Back at the ani gompa, we ran immediately to Ani Marilyn and asked her to make sense of the encounter for us. What had gone wrong? Why had we been snubbed by the Khandroma Rinpoche? Was there any hope of seeing her in the future?
Ani Marilyn, the embodiment of patience, said she would find out what she could. She turned to our ani and had a long exchange, punctuated by incredulous looks and the hair-washing gesture that had so baffled us up at the Rinpoche’s retreat. Finally, emitting a universal sigh of disbelief, Ani Marilyn turned back to us with three fatal words:
“That was her!”
Whaaaat . . . ?! That very woman—long-haired and clad in ragged robes—had been Yeshe Tsogyal herself! She had shown us the saint’s palm print, blessed us with sacred water from Padmasambhava’s own cave, and sent us on our way!
We were devastated—and it got even worse. We next learned that our own ani, our dear, generous ani, had been severely upbraided by the Rinpoche for invasion of privacy. That, Marilyn explained, was the essence of the angry exchange we had witnessed. Our hostess, so eager to please, had barged in on the highest lama in the region with a trio of nincompoops!
Rick and I listened to all this dumbly; but Nancy, pushed to the limit of shame and embarrassment, burst into tears. She ran from the lodge and stood outside the door as incredulous teenage anis, ruddy and wind-burned, ran up to surround her.
It was a miserable night, full of self-recriminations. Early the next morning we were awakened by our ani, who beckoned us to follow her. We were brought to Ani Marilyn’s room. It was cold and damp, and we were completely puzzled, but Marilyn gave us each a cup of hot Tibetan tea and bid us wait. Several minutes later the curtain over the doorway was parted—and in walked Lady Yeshe! Word of our mortification—and especially of Nancy’s astonishing tears—had reached the compassionate Khandroma Rinpoche, who descended from her hilltop retreat to forgive us.
The Rinpoche stroked Nancy’s tear-streaked cheeks, accepted our katas, and presented us with magical long-life pills. She then ran outside and returned in a split second carrying yet another gift: a huge cloth sack full of blessed barley flour and cheese, which she emptied, in its entirety, into three of our biggest Zip-lock bags! Yikes! Ten extra pounds of weight to carry! The food, which turned the plastic pouches into massive pillows, seemed equal parts punishment and gift—a “burden of nourishment” that was finally forced on us.
“Without speaking the same language,” the Khandroma Rinpoche told us via Ani Marilyn, “we are nothing but animals.” Her words rang painfully true. We had been little better than buffoons, bumbling about in search of abstract blessings from an enlightened woman whom we had failed to recognize—even when she was pouring holy water down our throats.
4
There was never any doubt that I wanted to buy a Buddha, first and foremost. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t willing to poke around for other deities; by this point, having convinced myself that Nepalese art was both a sound investment and a useful tool for self-improvement, I entertained the thought of going home with as many statues as I could possibly carry.
So, while combing through Kathmandu’s seemingly endless array of galleries, shops and street stalls in search of the perfect Buddha, I took ample time to acquaint myself with some of the other popular gods and goddesses who fill out the ranks of what I, irreversibly conditioned by years of Hebrew school, must very respectfully refer to as the Lower Arcana. Because, as much as I loved them, and as irresistibly as I was drawn to worship them, these other characters are not merely enlightened gurus, but fully fledged gods. Idols! Graven images! The closer I got to them, the closer I skirted around the steep and guilty edges of the Golden Calf syndrome: a common affliction among Jews in Asia.
But after all was said and done, nothing in the world could keep me from admiring, appraising and, yes, embracing these imaginative, voluptuous deities. And hey—why not? I mean, what business is it of mine if God decides to take one, ten or thirty million forms? Who am I to reject these divine manifestations of the Eternal, anyway? Nobody! Nothing! A mote! Better by far, I reasoned, to follow the old “when in Rome” wisdom and throw myself whole hog into the arms of that luscious, though decidedly non-kosher, pantheon.
