Baboons for Lunch

by James Michael Dorsey

  A part of Burma came home with me from a cave high in the mountains.

  Pindaya is a fly speck on a map of predominately Buddhist Myanmar/Burma. It sits halfway between Mandalay and Inle Lake on a steep incline that terminates in a vertical granite rock face that can only be reached through a series of steep switchbacks. I had not planned on going there but had overheard a dinner conversation that described an enormous cave system in the mountains that is home to one of the holiest sites in local Theravada Buddhism. Perhaps my newly awakened karma had called me.

  Theravada means, “Teaching of the Elders.” It is one of three main branches of Buddhism that originated in northern India and Nepal in the sixth century B.C. and rapidly spread throughout Southeast Asia until it was introduced to Cambodia in the 13th century via monks from Sri Lanka. Eventually, it spilled over the vague borders into Myanmar where it dug in deep. It is a personal religion that worships no deity but rather teaches self-control in order to release all attachment to the material world and achieve personal enlightenment. The intensity of its adherents has drawn me back to Southeast Asia many times.

  The bus coughs and wheezes as it struggles to climb the steep mountain roads. The driver downshifts often, talking to it, willing it upward, and when we reach the summit, it shudders and dies in a puff of smoke. The driver sits back and lights a cheroot; he is used to this. The road has ended in a large parking lot lined with coffin-sized vendor stalls all hawking cheap tourist trinkets and cold drinks. “Hey Mistah, one dollar!” a man yells as he shoves a plastic Buddha in my face that I politely decline. The vendors are incredibly aggressive toward me which I attribute to my being a rare Westerner and thus wealthy in their eyes.

  At the end of the parking lot, a ten-foot warrior is firing his bow at a twenty-foot tall spider. The warrior wears a gold crown to signify his royalty. The spider has crawled down the mountain, from its lair inside the cave. It’s eyes bulge and blood drips from its elongated fangs. The statues represent an old Burmese folk tale associated with the cave, but their gaudiness combined with the vendor stalls gives the place an amusement park aura. People are climbing onto the spider to have their photos taken and I am second-guessing my reasons for coming.

  At the base of the rock face, I enter a glass-and-steel elevator as out of place with the locale as the spider, and am shot 600 feet into the air where I step out into a different reality. There is a long walkway filled with hundreds of pairs of shoes and nuns in pink and orange robes selling spirit money for the faithful to use as offerings inside the cave. Just beyond this, there is a rush of stale air coming from the enormous yawning entrance to the cave.

  Pilgrims are prostrated everywhere in front of towering Buddhas, more than 8,000 statues of all sizes and shapes. Many of the faithful have forsaken the elevator to climb the dizzying stairs on hands and knees. From the entrance on, I must step carefully over and around hundreds of devotees, kneeling in prayer and meditation, slowly moving from one statue to the next in a mendicant assembly line.

  The oldest statues date to 1750, and many bear inscriptions from the Konbaung period (1782-1885), the last ruling dynasty of Burma. No other religious site offers such a range of Buddhist iconography or diversity of style and ornamentation. The cave gives physical form to esoteric beliefs, but, like Buddhism itself, it is internal, hidden from the world until you enter its mysteries.

  As one raised within a dogmatic faith, I have long been fascinated by Buddhism because to me “religion” has always implied a deity, and Buddhism has none. Yet, the passionate fervor that I have personally come to associate with Buddhists seems based on “right action” a cornerstone of Christian belief. Nowhere is it more evident than in the masses all around me, foreheads pressed to the floor, crawling like inchworms, lost in concentrated faith to the essence these images represent. There are hundreds, if not thousands of people inside the cave, and yet, there is no talking; only the low hum of countless mantras that sounds like an enormous swarm of bees.

  The statues are staggered like seats in an arena, disappearing upward into the black vastness of the cave ceiling. The lighting is dim and dramatic, designed to accentuate the immensity of the cavern and to give an aura of mystery to the statues. A meandering maze of paths wanders for miles, leading pilgrims in all directions past one diorama after another. Some trails dead end at ancient meditation cells while one enters a massive cathedral like room where stalactites and stalagmites grope for each other like fingers entwining to pray. There is enough gold leaf inside this cavern to sink a battleship.

