Shopping for Buddhas

by Jeff Greenwald

  But omnipotent Brahmana is too fantastic and abstract to be comprehended by most mere mortals. Necessity demanded that, to facilitate worship, Brahmana be trisected into the three great protector deities.

  There is Brahma, the supreme Creator, who formed the universe and all contained within it; there is Vishnu, the Great Preserver, who has the rather daunting job of protecting all that Lord Brahma has created; and there is Shiva, the potent Creator-Destroyer.

  Lord Shiva, whose dreadlocked, trident-wielding devotees haunt the streets and temple grounds of Kathmandu, is god enough to keep any full-time worshiper busy for a lifetime. Among other attributes, Shiva is Lord of the Dance, Source of the Ganges, the Perfect Ascetic and Protector of All Animals. Most importantly, Shiva is Time itself: supreme master of everything, both living and non-living, that exists. It is Lord Shiva who commands the course of all matter, from conception and birth to death and dissolution. J. Robert Oppenheimer, builder of our first atomic bomb, reflected warily on his achievement with a quote from the Sanskrit: “I am become Shiva / Destroyer of Worlds.”

  Shiva’s presence in the Kathmandu Valley—he keeps a little place by the Bagmati River—has indisputable side effects on Hindus and non-Hindus alike. If I were pressed to give one reason, one specific observation of why life in Nepal seems so much more vivid than life anywhere else, I would answer with a single word: time. There is a quality to time spent in Nepal that can only be described as inhalant.

  Back home in the Wild West, time whips by with the relentless and terrible purpose of a strangling vine filmed in fast motion. A week, two months, ten years snap past like amnesia, a continual barrage of workdays, appointments, dinner dates and laundromats, television shows and video cassettes, parking meters, paydays and phone calls.

  You can watch it from Asia. You read the newspapers, you think about your friends back home—marching along in the parade of events—and you know it’s still happening. It’s happening there. On the other side. Yesterdays, todays and tomorrows are tumbling after each other like Sambo and the tiger, blending into an opaque and viscous ooze. There is no such thing as now; only a continual succession of laters, whipping their tendrils around the calendar. The clutches of the vine. . . .

  In Nepal, the phenomenon is reversed. Time is a stick of incense that burns without being consumed. One day can seem like a week; a week, like months. Mornings stretch out and crack their spines with the yogic impassivity of house cats. Afternoons bulge with a succulent ripeness, like fat peaches. There is time enough to do everything—write a letter, eat breakfast, read the paper, visit a shrine or two, listen to the birds, bicycle downtown, change money, buy postcards, shop for Buddhas—and arrive home in time for lunch.

  Lord Shiva takes many forms: male and female, beastly and divine, compassionate and bloodthirsty. His main temple, golden-roofed Pashupatinath, lies just outside of Kathmandu, straddling the banks of the holy Bagmati River—which, flowing south to India, joins the Ganges. On the last full moon of each winter, the knolls and steps of Pashupatinath are carpeted with bong-smoking, glassy-eyed Shaivites who walk, ride, hitchhike and even crawl to Nepal from all over the subcontinent. They have come for Shivaratri, their master’s annual festival, and their participation in this event often includes outrageous acts of self-mortification. One devotee, famous for his crazy piety, lops off a little bit more of his arm each year. . . .

  As impressive a figure as Shiva is, the key to the Nepali equation is found elsewhere. It is held by Lord Vishnu: the Great Preserver, who single-handedly (actually, with twenty hands) unites the northern tides of Tibetan Buddhism with the southern swell of Brahmanism. Vishnu, the Nepalis believe, will be called on a grand total of ten times—awakened from his deep eternal snooze and pressed into action—in order to save the human race from extinction, the world from ruin, and the various realms of existence from a typhoon of chaos and calamity.

  This has already occurred nine times. Vishnu’s tenth avatar (as apocalyptic Jagannath, the rolling black chariot that destroys all in its path) will be his last.

  Lord Vishnu’s first six incarnations occurred so long ago that they are slowly settling into the silt of the collective unconscious. His seventh, eighth and ninth, though, are still actively worshiped and respected throughout Asia, from the steaming deserts of Rajasthan in western India to the coconut-littered beaches of Thailand and Indonesia. They are literally the stuff of which best-sellers (as well as countless Hindi movies, stage dramas and TV soap operas) are made.