Tara, a goddess of compassion, is a lovely sight—her full, perfectly molded breasts garlanded with flowers, her hips subtly bent, her delicate right foot resting on a blossoming lotus. . . . And yet, sighing with decidedly non-religious longing, I couldn’t help but wonder if I could be accused of ulterior motives for buying a statue that looked as if it belonged on the beach at St Tropez.
A friend of mine who lives and works in Kathmandu made that very mistake; he bought a gorgeous standing Tara at one of the shops outside Bodhnath Temple, brought it home, and put it in his bedroom. After a few weeks he began to realize that he was becoming obsessed, unable to romance a real flesh-and-blood woman while this slender embodiment of compassion watched from the foot of the bed. He ultimately had to move his Tara into the living room, and drape a sheet over the statue when expecting female company.
But how about Ganesh? Ganesh is irresistible, with his big fat belly and Babar the Elephant’s head. Ganesh is the god of auspicious beginnings, and one of the most popular gods in Asia. All I could think of the first time I saw him was the Flying Dumbo ride at Disneyland, a passage that remains my very earliest memory from childhood.
Lord Ganesh is the son of Shiva, the great god of Destruction in the Hindu trinity, and of Parvati, Shiva’s delicious consort. The story behind the elephant’s head varies in details from place to place, but the general scene was this: One day Parvati, taking a leisurely bath, decides that she wants a son, someone who will answer to her and her alone. She scrubs down her skin, collecting together a large lump of saffron, and fashions from this fragrant mass a boy. The moment he attains consciousness, Parvati names him Ganesh and puts him to work. She orders him to stand guard by the palace door, and to let no one—absolutely no one—enter.
Shiva, naturally, picks this precise moment to return home from some messy mythical altercation. Our hero is, understandably, rather single-minded in his desire to frolic with lovely Parvati. Seeing this strange child haughtily blocking the door, Shiva demands to be admitted. Ganesh flatly refuses.
Some say the battle was long; others claim it lasted only an instant. It ended, at any rate, with Ganesh’s head lying on the ground, a fair distance from the rest of his body. This accomplished, Shiva strolled into the parlor, but the homecoming wasn’t quite what he had anticipated. Parvati was furious, and all thoughts of romance were tabled until Shiva somehow put the situation to rights. Desperate to appease his wife, Shiva raced out and appropriated the head of the first animal he saw: a baby elephant. After the successful transplant, Shiva further sweetened the pot by granting his son special privileges, including extraordinary intelligence and a high status among his fellow gods.
Ah, Ganesh! Remover of obstacles, protector of children and thieves, patron of the poets! Ages ago, when the great sage Vyasa was suddenly struck by the inspiration to dictate the monumental epic Mahabharata in one sitting, Ganesh volunteered to serve as scribe. Halfway through Vyasa’s feverish and unflagging dictation, the pen burst into flame and disintegrated. Ganesh, fearful of missing even a single syllable, snapped off his own tusk to use as a quill. Peerless devotion to the art! What better ally, I ask you, for a writer whose pen is perpetually out of steam? What more loyal mascot than this holy Dumbo incarnation?
Or how about the bodhisattva Manjushri? Manjushri, Embodiment of Wisdom, whose pure and peerless incisiveness is symbolized by a flaming sword, held high?
Manjushri is one of the patron deities of Kathmandu. The story goes like this: Thousands of years ago, he visited the valley, which was then a huge lake with a miraculous flaming lotus shimmering on its surface. Manjushri had come to meditate on the edge of the holy lake and contemplate the mystery of its famous flame. After he had done so for a while he rose to his feet, stretched his l
egs, and began to walk around the entire periphery of the lake. He did this three times before pausing at the southern rim. Then Manjushri drew his magical sword and swung it above his head, bringing it down with devastating force into the hill beside him. There was a thunderous roar as the earth split, creating the deep rift known today as Chobar Gorge.
The waters rushed out through the gap. Within a few weeks, the Kathmandu Valley lay drained and tender beneath the sun—sacred ground from Day One. Humans arrived shortly thereafter.
What can compete with so potent a metaphor? I must admit that at first, before I thought I was really good enough to own my own Buddha, it seemed that Manjushri alone might be enough to satisfy my gnawing appetite for an all-purpose icon.