  The Buddhas seem to turn and follow me as I pass, and in the dim light, they begin to press inward, towering over me. Under the unyielding gaze of hundreds of enlightened ones, I feel a great sense of self-awareness and my own insignificance in the great cosmic puzzle. I can sense such belief in the cavern that should a statue begin to walk, I would not be shocked. The low vibrating OOHMMM, essence of the universe, uttered from thousands of lips, is a palpable presence I can feel in my stomach.

  My heart begins to race and I am mildly euphoric. I surrender totally to this feeling, wondering if I am succumbing to the sheer epic of the cavern, or unconsciously tapping into the religious fervor of thousands of faithful; what several spiritual writers have called the collective consciousness of mankind. My walk itself becomes a meditation, a flowing prayer, synched to the cadence of my steps. I have a sense of belonging, of being part of something larger, and a tranquility that has mostly eluded me in the past.

  I wander into an area with no people and turn a corner to find myself at a dead end. There, in isolated shadow, I almost stumble over a monk, the first one I have seen. He is a hermit, identified by his cone-shaped leather hat, and probably lives in the cave. He sits silently on his haunches, head bowed, and prayer beads passing through his fingers. His unwashed body odor mingles with the moldiness of the cavern. He is stick thin, an empty rice bowl on the floor in front of him. He prostrates himself before a sitting Buddha, a black hole of a silhouette before a glittering gold statue, each posture mimicking the other in a perfect yin and yang. The image is stunning.

  The monk occupies his own reality, oblivious to my presence, and I am too startled to move for several seconds. This tiny space is the only spot in the cave with no other people, and I feel something has drawn me to him in a way words cannot define.

  I step behind him, pressed flat to the wall, making myself one more statue while taking in the moment. His low chanting physically captures me and for a few seconds I sense a metaphysical connection to this holy man. My consciousness seems expanded and normal simultaneously, as though I am able to observe events around me from multiple viewpoints at once. The sensation is unnerving as I was not prepared for it and I wonder what power this monk possesses that his mere proximity has caused such a paradox within me.

  These are the moments I travel for, moments to which words can never pay proper homage, moments when time stops and experience imprints an image on your soul. I know I should leave but can’t make my feet move and I don’t want to disturb him. I step over the hem of his robe, trying to back away unnoticed but it is like trying to leave the determined embrace of a loved one. In my rush to flee, I knock over a bowl of money and fruit offerings. The hold is broken.

  The sound is muffled by the close proximity of dozens of large Buddhas, but in my mind I have just upset the cosmos and probably thrown the Earth off its axis to boot. I turn to see the monk, still unmoving, hearing none of my irreverent clatter, when a hand touches my shoulder.

  It’s a young monk, smiling from ear to ear. He helps me pick up the money and fruit as I wait for a cosmic lightning bolt from Nirvana to strike me for my clumsiness, but none comes. He holds up his iPhone and I realize he wants a selfie with me but I must bend in half to reach his level. The young monk races off and returns seconds later with what I assume is his family. Each produces a cell phone and all six of them take up stations around me, each handing off their phone to a stranger to t
ake a photo while I tower over the entire group. I feel like an extended middle finger of an enclosed hand and begin to laugh at the situation. Buddha really does have a sense of humor. This triggers a domino effect. A line of tiny people is gathering, all wanting their picture taken with this sweating Western giant. Only then do I realize what an oddity I am here as cameras flash away and it does not feel right. I have unwittingly become the center of attention and must end this.

  I begin to walk, shaking outstretched hands as I go; a celebrity by default. People are pointing at me and I feel far larger than my true size until I reach an upper cavern and gain my anonymity among the crowd once again.

