Military Orders

by Martin Roth

  “I’m feeling bad about what happened with your brother. And my part in it. Outsiders aren’t really supposed to be present when we create a mandala - it’s a pretty sacred ceremony - but I would like to invite you to watch a bit of the sand mandala making.”

  “Atonement. You’re feeling guilty. I didn’t know Buddhists believed in that, either.”

  “No, it’s not atonement. But I would be privileged if you came. The monks started today, and it’ll probably take another few days before they’re finished.”

  “Thank you. I would appreciate that. And after that? What happens? How do they locate this new Dalai Lama? In the middle of Australia.”

  “There needs to be more done. A lot more. Consulting of astrologers, and so on. But it’s very likely some senior lamas from Dharamsala will be flying out to Australia very soon. Once they have a specific location.”

  “How will they find that?”

  “Probably the astrologers will give them a lot of information - the name of the town, the name of the boy’s mother - stuff like that. ”

  “Good luck,” muttered Harel. He knew that he was no closer than before to learning about Matt’s death. He looked at Peter. “One more thing. Do you believe that Matt was smuggling artworks?”

  Peter was silent for a little while. “I didn’t know him that well. But we met quite a few times in the twelve months he was in Dharamsala. And forgive me, Professor, but to me he was a typical missionary. His goal was to save souls. He was a nice guy, intelligent, but, well, I thought he was actually somewhat naive about a lot of things. He knew nothing about art. He didn’t know the first thing. He had no interest in it whatsoever, and certainly not in Tibetan art.”

  And once again Harel was forced to ask himself - what was his brother really doing in Dharamsala?

  Chapter 11

  Dharamsala, Northern India

  Harel was happy to have arranged a 6:00 am appointment. Falling asleep the previous evening in his swish hotel room had been easy, but jet lag hit at around 4:00 am, and he remained wide awake after that.

  So here he was, walking through the wet and surprisingly busy streets of Dharamsala, headed for an early-morning meeting with his former student Peter.

  The Dharmachakra Buddhist Center was down past the St John in the Wilderness Anglican Church, a twenty-minute walk from the hotel. It seemed that it wasn’t one of the sights of the town. It may have been marked on the maps, but it was apparently closed to the public.

  Harel felt no particular desire to see a sand mandala being created. He could probably see one in California if he sought it out. But he had few leads in his investigation into his brother’s death, and he wanted to ask Peter some more questions. In particular, he felt he needed to know more about the Dorje Shugden temple down in the Kangra Valley.

  The Center was an ornate white structure, two floors high, with gaudy red and blue decorations stretched around the upper level, and a gold-leafed roof. At the entrance was a line of giant bronze cylinders, each the size of a small child, bearing carvings of Sanskrit mantras

  A few old ladies stood before the cylinders, spinning them with their hands. Harel knew that Tibetan Buddhists regarded spinning the wheels to be just as efficacious as actually reciting the mantras for gaining merit, in order to rise to a higher level in the next life.

  He walked through the temple gate and found Peter waiting at the entrance, dressed in his saffron robes, goosebumps on his skinny arms from the cool, early-morning air.

  “It’s about to start for the day,” said Peter. He ushered Harel inside and led him down a corridor with a brightly polished wooden floor, and then into a large space that resembled a storeroom, with a high ceiling, a stone floor and piles of boxes stacked against one wall. In the center was a large, square, wooden table, and seated around it on the floor were six monks, all chanting.

  Peter beckoned for Harel to stand with him at the edge of the room. On top of the table Harel could see the beginnings of the mandala. From his distance, about ten feet, it looked like a shiny oil painting. In fact, he knew it was composed of brightly colored sand.

  “That looks like…” he began. He was interrupted by the most senior of the six monks, a man wearing glasses who looked to be in his seventies. He stood up and shouted something in Tibetan at Peter, gesturing with two flabby arms.

  Peter walked over to him and they conversed, pointing a couple of times at Harel. The older man did not look happy.