But no. I wanted it all. I mean, if I was prepared to spend a couple of hundred dollars for one of these gods, I wanted as much for my money as possible. Wisdom. Compassion. Protection. Peace of mind! And for sheer devotional value, ounce for ounce, nothing beats a Buddha.
A Buddha is not a simple thing to shop for. He comes in infinite sizes, a full spectrum of colors, and a daunting variety of postures and poses. The postures—standing, walking, reclining, or sitting in meditative bliss—are called asanas. Then, to complicate matters even further, there are the mudras: hand positions. Sometimes the Buddha’s fingers are intricately entwined in the tongue-wrestling pose called dharmachakrapravartana-mudra: “Turning the Wheel of the Law.” Or with his right palm raised: “Fear Not.” Both hands up, palms facing outward: “Calming the Ocean.” Once, at a temple in Thailand, I think I saw a gesture called “Forbidding His Relatives to Fight with One Another.”
Fortunately, I knew from the very beginning which asana and mudra I wanted. The pose is sometimes called “Subduing Mara”; but the more familiar title, which I prefer, is bhumisparsamudra: “Calling the Earth to Witness.”
That pose seemed to embody the state of mind that would fix me up once and for all—it spoke of an approach to life and to work that I needed to be reminded of constantly.
Why? Well, I think it has to do with an unconscious fear of success: a very contemporary (and peculiarly American) malaise that, much like chronic fatigue syndrome, you never even realize exists until your lover or your analyst uses it to explain what’s been wrong with you all these years. Then the indisputable accuracy of the diagnosis washes over you like a hot tide, your face burns with the sugar rush of catharsis, and you are filled with the giddy conviction that you can make it all happen after all.
And why not? I mean, if the problem is fear of success, and you can somehow eliminate the fear, then all that’s left is success: gleaming out there on the horizon like an illuminated skyline, brilliant, inevitable, you couldn’t miss it if you tried.
So why not another pose, like “Fear Not”? Well, if the only thing to fear was fear itself, then that “Fear Not” pose might be enough. But this is not just plain, ordinary fear of something like death or undercooked chicken. This is fear of success, a far more insidious foe. It elbows its way into every situation, from table tennis to romance, and takes many strange and terrible forms—not the least of which, as any writer knows, is a relentless, demonic distraction.
On the surface, this distraction may manifest as a simple desire for a pepperoni pizza or cup of espresso. You know the technique: momentary diversion. What the demon really wants to do, of course, is snatch the page right out of my typewriter carriage, read it with a sneer, and howl, “This really stinks, boy! It’s the worst kind of amateur drivel! What makes you think you can get away with inflicting this gibberish on anyone with brains enough to avoid it? What gives you the right?”
Buddha did not suffer from fear of success. He was one of those rare characters, like Joan of Arc or Lawrence of Arabia or Pablo Picasso, who know beyond a shadow of a doubt that their lives hold a particular destiny. For people like this, life is just a matter of waiting, patiently, for the appropriate moment to come before stepping, in sandals or boxer shorts, into the mythos.
Prince Siddhartha Gautama was twenty-nine years old when he vanished from his father’s plush castle at Kapilavastu—near what is now Lumbini, in southern Nepal—and set off to find the “deathless state.” He drifted from one great mystic and teacher to another—trying first yoga, then seclusion, then torturous self-denial. None of these devices satisfied him for more than a year or two. The problem wasn’t Siddhartha’s attention span; he simply mastered each new school of thought and moved on to the next curriculum, until every available doctrine had been tested—and rejected.
So Siddhartha Gautama placed himself beneath a tree and vowed to remain there, empty-headed and motionless, until he arrived at the place called enlightenment.
After seven weeks, he was close—very, very close. So close that it was just a matter of saying yes. But just as he sat there, motionless beneath that famous Bodhi tree, just as he drew in his breath for that one simple monosyllable, who should appear out of nowhere but Mara, Lord of the Underworld, who tipped his Stetson hat, adjusted his mirror sunglasses, and approached the tree beneath which the would-be Buddha was seated.
And Mara said, “Hey, good work! Congratulations! Listen, I can tell when a man needs a drink; have a whiskey sour!”
