Blue Sky Kingdom

by Bruce Kirkby

  —Steve Silberman, NeuroTribes

  15 THE GODS WITHIN

  I lay before the sunlit windows, lazily reading, when Lama Wangyal banged through the hobbit door. He strode past our room without a word, his footsteps fading up the creaking ladder.

  Since I’d witnessed his beating of Paljor a week earlier, the old monk had seemed unusually curt. He no longer visited Christine and me at night. Nor did he poke his head into our room each morning to say jullay. While I’d come to terms with the incident, and felt no animus toward the old monk, I wondered if he had perhaps been aware of my presence during the incident. Did he feel embarrassed? Or maybe he was simply fed up with our family’s noisy company. After all, we had been crammed into his tiny home for two months, practically living on top of each other.

  Just then, Lama Wangyal bellowed, summoning me to his room, “Oh, Mortub! Oh, Mortub!”

  I scampered up the ladder, worried the end of our welcome might be drawing nigh. Was he going to ask us to leave? Maybe suggest we move down to the guest house?

  Instead, as the door to his small room swung open, Lama Wangyal held a traditional Zanskari robe toward me. “For you,” he beamed. “From dead person.”

  How vastly unattuned I remained to the events and moods unfolding around me at Karsha Gompa.

  Made of purple hand-carded wool, it was musty and worn—and, to my eyes, beautiful. Lama Wangyal explained he had bought the robe that morning, when the personal effects of a deceased villager were auctioned for the benefit of the monks.

  Remarkably, it looked large enough to accommodate my tall frame. I slipped my arms into the sleeves and it fit perfectly, the heavy fabric hanging to the floor. My fingertips discovered a scattering of barley grains in the depths of a small pocket. Lama Wangyal cinched a fuchsia sash around my waist, and then stepped back to admire.

  “Good, Mortub,” he said. “Very good.”

  I loved the robe, and in that moment, overcome with emotion, I was certain I’d cherish it for the rest of my life.

  “Cold coming soon,” Lama Wangyal grimaced.

  Then he waved me away, settled on his mattress, and began to chant.

  * * *

  The next morning, I pulled on the heavy robe, revelling in its warmth as I brewed tea and then slipped outside. The Nepalis were working nearby, shoveling gravel through a screen. Leaning on their tools, they greeted me with a chorus of “Namaste daju bhai!”

  “Namaste daju bhais,” I shouted back.

  The air was perfectly still. Far below, a flock of sheep flowed like milk down a narrow village lane, driven by two skipping boys. In nearby fields, farmers burnt slash, and beside the stream, shadowy women washed clothes. An occasional laugh floated up. Across the valley, a dusting of fresh snow clung to scabby foothills. And above, Himalayan giants smouldered purple in the gathering dawn.

  Could a person ever tire of this view?

  * * *

  Whispers began to swirl that the monks were creating a harvest mandala—a fantastical and highly complex painting made from colored sand. So after class I set off with Bodi and Taj to investigate.

  Karsha’s original and most ancient temple was Labrang, a fort-like structure situated just inside the lower gates. Home to the monastery’s granary, the temple held the stockpiled barley taxes collected from local villagers, alongside tariffs of butter and firewood. Sacred relics were secured in a dungeon-like vault, including a tooth rumored to have come from Buddha’s own elephant and the seventeenth-century robes of the Panchen Lama.

  Beyond a door framed by crooked posts, and thick yak-hair blankets, we entered a barren hall, roughly the size of a school gymnasium. Silken banners of red, orange and yellow hung from the low ceiling, and a two-storey statue of Buddha rose behind the altar. Since it was too tall for the room, a hole had been cut in the ceiling, through which the head poked out into sunlight. Frescoes adorned the mud walls, dating from the fifteenth century. Sadly, recent rains had damaged much of the imagery, leaving it slumping, like molten wax.

  “Oh, Norbu! Oh, Tashi!”

  The Lost Boys were sprawled across the floor in a far corner. Lama Mortub, the monastery accountant, lay amongst them. Ta’han rose creakily, pouring us cups of sweet, milky tea and offering fried bread.

