to judge? Even if I wasn’t taking photographs, I was still etching these moments into memory—wasn’t that just another form of memento I would take home?

  A crescendo of drumbeats shattered such brooding thoughts. The yellow-hatted lamas leapt to their feet and swept down the aisles, picking up and carrying away everyone else, like flotsam.

  The dung-chen is an enormous brass horn common in Tibetan Buddhist ceremony, which produces a deep, resonant wailing, often likened to the singing of elephants.

  Outside, Ta’han hoisted a banner high overhead and led a procession toward the rocky slopes. The Nepalis followed, each cradling a tsampa statue in their arms. Lama Sundup came next, hoisting a skin drum. Norphal played a gyaling, an ancient oboe-like instrument encrusted with coral and turquoise. Changchup blew into the dung-chen, an immense brass horn that produced haunting moans.

  Beyond the assembly hall, everyone gathered around the Head Lama, who blessed the tsampa statues one final time. Then they were heaved down the mountainside, smashing to bits on the rocks below—a reminder of the impermanence of all things. Choughs quickly swooped in for a free meal.

  Hours later, our family was playing tag with the novice boys when Lama Wangyal appeared and once again dragged us all to the assembly hall. Just a handful of senior lamas remained, along with the young German photographer, who sat beside us on a carpet. Tea was served. Chanting resumed.

  I couldn’t help but notice the young German man wore a Gore-Tex jacket and pricey altimeter watch, and as he prepared to leave, I leaned close and reminded him there was a donation box by the door. Perhaps it was unwarranted.

  “Fuck off,” he hissed. “I’ve already donated.”

  Later, as the ceremony wound down, the monastery accountant held aloft a handful of crumpled bills from the donation box that day. It totalled 120 rupees (two US dollars).

  Lama Wangyal later told me the puja—paid for by the family of the sick farmer—cost fifty-four thousand rupees (920 US dollars).

  * * *

  Bodi and I set out to climb a ridge rising above the nunnery. The surrounding slopes were dotted with wild rose, and when I mentioned the brilliant red hips contained a fantastic amount of vitamin C, Bodi paused to inspect the shiny fruit.

  “You can eat these?” he asked incredulously.

  “Sure. Wanna try?”

  “Yes! I’d love to.”

  Harvesting rosehips has always seemed like a waste of time to me, hardly worth the effort required to garner a few nibbles, but Bodi’s enthusiasm warmed me, and I plucked a few ripe fruits, cracking them between my fingers, carefully scraping away the seeds that lined the skin. Decades ago, someone warned me the inner fuzz could induce a fearsome cough, but I can’t confirm the rumor, for I’ve never experimented. Now I handed Bodi a tidbit of flesh, no larger than a grain of rice, which he popped into his mouth.

  “Oh, I love these,” he said, rapturously, and began stuffing his pockets. “A snack for later.”

  Then he skipped away up the path as butterflies tumbled on the wind overhead, their gossamer wings the color of the summer sky. We were nearing the nunnery when Ani Garkyid’s voice rang out, “Jullay, Norbu! Jullay, Mortub!”

  She was weeding a vegetable garden, and beseeched us to pause for tea. I was about to decline, concerned Bodi might melt down—visiting the nunnery wasn’t in our plans—but he happily agreed, “Oh, yes please.”

  We sat together in the shade of a willow, sipping milky tea and nibbling from a bowl heaped with apricots, almonds and raw sugar crystals. A toothless elder joined us, and Bodi held the bowl of snacks toward her, but she pointed to her barren gums.

  Later, when we’d skipped out of earshot, Bodi said, “Maybe that’s why they are called nuns? Because they got none teeth.”

  I grew fonder of these warm women with every encounter, impressed by their resourcefulness and enthusiasm, which they maintained despite enjoying just a fraction of the prestige—and patronage—accorded to their male counterparts.

  Himalayan Buddhism has a dismal record with gender equity that stretches back to the time of Buddha himself, who reluctantly admitted that women could attain enlightenment, but declared after, “a nun that has been ordained a hundred years must bow down to a monk ordained for only a day.”

  The nuns’ motivations appeared unquestionably pure to me—they had devoted their lives to Buddhism for reasons of faith alone—but in the complex economy of merit that drives Himalayan village life, a lama is regarded as infinitely more virtuous than a nun. As a result, monks are paid handsomely to perform pujas while nuns must labor in village fields just to meet their basic needs, rising in the darkness to perform morning puja, and only praying again after sunset.

  As a result, many nunneries teeter on the edge of subsistence, while neighboring monasteries accumulate and enjoy vast fortunes. Of course with such affluence comes inevitable vices: greed, corruption and sloth.

  “Men will be men,” is how Sonam Dawa later explained such murky behavior to me.

  “It’s the same all over the world,” Christine added with a sigh. “Why should the monks be any different?”