  Reaching the exit, I am stopped in my tracks by the stunning view of the valley below. Hundreds of mushroom-

  like pagodas dot the landscape, their golden or white domes that from so far away resemble Hershey’s Kisses. A blue heron flies past a billowing cumulous cloud in an image so stunningly different from the interior of the cave it brings to mind the concept of Maya, in which all the physical world is an illusion. I guess it is harder to leave the monk than I thought.

  My mind is racing as I board the down elevator and I am packed hips to shoulders with a dozen Chinese tourists, all of them two feet shorter than I am and all of them craning their necks to look up at me with a wide-eyed stare I have so often encountered in Asia. A single tiny hand rises from the crowd and snaps a photo of me. When the elevator door opens they push each other, pinning me to the wall, in their rush to exit.

  Outside, the giant warrior is still shooting an arrow at the giant spider. Several crimson-robed monks, most of them not yet teenagers, strike histrionic poses and hold their upraised hands like claws while they growl and mug for the cameras. My celebrity has been replaced by a giant plastic bug, so my karmic levels must be normalizing.

  I walk by the tourist vendors, and the same man shoves a tiny Buddha into my face. This time I buy it as the perfect reminder of both the tackiness and religious fervor of this cave. It is Ying and Yang incarnate.

  Climbing onto a new bus I sink into an empty seat and reach into my bag for a bottle of warm water, aware that I have the word “Burma” on my lips.

  Kanas shaman

  Breaking Bread in Kanas

  In far northwestern China, where a shark fin outline on a map punches Russia in the belly and divides Kazakhstan from Mongolia, invisible spirits and deities prowl the land.

  Kanas is one of China’s newest national parks, and bears a striking similarity to Yosemite. For tourists used to China’s giant smog-choked cities, Kanas is refreshingly green wilderness. It is also an ancient bastion of shamanism, Tengrism, and animism. Of those three, perhaps Tengrism bears explaining as a religion indigenous to central Asia involving ancestor worship and polytheism, usually through the use of totems. Mysticism lies upon Kanas like a blanket and its most famous resident, Genghis Khan, (Mongol name: Borjigin Temujin) was a self-proclaimed shaman. Eight centuries after his death, he remains a constant presence.

  Many reasons called me to Kanas, one of which was to witness a total solar eclipse, and that single event presented me with the most defining image of how deeply enmeshed the people there are with the spirit world. As the shadow began to pass over the land, I watched men in business suits and women in heels scream and run into buildings to hide. I watched people cowering inside their cars, and some, caught unawares in the open, simply fell to the ground, whimpering and covering their faces. A few of the ever-present soldiers stood their ground but most pulled their hats over their faces, shaking at their posts. People, that moments before had appeared quite urbane and sophisticated, proved that in that land of mysticism, everyone was subject to its power.

  In the rolling, boulder-strewn hillsides, traditional felt yurts of Mongolian nomads, sprout like summer mushrooms. The mountain people begin to ride as soon as they can walk and to watch them in the saddle is to understand how an army of their ancestors conquered the ancient world from the backs of horses. Legend holds that it was from Kanas that the Mongol hordes descended on Eastern Europe. High above, in the treeless valleys, dozens of stone monoliths stand from those days. Many are carved in the shape of men and locals will tell you they were erected during religious ceremonies presided over by the Khan himself as a lasting call to the reining deities to protect his army abroad and his family at home.

  Some of the more modern residents occupy the village of Hemu, which masquerades as a town with its rough-hewn log cabins and sod roofs, left behind nearly a century ago by Russian loggers. In housing of either style, a visitor will always find a portrait of and a shrine to, the mighty Khan. They are as common as chopsticks, along with animal bone talismans and sacred fetishes to combat any lurking evil.

  The cabin of the ruling lama is identified by an armada of white prayer flags tied to his fence by passing mendicants and a stroll up most hillsides will reveal stone prayer cairns that launch pilgrims’ entreaties into the wind. Tuvan throat singers can be heard in Hemu, enchanting the stones or talking to spirits under a full moon, and in the hills, oracles cast bones to read future events. The people of Kanas occupy dual realities, merged into single time, the material and spiritual; the yin and yang of an ancient life in a modern world.