  Eventually Lama Mortub beckoned us, and we followed him to a large sheet of plywood, resting waist-high on boxes. A complex design had been sketched in chalk across the plywood’s surface, and copper bowls lay scattered around it, filled with colored sand in every hue and shade imaginable. A few strands of sand swirled outward from the center, like worm trails on a beach. This was the start of the mandala.

  Lama Mortub climbed carefully onto the platform, followed by three young proteges, and the quartet settled cross-legged on the periphery. The mandala was perfectly symmetrical, divided into four identical quadrants, and each man was responsible for one.

  Without words, they began to work.

  After studying a blueprint, each artist searched for the needed color. If a precise match could not be found, it was created by mixing sands together like paint. The sand was then poured into a long, narrow metal funnel known as a chak-pur, and by running a rod over the funnel’s serrated surface, fine-grained sand flowing from the spout, the monks were able to “draw” with sand.

  The work was painstaking, for correcting a mistake would be impossible. Attempting to nudge even a few errant grains could induce a catastrophic unravelling. So the men took their time, steadying their forearms on piles of small pillows and rehearsing every stroke. When at last ready to apply sand, the artists took a deep breath and entered a stillness reminiscent of meditation.

  Each worked at his own pace and rhythm, and slowly a splendor of motifs bloomed: scepters, flames, flowers, castles and thunderbolts. Occasionally, after a particularly intense session of sand painting, one of the monks would shake his arms. Or throw a head back with closed eyes. But no one got too far ahead of the others, and there was unity to their progress.

  Four monks at work on a mandala. The fantastical sand painting is meant to represent the physical universe, acting as a reminder, in its destruction, of Buddhism’s core tenet of impermanence.

  A support team hovered on the periphery, retrieving anything needed by the artists: another pillow, more sand, a cup of tea. Slowly, the mandala inched outward.

  Taj and Bodi watched for a time, and I prayed neither would sneeze. Eventually the pair lost interest and drifted off to investigate the altar. Finding a scattering of rupee bills, Bodi asked if he could run home and get some of his own money to give Buddha.

  “Of course,” I said, and he dashed off.

  Soon he was back, huffing and puffing, with a hundred-rupee (two-dollar) note. Painstakingly he balanced the bill atop a silver plate. Then he spun and spun, and spun some more.

  The clinical term for such behavior is stimming—an unconscious means of self-soothing, or controlling anxiety. All of us “stim” to some extent, whether we know it or not: tapping pencils, twirling hair, pacing while talking on the phone. But those on the autism spectrum tend to stim more frequently, and more gregariously, to the point that it can interfere with life.

  As I fondly watched my son, he laughed and spun and giggled—and then accidentally knocked over an immense candle, plunging the temple into darkness. Only the hole in the roof, above Buddha’s head, provided a glimmer of daylight.

  “No problem, no problem,” came the soft voice of Lama Mortub.

  A flashlight snapped on. Ta’han tossed me a lighter. Soon the room was bright again. After setting the candle atop the wooden crate, I scraped up the hardening wax.

  Before chasing the boys outside, I surprised myself by bowing, ever so slightly, to the golden statue rising before me. The gesture was wholly unexpected, but in the moment, felt perfectly right.

  * * *

  Dark clouds poured into the valley the next morning, engulfing the peaks. Surrounded by mountainsides, it felt as if we were living in a box—wi
th the lid closed.

  When it started to drizzle, tarps of blue, yellow, white and orange were hastily dragged across haystacks in village fields below, leaving them looking like fairy-tale mushrooms. By evening Karsha Gompa was shrouded in mist, and I wandered the trails of that shadowy world, my purple coat whipped by winds.

  Strong gusts raked the cliffs that night, and droplets splattered against windowpanes by my face. I lay awake, hoping Lama Wangyal’s roof could withstand the deluge. A thunderstorm passed frighteningly close, and Bodi cried out. As I comforted him, lying forehead to forehead, I could hear Lama Wangyal chanting upstairs.

  * * *

  The storm passed after three days, leaving wispy clouds trailing from mountainsides like khata scarves.