  For his seventh encore, Vishnu was born on Earth as a prince named Rama. His mission was to destroy a powerful, ten-headed demon named Ravana, who had succeeded in weaseling from the cowed gods a boon that rendered him invulnerable to both divine and beastly harm. Ravana hadn’t bothered to take out a policy against humans; they were, after all, his preferred food. Rama, along with his brother Laxman and the monkey general Hanuman, laid waste to Ravana’s plans of world domination. The story is told in what must be the world’s most fantastic epic: the Ramayana.

  In his eighth avatar, Vishnu appeared in the famous form known as Krishna: lover, flautist and rascal extraordinaire. The epic Mahabharata tells the tale of that volatile era in human history. One particular chapter of that voluminous saga has achieved biblical status. The chapter, in which Krishna explains the rules governing the behavior of both human beings and gods, is known as the Bhagavad-Gita.

  And the ninth? Aha. . . . For his ninth avatar, Vishnu, the Great Preserver, awakened, stifled a yawn, and set off once again to save the human race (this time from its own crazy foibles). This most recent visitation took place a mere twenty-five hundred years ago. The form he chose was again both mortal and princely. His place of birth was in southern Nepal, in a peaceable kingdom called Kapilavastu.

  At first, aside from his miraculous birth, there was nothing overwhelmingly remarkable about this precocious young prince of the Shakya clan. This all changed in 534 B.C. when, at the age of twenty-nine, tormented by the riddles of old age, disease and death, Prince Siddhartha Gautama set off to find the antidote to human suffering. Six years later he succeeded, and traveled off to teach what he had discovered to anyone who might care to listen. Thus Vishnu’s ninth incarnation became the historical personage known throughout the world simply as Buddha: the Awakened One.

  This crucial keystone connecting Brahmanism and Buddhism partially explains the remarkable atmosphere of religious tolerance that prevails in Nepal (a tolerance that extends to the small Islamic community, though it stumbles awkwardly over Christianity). Over the centuries, this broad-minded attitude has turned Nepal into a vast spiritual fermentation tank, where the sweetest artistic juices of Hinduism and Buddhism have run together like popsicles in a crucible. Buddhist and Hindu gods and goddesses rub shoulders at nearly every temple and in every celebration, strolling arm-in-arm down the broad avenues of myth.

  It’s the richest banquet imaginable. For anyone with an appetite for fantastic legends, a thirst for color (especially red) and a general craving for utter theological wonder, visiting Nepal is a study in all-you-can-eat.

  3

  During my first visit to Nepal, it seemed to me that this soaking-up was a passive exercise—something that happened to you. Sure, I knew about the concept of karma, or “action”: that my good or evil words and deeds will follow me from one miserable lifetime to the next, until, at some point in the hazily distant future, the balance will at last be skewed in my favor and I shall be ushered from this vale of tears and into the Clear Light. I just didn’t figure there was much I could do about it, except behave myself and hope for the best.

  Wrong. Dead wrong. . . . Sometime during my second trip, I caught on. In Asia, I learned, one can influence the inexorable tides of karma far more efficiently than one can in the West. There is an ancient, time-honored tradition that allows you to earn what amount to spiritual Brownie points—to actively hedge your bets against coming back as a banana slug or pit bull—by undertaking certain l
abors. One may seek out blessings from lamas and yogis, perform pilgrimages to specific religious shrines and/or visit any number of the countless sacred spots that cover the Asian landscape as thickly as a leopard’s spots.

  This process of collecting blessings is known as “acquiring merit.” It is great fun and, for most of us, a very, very good idea.

  These blessings can take many different forms. Certain lamas might hand out red strings or small amulets, which are tied around the neck. Others dispense tiny round pills, or sprinkle their devotees with holy water.

  In more intimate circumstances, a lama or guru will share an especially effective breathing technique, or give a disciple a personalized mantra—a phrase filled with so much spiritual power that merely reciting it can help lift the devotee into a meditative trance state.