  Peter returned to Harel. “That’s the head abbot,” he whispered. “He’s not so pleased about your being here. It’s not so long ago that this kind of ritual was strictly forbidden to outsiders. I reminded him that the Dalai Lama himself said that outsiders should be allowed to see these mandalas, as they were intended for universal peace.”

  “Look, I really don’t have to stay if it’s going to cause you some embarrassment.”

  “No, no. It’s fine. But I can see that he’s very tense. There’s a lot of nervous excitement around here - all these rumors about where the next Dalai Lama is going to be found. Anyway, I told him that you’re a world-famous scholar of art and religion. I said I’m sure the late Dalai Lama would have been happy for you to watch.”

  Harel smiled. Flattery existed everywhere.

  One of the monks took a bell from a table. Harel recognized this as a vajra bell. Tibetan Buddhists regarded the vajra - a lotus-shaped metallic base with curved prongs emerging from it, and no bigger than a baseball - as their most powerful spiritual symbol, capable of destroying all enemies. In English it was called a diamond thunderbolt. It was often attached to a small bell. Now the monk rang the bell.

  Then he watched as the monks tied face masks over their mouths and noses. Several clambered onto the table itself, around the edge of the mandala. They took up metal tubes - Harel knew the tubes were filled with sands of different hues - and began tapping these to create a smooth, even flow of sand onto the picture. It was a little like watching chefs applying decorative frosting to a giant cake, with a sound like a chorus of chirping crickets.

  “They started yesterday,” said Peter. “They worked on it for about eighteen hours. It will be finished in another couple of days.”

  “I thought this was done for a special occasion. What is the occasion right now?”

  “It was decided just a few days ago to do this. As part of the discernment process for finding the new Dalai Lama.”

  Harel peered at the tabletop image. Then he pointed, and spoke in a loud whisper. “That square shape over there, right near the center of the picture, that’s the mandala of enlightened wisdom. You can see all the vases holding lotus blossoms. It all represents the mind.”

  “That’s very, very good,” said Peter. “It’s no wonder your courses were so popular on campus. You knew your stuff.”

  Harel saw no reason to contradict him. He turned to his former student. “Tell me - what does an American Buddhist monk do all day?”

  “Well, it’s only just after six in the morning, but I’ve already spent two hours chanting and meditating. That’s a big part of every day. And language study, unfortunately. That’s also a big chunk of time, until I get fluent. It’s what I’d be doing now if I weren’t meeting you. Otherwise, pretty much the same as the young Tibetan monks. A lot more meditation. That’s at the heart of Tibetan Buddhism. And chanting sutras. Then all the housework. The young guys do most of the duties, cooking, cleaning and so on.”

  “Do you have your own room?”

  “As if. Maybe in ten year. Right now I’m in a kind of dormitory-style room with a dozen others. But that’s good. It helps me learn the language.”

  Harel changed the subject. “This Dorje Shugden temple down in the Kangra Valley - what do you know about it?”

  Peter shrugged. “Not much. We never meet. I don’t mean that in any bad way. We’re physically separated. But there are no bad relations, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “But last night you seemed to agree with me th
at Matt going down there might somehow have gotten him murdered.”

  “I didn’t mean specifically that place. I was talking about all the questions he was asking. All over the place. He was picking up so much gossip. And I was urging him on. I feel bad about that. Gossip is a sin in Christianity, isn’t it?”

  “You’re becoming more Christian by the minute. Maybe Matt did a better job of evangelism than you realize.”

  Peter didn’t smile.

  Harel continued. “I know that there’s bad blood between you and the Dorje Shugden people. But what’s the origin?”

  “Yes, it’s not good for us Buddhists. The Dorje Shugden cult - we think of it as a cult - got started several hundred years ago. In the seventeenth century. Dorje Shugden was a spiritual being, one of the many dharma protectors. But then arguments broke out over whether he was a good spirit or a bad spirit. And some groups became - what’s the word - passionately devoted to him. To put it mildly. They saw him as a protector of a very pure form of Buddhism. One that’s not tainted by outside influences.”