  Eager to stretch our legs, our family set out for a walk after puja. The village streets were crowded—locals emerging as if from hibernation. Tarps were yanked from haystacks. Drying clothes fluttered along fences. Toddlers splashed in ditches. A merlin hunted over plowed fields. Even the swallows celebrated, feasting on a banquet of freshly hatched insects.

  The stone-walled laneways were clogged with bleating goats and sheep that had returned from the summer doksa.I We were particularly mindful of the yaks, grazing on a stubble of barley and alfalfa left behind after harvest. Increasingly aggressive with the approaching rut, they snorted and crashed headlong into one another, the earth shaking with their collisions.

  Wandering with no particular destination, we all paused to marvel when Taj spotted a caterpillar the size of a small banana. Nearby, in a muddy meadow, barefoot women were stomping out flat platforms the size of parachutes. After the sun dried these circular pans, teams of yaks would be attached to a central post and driven in circles, threshing barley seed from chaff beneath their hooves.

  On the way back to Lama Wangyal’s home, we stopped at Labrang, so Bodi and Taj could show Christine the mandala. An astounding amount of progress had been made, the sand now almost reaching the edges of the plywood. After working for six days straight, the artists were exhausted and had entered a trance-like state, glancing up briefly before returning to their work. Thankfully, the end was in sight.

  “Maybe tonight finishing.” Ta’han slurred his words.

  When we returned home, Lama Wangyal presented Christine with her own Zanskari robe, which he had bought at another funeral auction. She too was deeply touched by the gift—though being less nostalgic than I, suggested in private the coat might not make the return trip to Canada.

  “I can’t imagine wearing it in Kimberley,” she laughed. “Seriously, Kirkby, why do you want to take yours home? It’ll just end up in the bottom of a closet.”

  But I couldn’t imagine letting go of Lama Wangyal’s gift. I suppose it symbolized all of Zanskar’s intangible gifts to me: a peace I didn’t yet entirely understand, and was scared of losing.

  But here, for the time, the robes felt perfect to us both. And later that evening, we were wearing them—huddled close, gazing over the moonlit valley—when a disharmonious racket echoed across the mountainside.

  Horns! On and on they wailed.

  We raced inside, worried the clamor might have roused our boys, but Bodi and Taj slept soundly. Christine was ready to crawl into her sleeping bag, so I set out alone to investigate.

  Following the racket down darkened pathways, I spotted four silhouettes standing atop the Labrang roof. Tsephal and Paljor were blowing into brass gyaling, fingers hopping indiscriminately up and down the jewelled instruments. Beside them, Norphal and Changchup blustered into a pair of enormous dung-chen, the flared bells resting on the parapet. The mandala had been completed, and the boys were summoning Guhyasamaja, the great Gelugpa protector. His temporary home among the grains of sand awaited.

  The tangled music was a signal to the village, the valley and the entire universe that tomorrow at sunrise, ancient rites would begin.

  * * *

  Horns sounded again at daybreak. Rousing the boys, Christine and I pulled on puffy jackets, grabbed tea bowls and raced outside. The monk boys stood on the roof of Labrang, joyfully blowing into their ancient instruments.

  Inside, we found the prayer hall empty. An elaborate yak-butter statue stood on the altar. Three feet tall and as delicate as lace, it had taken the Head Lama a week to craft. The mandala was hidden from view by four thanka paintings. I unrolled a carpet and we huddled together at the back, boys tucked between Christine and me.

  Eighty-two-year-old Lama Ishay was the first to arrive, shuffling down the central aisle with robes dragging behind him. Other senior lamas followed, all wearing ceremonial yellow hats. Monk boys raced amongst them, stocking feet sliding on the wooden floor like ice skates. The disciplinarian prowled the aisles, an orange hooded robe hanging from his shoulders and a hardwood staff in hand. Lama Norbu, the Joker, paused before our family and playfully pretended to kick Bodi and Taj. Then he turned to the great golden Buddha, its head buried in the ceiling, and dropped to hands and knees, prostrating three times.

  As the first shaft of direct sunlight penetrated the hall, shining on Buddha like a spotlight, the chant master’s voice rang out. Singsong chanting grew, crested, subsided, then erupted again. Butter tea was served. Paljor distributed shiny biscuit packages, fried bread and sweet cinnamon rice. Ta’han shuffled to the central aisle and recited scripture while throwing rice in the air. But he must have been mixing up the words, for Wang Chuk corrected him continuously. Eventually he slunk back to his seat, head hung low. Then more butter tea. And more chanting.