  As Bodi and I continued our climb, my mind drifted to the Dalai Lama. If this extraordinary man, who had shepherded Tibetan Buddhism through unthinkable trials, were to leave the world with one final, revolutionary act, it would surely be declaring his intention to reincarnate in a female form—for if anyone can keep the flame of Buddhism alight in the Himalaya through the difficult years ahead, it would surely be the nuns.I

  We followed livestock trails up rough, crumbling slopes. Clouds of locusts scattered beneath our feet, paper wings snapping as they flitted away. Only a nubbin of brush remained here, and the herds had long since passed to higher grounds.

  We passed a water-smoothed boulder, larger than a mobile home, and I wondered how on earth it had come to rest alone on those slopes. Perhaps it had been deposited by glaciers? Or carried by outwash from icefields above? Whatever the case, it was a reminder that these mountains were still young and being shaped by cataclysmic forces.

  We reached the top of the ridge an hour later, only to realize that it wasn’t the top, for higher ridges rose beyond, stretching toward the horizon like corduroy. But this was good enough for today. A small barricade of stones—ankle high and shaped like a coffin—showed where someone had taken shelter during a stormy night. Bodi and I settled beside it, snacking on the rosehips carried in his pockets. Spiders darted through pebbles, and an aggressive male locust put on a spectacular mating display, attempting to copulate, unsuccessfully, with every passing female.

  The sky was overcast, and the great valley appeared mute, as if sketched in pastel. Dust devils skittered across the plains below.
The two great rivers, the Stod and the Tsarap, reflected the sky like veins of tarnished silver.

  Amid all that desolation, a few scattered patches of green showed where villages stood. And beyond, forlorn peaks of ice and rock marched to the horizon. From this high perch, I could see for the first time what Zanskar really was: a fragile life raft bobbing amidst one of the most inhospitable landscapes on the planet.

  I took a deep breath. Then another. Bodi sat beside me, perfectly still. With time, my thoughts settled. And without trying, I knew, in some odd way, I was meditating.

  For years, I had glibly asserted that for me, “meditation” took the form of physical activity: biking, paddling or skiing. And while the intensity of such experiences certainly brings focus to the moment, it wasn’t a frame of mind I was able to replicate elsewhere, at will.

  But things were starting to change.

  * * *

  When a group of French benefactors arrived at Karsha Gompa, they were housed in the classroom, and our lessons moved to a storage room above the kitchen. Dusty furniture was piled along one wall and cubbyholes lined the other. The boys sat on carpets, which Wang Chuk helped me drag up from the assembly hall. How long would we be stuck in this room, I asked, but he didn’t know. Maybe a day? Maybe a month? Why did it matter?

  One sunny afternoon, when Lama Wangyal asked Christine and Bodi to stay behind and polish statues on his altar, Taj and I arrived to find the makeshift classroom empty. We stood hand in hand in the doorway, wondering why everyone was late for class. Then I heard a giggle coming from the cupboards. The doors were locked, but eventually I coaxed one open, finding eight small boys tangled inside. Others were hidden under chairs and behind boxes. It took an exasperating amount of effort to get the group seated.

  When I was finally ready to teach, I discovered the blackboard had disappeared. Thankfully I carried a sheet of laminated paper in my backpack, which I used as a tiny whiteboard.

  My plan for the day was to discuss the five Ws (Who? What? When? Where? Why?) but none of the boys seemed to understand these words. I looked to Norphal for translation help, but he had vanished. Changchup, the second-best English speaker, was absorbed with a phone he’d found in the courtyard, left behind by a tourist. When five junior boys began wrestling, I broke them up and separated them among the older boys, but it did no good. Bedlam reigned. Losing my patience, I tossed the laminated whiteboard to the floor.

  Everyone froze.

  I was overcome with embarrassment. Had I blown the respect I’d struggled so hard to earn? What had happened to my carefully cultivated inner peace? In Zanskar, schon chan, “one who angers easily,” stands among the worst insults, and losing one’s temper is an act rarely forgotten.

  It didn’t matter. My efforts at exerting some semblance of control over the classroom had been futile, and having lost all heart to teach, I coolly told the boys to retrieve their workbooks. Soon they were sitting with heads down, copying sentences they didn’t understand.

  After five minutes, I calmed down. Not wanting to give up, I tried again.

  “What is this?” I asked, holding up a pencil. “What? What?”

  Hesitantly, a few responded. “Pencil?”

  “Where is the pencil?” I asked, putting it on the floor. “Where?”

  “Floor,” someone yelled, and for the first time, I felt like I was getting somewhere.

  I put the pencil behind my ear, and asked, “Where?”

  Then on a table. “Where?”

  Slowly the class began to perk up, and with it, my sense of hope.

  “Who has the pencil?” I asked excitedly, dropping it in different boys’ laps.

  “Skarma has the pencil! Sonam! Phuntsok!”

  I raced up and down the line, trying to ingrain these basic words. The older boys could not be restrained, shouting the answers aloud even when I was asking a junior boy.

  After an hour, we moved on to mathematics, and I scrawled individual problems for each boy in his own notebook. They loved this and scuttled off to quiet corners where they sat with pencils in mouths, staring at their questions as if they contained some special magic—just for them. I was still writing out questions for the final boys when the first ones returned and started crowding around, throwing their notebooks on top of the pile while I worked, trying to get me to grade their work.