  “Aren’t there stories that Dorje Shugden actually helped protect the Dalai Lama himself?”

  “Yes, some people believe that Dorje Shugden, the spiritual being, was actually protecting the Dalai Lama when he fled from Tibet to India in 1959.”

  “But later the Dalai Lama condemned Dorje Shugden worship?”

  “Yes, that’s right, he said….”

  They were interrupted by a sudden cry, almost like the screech of a cat, followed by a low and eerie growling. At the same time the tap-tap noise of the sand sprinklers had stopped. Harel looked up.

  It was the head abbot. He was standing next to the large table, swaying and growling. Everyone in the room was watching him in awed apprehension.

  Abruptly the man became silent. Then he raised his hands in the air and began chanting, a low guttural sound that suddenly burst into a high tenor. He started treading around the table, in slow deliberate steps, like a tai chi practitioner.

  “What on earth’s happening?” Harel asked Peter.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What chant is this?”

  “I don’t know that either. I’ve never heard it before. It’s not something we learn?”

  “Is it Tibetan?”

  “No. Not any Tibetan that I know. And it’s not Sanskrit.”

  As the old man passed near, Harel could see that his eyes were glazed and his entire body was quivering, the layers of fat on his arms pulsating like jelly in an earthquake.

  But then the chanting stopped. The man took up one of the metal tubes and from a large packet on the floor he filled it with sand. Harel peered into the packet. He could see that this sand was the color of blood. With extraordinary agility the man climbed onto the table.

  Then he began sprinkling the red sand onto the picture. For several minutes he tapped away, his body still shaking. The other priests had moved down from the table, and were standing and watching. Harel moved nearer. He could see that the man was sprinkling bright red sand on top of existing images. Harel knew this was not normally done.

  For at least five minutes more the man worked with a fevered intensity at creating his crimson image, sprinkling the sand with remarkably firm hands while the rest of his body continued to shake.

  At last he appeared to have finished. For what seemed an entire minute he just stared at work. Then he cried out something, before climbing down from the table. He was shaking even more than before, and Harel could see that his face and arms were glistening with sweat.

  “What did he say?” asked Harel.

  “He said this is where the new Dalai Lama is living.”

  Everyone was staring at the image. Some of the younger priests were whispering excitedly.

  “It looks like a giant red rock,” ventured Peter.

  “That’s exactly what it is,” agreed Harel. He looked harder. “It’s a giant red rock. And I know where it is.”

  “You do? Where?”

  “Last night you talked about the Dalai Lama being found in central Australia? Well, have you heard of Ayers Rock? Uluru is what it’s called nowadays. In the heart of the Australian desert.”

  Peter shrugged. “I know the name, I think. Vaguely.”

  “It’s a giant rock. Almost a small mountain. It’s absolutely sacred to the Aboriginal people. It’s probably one of the holiest places in the world.”

  Peter looked at the blood red image. Then he looked back at Harel. “But why there?”

  Harel smiled. “You’re supposed to know that. I think last night I was asking you that question - why central Australia?”

  “The central Australian desert,” muttered Peter. “Uluru. Well, the next few weeks are going to be very interesting.”

  Chapter 12

  Burumarri Creek, Central Australia

  Vanya Poulis always suspected that this would be the occasion when her marriage would come under threat - a medical emergency involving their young son Sammie.

  Actually, it probably wasn’t an emergency, and yes, she was probably over-reacting. But little Sammie was acting strangely, and she wanted to see a doctor as quickly as possible. She was forty-four. Sammie was her first child, and who knew if she and Eddie, who was one year younger, would be able to have another.