And the Buddha said, “I don’t drink!”
And Mara said, “Just one, c’mon, it’s on me.”
And the Buddha said, “No, thanks!”
And Mara said, “Well, then have a cookie!”
And the Buddha said, “No, thanks!”
And Mara said, “Oh yeah?” and summoned together his irresistibly beautiful daughters. And these girls danced for the Buddha in their Sports Illustrated bathing suits and slowly wriggled out of even those velveteen leopard-skin Neoprene suits. . . . And if you have a hard enough time keeping your eyes in your head while strolling down the streets in a Great American City on a warm spring day when you feel good lookin’ and sexy and powerful, just imagine the pitiless predatory pheromones saturating that quiet grove twenty-five hundred years ago, as Buddha sat there, possibly with a huge and final erection, and Mara’s daughters ran their long brown hands over their smooth bodies with shivers of damp anticipation.
And Buddha said, “No, thanks!”
Then Mara pulled out his own pornography collection: big, colorful full-page spreads advertising salted caramel gelato and shiny cars with all the options; iPads and saunas and really comfortable sheepskin boots; violent cartoons and gory special effects and horrible traffic accidents, the dirtiest parts of a thousand hot books condensed into a single word, incredibly realistic images of Siddhartha as a rock ‘n’ roll star and astronaut and best-selling author.
And Mara said, “All this and more, baby. C’mon, we love ya. Have a drink!”
And the Buddha said, “No, thanks!”
Mara could only sputter and gape at this individual. Finally, he nodded his head.
“Okay,” he drawled. “Okay. So you can’t be tempted. Well, bully for you. Just one last question, though. What I wanna know is this: who gives you license to sit here and decide that what you know, what you think you know, is worth hearing, let alone worth teaching? Where do you get off, claiming that you could be the Enlightened One? What gives you the right?”
Siddhartha reached down with his right hand and lightly touched the earth. There was a stillness in the grove, and Mara could see the eyes staring at him from all directions. Bird eyes, rabbit eyes, snake eyes, mole eyes, bug eyes, tree eyes, stone eyes, all peering at him, surrounding the Buddha, and the wind through the trees whistling
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. . . .
That pose: Buddha in full lotus, his left hand resting in his lap, untrembling. Fingers of the right hand gently grazing the ground. That was the pose I wanted.
Maybe someday, whilst toiling away, tottering on a wobbling log above the quicksand of deadlines and anxiety, teeth gnawing at my fingernails, flat down busted at the eternal beginning, or mired in the middle of things, thinking, “
Help! Help! Anything but this! Jeez, I know, maybe I’ll just get up and fix myself a nice whiskey sour, or grab some cookies real quick from the corner store, or, hey, why not give sweet Susie Swimsuit a call. . . .”
At that very moment, a calm, confident voice, seeming to originate from the shelf above my keyboard, will murmur,
“No, thanks!”
And I’ll look up to see those half-closed eyes; that gentle, understanding smile; that light, light, light touch on the earth—and I’ll know better.
5
This form of yours, calm yet lovely, brilliant without dazzling,
Soft but mighty—whom would it not entrance?
Whether one has seen it a hundred times, or beholds it for the first time,
Your form gives the same pleasure to the eye.
—CONZE ET AL., Buddhist Texts through the Ages
So, what does one look for in a statue of the Buddha? What makes a work of figurative art a Buddha and not, say, a Star Trek action figure or a clay bust of Elvis?
According to Matricheta, an Indian poet who lived fourteen centuries ago, the figure of a Buddha “blazes with immutable signs and marks.” You can’t miss him; in a world populated by billboards and “Beware of the Dog” signs, he stands out as radiant and unmistakable as a theater marquee: Gone with the Wind. The people of ancient India, in fact, went so far as to catalog the thirty-two major (and eighty minor!) traits that positively identify a Buddha. For the purposes of this exercise, though, this crash course in Buddha hunting, we will content ourselves with enumerating only seventeen—a nice, prime number—of the most obvious and interesting protrusions and coruscations:
Shopping for Buddhas Page 4