  Maybe someday I would make that kind of connection and wind up the proud owner of a rare and precious mantra. But in the meantime, I was playing the peripatetic journalist—always on the go. All I wanted were the blessings themselves, and the tiny reassurance that I was keeping the tossing raft of my karma on an even keel.

  But that would take a lot of blessings. An endless river of them, I guessed. And so, over the years, my desire to garner as many blessings as possible became an obsessive challenge, lying somewhere between a pious religious quest and hubcap collecting.

  Predictably, this peculiarly Western approach to winning spiritual merit has its perils. One example in particular bears recounting.

  While we were traveling in Tibet, Nancy, Rick and I heard tales of an extraordinary fifty-two-year-old woman who could perform miracles. Known as the Khandroma Rinpoche, she was believed to be the direct reincarnation of Lady Yeshe Tsogyal: consort of Padmasambhava, the legendary Indian mystic and sorcerer who brought Buddhism to Tibet in the eighth century A.D.

  The Khandroma Rinpoche, we’d heard, was one of the most enlightened and powerful women in Tibet. She had been known to fly through the air. On one occasion, during a storm, witnesses had seen her zoom to the top of a peak to catch a falling prayer flagpole before it touched the ground. Our minds boggled—what a coup it would be to get her blessing! But the quest for this prize would involve real work; the Khandroma Rinpoche lived with a few hearty attendants above an ani gompa: a magical nunnery hidden up a narrow, tortuous canyon, near the confluence of two mountain rivers.

  The journey from Lhasa to the ani gompa, by bus, mule-drawn cart and foot, took nearly a week. The final leg of our hike, through the cool and dripping canyon, seemed almost like a rebirth. Everything about that canyon—its smell, its temperature, the cries of its birds and the marbled color of its walls—served to remind us that we were about to enter a world apart.

  Emerging, we stood for a while above the ani gompa. Below, the two rivers collided in a roar of white foam. Rick passed some almonds and dried apricots around. Finally, we heaved our packs back on and made the descent, entering the little nunnery-cum-village. Within a matter of minutes, the three of us found ourselves the sole guests of the nunnery’s modest lodge.

  Our hostess was a handsome ani, or nun. She was dressed in a heavy maroon-colored robe and wore a malla of one hundred and eight well-polished prayer beads wrapped around her forearm. As with all the nuns and monks we’d met, our ani’s head had been recently tonsured. Her high, proud scalp was covered with the thinnest layer of hair, rising like the shoots of a newly planted lawn.

  The ani watched with intense interest as we spread our sleeping bags out on the guesthouse’s narrow wooden cots and heaved our dusty backpacks onto the floor. The journey had been difficult, to say the least, and now that we had arrived at our destination it was only right and proper to reward ourselves. Rick cast me a conspiratorial glance and dug into his backpack for the waterproof sack containing our special “treat” food.

  While trekking in Tibet, we existed mainly on tsampa—finely ground barley flour that one mixes with salty, buttery tea to create a heavy porridge with the approximate appearance, aroma and taste of fresh Play-Doh. One grows a bit weary of this fare. Anticipating this, we had brought various rations of our own: Quaker Oats instant cereal, bars of waxy Chinese chocolate, bags of nuts and raisins, and a bunch of Chinese army survival biscuits that looked like adobe bricks and were only slightly less dense than neutron stars.

  There was one more food item, rare and precious, which we had decided beforehand to save for the most special occasion of our entire Tibetan sojourn. We had absolutely no hesitation in deciding that this moment—arriving at the doorstep of the remote and potent Khandroma Rinpoche—was it. With a solemnity bordering on the melodramatic, Rick located, displayed and lovingly opened the single, priceless can of StarKist tuna, “packed in spring water,” that we had carried to Tibet from a Safeway supermarket in Oakland, California. Every saliva duct in my mouth came alive as the nearly forgotten aroma of seafood wafted through the dirt-floored, stone-walled shack.

  Within a split second, we had devoured the delicacy, a fact accomplished under the sharp and inscrutable eye of our portly hostess.