  Unfortunately, the nearest full-time doctor was at Alice Springs. In the township of Burumarri Creek, where they lived, a nurse came most mornings, but the doctor only once every couple of weeks. The nurse had seen Sammie, and could find nothing wrong. That was the problem. If there was a real emergency she could call up the Flying Doctor service, which was based in Alice. But not when the nurse said there was nothing really wrong - that it was just a growing phase. Part of the Terrible Twos.

  The conversation with the nurse that morning had not gone well.

  “I just feel that he’s not behaving quite right,” she told the nurse. “He’s - you know - something’s a bit strange.”

  The nurse looked at Vanya and smiled. She was older than Vanya, probably at least fifty, a kindly lady from New Zealand who had spent years nursing her husband in Christchurch through multiple sclerosis, then, after he died, came to the central Australian outback for the relatively generous salary on offer, in order to save for retirement. “I’ll have a look at him,” she said.

  She ran a battery of tests. “You have a very healthy boy, Vanya,” she pronounced. “Very healthy. You should be very happy. I really cannot understand what you are concerned about.”

  “But, you know, it’s these strange sounds he makes.”

  “I’m still not sure what you mean when you talk to me about strange sounds.”

  “He calls out these strange words. Or sentences. As if he’s speaking some weird foreign language.”

  The nurse laughed. “Vanya, he’s two. That’s what two-year-olds do. They’re experimenting with language.”

  “But it’s as if he already knows these words. They sound like real words. But they’re not English. Or any other language that I know. And I know half-a-dozen languages fairly well. He repeats them again and again. And then he lapses into silence. He just sits there, like a stone. Not saying anything at all. Staring at something out in the distance. And he seems to look annoyed if I say something to him. As if I’m interrupting his thoughts, or something.”

  “Vanya. Haven’t you heard of the Terrible Twos?”

  “I know, I know. That’s what everyone says. But he’s only just turned two.”

  “So he’s an early developer. Now is when the tantrums start. And the rebellious behavior. He’s looking for ways to annoy you. And he’s a bright kid, so he’s able to experiment with all kinds of tactics. And he’s succeeding.”

  “But…” Vanya felt helpless. “A mother knows when something isn’t quite normal.”

  “Yes, a mother knows. That’s true. And a nurse with my experience knows when she sees a normal, healthy two-year-old boy. Perhaps he’s a little more active than others, and he certai
nly seems very creative - his dad’s an artist, after all - so you might have your work cut out for you over the next few years. But I think you should be very grateful for such a healthy boy.”

  So what could Vanya say? But a mother just knows, she kept telling herself. And she kept telling it to Eddie too, until at last he agreed that something wasn’t quite right.

  “There’s some sort of spirit in him,” said Eddie. “He’s part-Aboriginal. And part-lots of other things. So what do you expect? Anyway, I can’t say it’s a bad spirit. Who knows where it came from?”

  Vanya had to smile. Eddie was from a large, local Aboriginal community, although his surname - Poulis - suggested that Greek blood had entered the family veins at some point in the past.

  But it was her own heritage that was most exotic. It included a Russian mother and Scottish father, grandparents of four different nationalities, one of them a Presbyterian pastor, and a vast collection of legendary family adventurers - who knew how real they all were? - that included a Ukrainian great great grandfather who, as an explorer and globetrotter, had traveled through Mongolia, Nepal and Tibet more than one hundred and fifty years earlier, picking up a wife somewhere along the way.

  She admired her husband’s respect for his traditions and for his spirituality. It helped make him one of Australia’s leading painters. She had been very happy to come and live with him here on the outskirts of Burumarri Creek, a remote outback community, right in the shadow of the giant red rock Uluru.

  Eddie specialized in paintings based on the Dreaming - the traditional creation myths of his Aboriginal tribe. He had chosen this particular location for their home as it was right by the site of his tribe’s most important Dreaming - a creation myth involving giant kangaroos. Even some of the nearby rocks resembled these creatures.

  So she respected his heritage. But when it came to sickness and disease and healing she did not want tradition and spirituality. She wanted a real doctor and real medicine.