  “No jumping the queue,” I reminded them gently, sliding their notebooks to the bottom. Many still jostled for position, but a few lost interest and began playing tag.

  I didn’t see Wang Chuk enter the room, but I heard him. The gruff man screamed, though in their excited state, the boys didn’t notice. Or they chose to ignore him. Charging into the fray, Wang Chuk grabbed Purbu by an ear and threw him to the ground. Then he reached to the rafters and extracted a long, thin stick. With a powerful swing, it snapped across Changchup’s legs. The tall boy, still playing with the phone, ran off laughing. Wang Chuk next tried to rip a toy car from Nima’s hands, but the seven-year-old refused to let go, even while being beaten.

  Eventually, the dust settled. The school administrator had prevailed. The boys sat quietly on their carpets. Silently placing the stick back in the rafters, Wang Chuk left without a word. As my math lesson continued, I wondered if Wang Chuk thought I was a lousy teacher. Was his outburst meant to be a demonstration of appropriate discipline? Was it his way of saying, “Okay, Captain Canada, here is how it’s done”?

  Despite my best efforts, the classroom dissolved into pandemonium again, and by the time four o’clock finally arrived, my short-lived hope had evaporated. Packing up our supplies, I trudged wearily out the door with Taj in hand.

  Wang Chuk was crouched on his haunches outside, tossing balls of tsampa to waiting choughs. I squatted beside him, ashamed of my inability to control the class. But he shook my hand eagerly, as if it were the first time we’d ever met, and then pulled Taj onto his lap. Apparently the mayhem of the day had washed over him without notice.

  But not me.

  I returned to Lama Wangyal’s, mired in depression. It felt like I was floundering, and our efforts to make a difference in the lives of these novice monks was nothing more than an illusion—the well-intentioned but ill-conceived desire of a foreigner.

  Christine disagreed, pointing out that if we could make a positive impact on just a single boy, that would be a success. “Look at your progress with multiplication tables. And think how much English they are speaking. Some barely knew a word when we arrived.”

  Grudgingly, I admitted she was right.

  But I remained disheartened, moping around our room. We’d left Canada five months earlier, and for the first time, I felt homesick. I was tired of banging my head on ceilings. I was tired of being watched everywhere I went. I was tired of being dirty. I was tired of spending more time disciplining the novices than teaching them.

  I found myself fantasizing about the simple pleasures of home: a warm shower, clean sheets, a cheeseburger, Saturday night hockey. My brain felt starved, and I yearned to read a magazine, listen to the news or even just aimlessly surf the Web.

  “You’re in the depths of it,” Christine sympathized. “Be patient. It’ll pass.”

  Her despondence had lifted weeks earlier, and she was at peace again. “We only have a month left. You should make the most of it.”

  * * *

  I was brushing Taj’s teeth under a starry sky when the hobbit door swung open and Lama Wangyal burst from the house, braying like a donkey.

  Two novice monks had been lingering in shadows nearby, unbeknownst to either Taj or me. Lama Wangyal began furiously whipping one across the face with a stick. What the fuck? I was horrified and remained frozen, not wanting to watch but unable to turn away.

  The thrashing continued, but the boy never flinched. Or cried out. Instead he pulled his robes across his face and stood his ground, as if leaning into the wind. In the darkness, it was impossible to tell who was suffering such a beating. (Later I would learn it was shy Paljor
, who apparently had skipped puja to visit his family in the village below.) Eventually, both monk boys dashed into the house, and Lama Wangyal followed, still roaring.

  Not one of them had noticed Taj and me standing nearby.

  I felt sick. Thankfully Taj appeared oblivious to the drama, and dashing inside, he kissed Christine goodnight before crawling into his sleeping bag. Soon he had drifted to sleep.

  As shadows filled the room, I explained to Christine what I’d witnessed. She’d observed a similar interaction in puja, when young servers had failed to appear with tea on time.

  “I try not to place unrealistic expectations on the monks,” she admitted. “They are only human after all. But still, beating a kid in the face with a stick seems wrong.”

  It sure seemed pretty damn un-Buddha-like to me.

  I’d never been inclined toward corporeal punishment. And raising Bodi—with his sensitivities, extreme reactions and occasional public meltdowns—had shifted my views even further away from unbending discipline and toward compassion.

  As I lay in bed, watching a stain of moonlight spread across the ceiling, I felt as if something had cracked inside me. A line from Peter Matthiessen’s Snow Leopard floated over and over through my head: “The great sins, so the Sherpas say, are to pick wild flowers and to threaten children.”

  I. The status of Tibetan Buddhist nuns has been improving under the current Dalai Lama, and in 2016—two years after our visit to Zanskar—a group of twenty nuns was granted, for the first time, a geshma degree: the highest level of Buddhist scholarship, equivalent to a geshe for monks, or a doctorate in the West.

  4 NOTHING LASTS FOREVER BUT THE EARTH AND SKY

  Conditions like autism, dyslexia, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) should be regarded as naturally occurring cognitive variations with distinctive strengths that have contributed to the evolution of technology and culture rather than mere checklists of deficits and dysfunctions.