  There are few cars about and the ones that are identify their owners as the suited bureaucrats from Beijing that stick out like brown shoes with a tuxedo. They are ubiquitous government watchdogs, terrified that the outside world might learn that China has cultures more ancient than, and equal to, that of the Han rulers. As an outsider, I quickly grew used to their harassment as the price of traveling in a police state. I might also add that those hard-nosed suits from the capital cowered from the eclipse with the best of them.

  Now, I am large, even for a Westerner, and the people of Kanas might be called diminutive. My physical size has often drawn small crowds during various travels through Asia, and I was more than prepared for locals that might think me an incarnation of one of the endless cavalcade of local spirits or demons. I am quite used to bug-eyed stares and open mouths that seem to be an integral part of remote Asian cultures when encountering an outsider. While I was quite a local attraction, I can report that I never encountered thrown stones or an exorcism during my stay, but at I am sure that after my soiree through town I had at least made the evening’s dinner conversation.

  My arrival in Hemu was apparently coordinated by the serendipity that often finds those of us who wander afar. I have always believed that the best experiences come to those who are open to the ambush and so was only mildly surprised when a young boy approached me in town as I was browsing in a pharmacy, examining the sun dried animal parts, potions, and fetishes that are the tools of a shaman.

  An elder lady named Mai Pin heard there was an American about, and sent the young lad to find me as my kind are few and far between in her land, and with him, came an invitation for lunch. Never one to turn down a free meal, I followed him like a loyal pet, up a muddy hill, past the reindeer pens that hold those enormous creatures, not for meat or as work animals, but for their antlers that are shorn annually and shipped to Chinese markets where they demand exorbitant prices as aphrodisiacs. At the crest of the hill I turned in time to see my government shadow jump behind a fence post half his girth in size and could not help laughing at the absurdity of the moment. I waved at him and pointed to where I was going.

  Outside my hostess’s cabin, I found home-sewn bags filled with mare’s milk, left to ferment. Large flat bamboo trays filled with square blobs of the thickly curdled milk hung nearby, that when dried by the sun, became a jaw breaking hard staple of the local diet. I heard my hostess calling from inside the cabin, and as I stepped under the bone talisman nailed over the portal, I was relieved to find that I had enough good joss not to be struck down as an evil spirit.

  Now, as in town, such a rare visitor demands an audience and I was no exception. Three generations crowded into the tiny room to inspect the strange invader, the baby o
f which took one look at me and tore into an aria of bellowing. To him I was most assuredly a demon spirit.

  Old Mai rose from her seat leaning heavily on an age-rubbed, serpent-headed walking stick that implied her high status, possibly that of a shaman. I was dining with an elder of rank. She held me by my arms and kissed the air above both of my cheeks then lit a bundle of sage, placing it in a cup next to the window. Turning slowly she spread her arms with a slight bow to the four directions and spoke soft words of ceremony that escaped me, perhaps entreating the spirits that were joining our lunch. Mai and her family had the dark, round, moon faces of Mongols, their high arched cheekbones curving like hills under their rising moon black eyes.

  Mai Pin wore the pirate-tied headscarf, faded print dress, and knee-high gum boots that are the uniform of a babushka, and, in fact, she was a widow of one of the last Russian loggers to have felled local timber. She was one of many locals to have merged with the Russians who preferred this life to that of their homeland, and, in turn, produced the next hardy generation of mountain dwellers.

  Age and toil had bent her nearly in half, her story etched into the lines of a leathery face, but there was merriment in the glint of her eyes. She wore a hand-carved amulet around her neck and her hands twisted like raptor claws under a framework of protruding veins. She was like a large, mobile apple doll, shuffling to an ancient clay stove where she dropped saucer sized gobs of white dough into a pot of boiling oil that momentarily produced golden, fluffy, but completely tasteless donuts that accompanied the sun-baked mares’ milk for our lunch. She waved everyone to a long wooden table where seven of us gathered, and everyone motioned for me to sit first. As we did, each person in turn reached out to lightly touch my hand in unspoken acknowledgement that told me I was both welcome and safe.