  To say that our ani was hospitable would be the most banal of understatements. She was practically a Jewish mother. Less than an hour after our arrival she was already bringing us food: fresh Tibetan bread, hard cheese and sour little apples. This gesture was repeated at dinnertime, and again the next morning. Our attempts to return the meals or consume less than the full share she had brought were futile. The ani would sit down on one of the cots and watch us sternly, crying, “Sheh! Sheh! Sheh!”—“Take! Take! Take!”—until the last bites disappeared from our plates.

  It became embarrassing. We were uncomfortable—and a little bit puzzled—by the extent of this one-sided generosity. Tibet is by no means a bountiful land, and we couldn’t help but feel that we must be imposing on our ani’s frugal supplies.

  Shortly after our arrival, we met another Westerner at the ani gompa. This was a tall, fair-skinned, clear-eyed woman called Ani Marilyn. Marilyn, a former Magnum photographer whose work had appeared, in the mid-1960s, in magazines ranging from National Geographic to Vogue, had “broken through” the glamorous life as an international photojournalist to pursue the austere Middle Way of Tibetan Buddhism. In 1987 she took full vows and was at last a fully ordained nun. Her Buddhist name was now Ngawang Chodron; but, as a kindness to those of us unaccustomed to speaking with the back of our throats, she consented to be called Ani Marilyn.

  Since Ani Marilyn was fluent in Tibetan, we asked if she might intercede with our nun and discover the root of this obsessive desire to mother us. Marilyn agreed. A few hours later, she dropped by the visitors’ lodge with an explanation.

  “I spoke with your ani,” Marilyn said. “She told me that right after you arrived, even though you must have been terribly hungry from your long journey, you had nothing to eat but a tiny, disgusting tin of dead fish. She has been going around the gompa, collecting food from the other anis in order to feed you properly. . . .”

  After several blissful days at the gompa, we presumed to be on good enough terms with our ani to ask her an enormous favor. She listened to our pleas and finally consented, a bit apprehensively, to take us up the long, steep hillside that led to the Khandroma Rinpoche’s secluded residence.

  We were thrilled. We put on our best clothes and brought along fine silk katas—the traditional greeting scarves of the Tibetans—to present to this venerable woman. A kata is a marvelous thing; you offer one to a high lama, who blesses the scarf and places it around your neck. What better souvenir of our visit to the Khandroma Rinpoche than a fine silk kata, infused with the spiritual essence of Padmasambhava’s closest consort?

  Following our ani, who prayed and twirled her prayer wheel all the while, we finally arrived at the Khandroma Rinpoche’s sanctuary. It was a stern domicile on a high ridge, commanding a tremendous view. We could see crumbling old retreat huts and shrines crowning nearby peaks; prayer flags fluttering on high aeries; squat houses with Om-carved stones cobbling their r
oofs.

  Much to our dismay, though, the high lama herself did not turn out to greet us. The only people present were a few female caretakers. At first it looked like we would return totally empty-handed; but after a somewhat harsh exchange with our ani, one of them—a disheveled-looking woman with shoulder-length black hair and a grimy corduroy robe—consented to show us around. She brought us into a dank, dripping meditation cave and showed us a depression in the wall that was meant to be Padmasambhava’s handprint. Then she pushed us rudely into kneeling position and ladled water from a cold subterranean spring into our palms. We sipped it reluctantly, wary of micro-organisms.

  There was a pile of katas in a corner of the cave, but we were not about to toss our offerings onto that anonymous heap. Our supply of first-class katas was limited, and if we couldn’t give our scarves to the Khandroma Rinpoche herself, we figured we might just as well hang on to them for the next high lama.

  So where was the Lady Yeshe Tsogyal, anyway? Now that the formalities of our little cave tour were over, we earnestly wished to meet her. We turned to our ani, who—knowing as little English as we knew Tibetan—was at a total loss to explain. She made some sort of cryptic combing motion with her fingers, which seemed to indicate that the high lama was having her hair washed. The oldest excuse in the book!

  Abruptly, our welcome expired. Our reluctant tour guide, visibly peeved, vanished from sight. Large was our disappointment as we were led back down the hill, still clutching our katas. It was impossible not to take the rejection personally. To make matters even more grim, the recently radiant sky was quickly filling with ill-omened clouds. Within an instant, we were caught in a cold deluge and soaked to the skin. I felt completely overwhelmed by dejection and misery.