  I was trying to imprint the marvellous scene into my mind when I became aware of a faint tickling on top of my head. The sensation stopped, then started again. What could it be? Suddenly suspecting a spider, I whipped a hand across my scalp. But my fingers found a warm hand?

  Standing over me, tears of laugher streaming down both cheeks, was Changchup. While waiting to serve another round of tea, he had been gently pulling on a strand of my hair.

  Glancing around, I realized the entire congregation was watching with glee. Even the Head Lama was bent over in hysterics.

  * * *

  For six straight days, a celebratory puja was held in Labrang. On the seventh day, the mandala was destroyed.

  First, the lamas gathered in the courtyard, under a scorching sun. Robes were draped over bald scalps. Christine and I tucked our boys in the shade of a rose bush. The monastery’s dog, a ferocious-looking black mastiff—said to be the reincarnation of a less-than-holy monk—was chained to a tire nearby, melting into the concrete.

  A fire pan was stacked with dung, doused with butter, and the pyre lit. The Head Lama heaved rice, barley and peas into the flames. As Lama Sundup delivered an endless train of offertory plates, he probed the depths of his nostrils with a finger. Nose picking is perfectly acceptable in Zanskar: farmers, businessmen, grandmothers and children alike never hesitate to plunge a finger in mid-conversation. It is understandable, for dust and parched air can lead to horrifically crusty snot, and I often awoke feeling as if a hazelnut were lodged up my nose.

  The ceremony dragged on. Taj dozed off. Tashi Tsering, the bowlegged cook, doled out rice. Wang Chuk corralled the novices and led the class around the fire with trumpets, conch horns and cymbals blaring. The burly disciplinarian fell asleep with his mouth wide open.

  My thoughts settled on my breathing, and as I gazed across the barren valley—a landscape devoid of physical distraction, resting under a dome of depthless blue sky—I understood Zanskar as the physical manifestation of a meditator’s mind.

  One breath in. Another out.

  A blue sky metaphor is often employed in meditative teachings. When storms descend upon our lives, as they inevitably do, we tend to focus on the clouds—problems, conflict, anxiety, distress, depression—forgetting that the blue sky is always there, but hidden from view, somewhere above. Like an airplane breaking through the clouds, meditation is meant as a conduit to that peace, accessible to anyone at any time.

  One
breath in. One breath out.

  Maybe this is why a culture of peace and meditation flourished on the Tibetan plateau, because the landscape provides a constant reminder of where the mind could be. Whatever the case, in that moment, a stillness descended such as I have rarely known. It was as if my thoughts drained out into the grand valley. I became part of it. And it part of me. The borders between the physical and spiritual blurred; the land, the monks, the peaks, all one.

  I have no idea how long this state of supreme relaxation lasted; it could have been minutes or hours, but it was interrupted by everyone leaping to their feet and running toward the Labrang. Feeling disoriented, I chased after them.

  Inside, the silken drapes concealing the mandala were yanked aside. The Head Lama blessed the creation a final time, and by extension the entire Zanskar valley. Then he raised a brass dorje, and with a slash, destroyed it.

  My heart sank to witness the destruction of such gorgeous artwork, but the surrounding monks appeared unmoved. Some hardly paid attention.

  Using a whisk, Ta’han quickly swept the sand into a pile, the once-brilliant colors reduced to a uniform drab purplish brown. The sand was then deposited in a copper urn. Horns blared again, and the congregation surged outside. Ta’han set off down the winter trail, copper urn held overhead.

  Nearly everyone else—forty monks or more, along with Christine and our boys—slouched off toward the village, where a truck laden with loudspeakers had arrived, and an outdoor Hindi dance party was underway.

  I followed a handful of senior lamas into the depths of the gorge. Beside a shady pool, Lama Norbu, the senior lopon, lit a bundle of incense as thick as a forearm, using the smoke to purify the surroundings and each member of our group. Sutras were chanted as the Head Lama waded into the splashing stream and emptied the urn.