We were able to visit her twice more before leaving Thailand. I wanted to discuss what had happened – to the extent we could within prison walls – and learn more about how she was handling it all. Molly told us she missed her children desperately, talked to them whenever she was allowed a call, and took comfort in their being cared for in Canada. Her church friends visited and kept her in basic supplies, so that she wanted really for very little. “I spend my days reading the scriptures,” she said. “That’s enough for me now.” I got it. What a salvation for her to lay back in the mythic embrace of the benevolent Father. She could feel safe at last.
James and I had talked about her substituting her dependence on Daniel for her dependence on God, but neither one of us dare tug on the life preserver of a drowning person as we sailed past her. Still, I did talk to Molly about the karmic connection she had with her soul mate – none of which she believed in anymore – while James emphasized that everything was her own creation, even the strength to get through this ordeal.
Molly described her long relationship with Daniel. “I was brainwashed! He convinced me that he really was the Christ or the new Buddha and it was up to us to bring in the Good to finally triumph over Evil. I was the new Eve birthing the new generation of children. Eve had brought sin into the world, and our love was the greatest love of all time that would change everything. When the balance tipped to the Good, then we would be able to be together.
“Now I see he was Lucifer – he was so beautiful and could do all the supernatural tricks – but truly he was the Devil. I was led astray by the Devil.”
Keeping my loving gaze upon her, I said, “The Devil, the Adversary, the counterforce – the one who teaches by contrast. He is willful against Universal Law. But OK, I can see where you’re coming from. Tell me, when did you start to suspect Daniel wasn’t the Messiah he claimed to be?”
“Oh Becca,” Molly heaved a sorrowful sigh. “Last time you and I were together – remember? – I was beginning to question my relationship with him.”
“Yes, I remember. Back in 2004,” I said.
“I began talking with a girlfriend here. It was the first time, except for with you, that I talked with anyone about him. And just hearing myself say some things... well, they sounded... wrong. Then Adelle was having such a rough time being a teenager; she was bulimic, and I really began pressing George – you know his real name was George Patrick? – to get her some help. And he’d say, ‘It’s OK, I’ll get her a pink cell phone,’ and I began to realize that he was not here for the children... that he’d never been here for the children. He even denied Delilah was his child! Can you believe it?”
“That was what you quarreled about at the Good Earth Restaurant that day?”
“Yeah. I was demanding money he had promised us, and for him to be some kind of real father. Oh, Becca, it was all unraveling. The whole dream, the whole story. It was all unraveling, and I couldn’t stop it.”
“You wanted your dignity,” I summarized.
“Yeah, I couldn’t go back to living the way it was before. It was all unraveling... and then it went terribly wrong.”
We sat across from each other in silence for a moment as tears filled her eyes. Then I saw strength narrow her focus and the tears subsided. She went on, “I was deceived by Lucifer, and that’s why I was so confused. I did wrong things in my life, and now I want to ask forgiveness from everyone I wronged.”
“Well, you can take us off that list,” I said, smiling. “And the jealousy you felt, and the lack of trust with men, and your insecurities?”
“I don’t think about any of that anymore. I am completely filled with the Holy Spirit. I have a new life now.”
“OK Molly,” I said. “The main thing I want to know is: are you free now?”
“Oh yes! Freer than I have ever been!”
Molly’s trial, in which she pleaded guilty to the shooting, created a sensation in Thailand. When Judge Pusayapaiboon read the verdict, he said the following: “The court views that the defendant committed the crime as charged, but did it in a rage after being provoked, pressured and beaten.” There was the “battered woman defense” straight out of The Burning Bed! She was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. Newspapers noted it was “one of the lightest sentences ever delivered for a foreigner charged with murder.”
I got my time to lie in the sun. Lulled by the lapping of the lake, I let my body be weighed down by the warm humidity down here, at a much lower altitude than our home in the Rockies, recently blanketed in snow. Taos was far away now. Across the lake came sounds of a bell being rung. There must be a Buddhist temple nearby. With each gong of the bell, I felt myself in the present moment, here by this serene lake in jungle-green northern Thailand, our place to rest between America and India. Thoughts tried to nudge their way into my mind, but I kept my focus on being suspended between places, floating on each resonant tone of the bell.
I felt Molly in my heart, and gratitude for her safety soothed me. She would be fine, and when she got out of prison in a little over a year, she would reconstruct her life. We might then speak about many things.
A big fluffy white cloud covered the sun, and a breeze sent ripples across the lake. Wrapping myself in a sarong, I mindlessly wandered through the gardens of the resort, which we had to ourselves. What with the civil unrest in Bangkok, there were no tourists around. I picked a red hibiscus and put it in my ear, Hawaiian style. Soon I came upon a spirit house, the shrine that Thai people construct in front of their houses. Resting on a cement pillar, the mini-temple housed a golden Buddha flanked by plastic Thai dancer dolls, red ribbons, and small vases of white orchids. In front of the spirit house was a platform on which rested a pot of incense sticks and a silver tray with a glass of milk, a glass of water, and a plate with white rice, an orange, and a banana. Perhaps this was the spirit house of the hotel? No, for me this was the spirit house of Thailand! Bowing with hands clasped at my heart, I uttered thanks to this country, the Land of the Free, where my friend had found her own liberation within the walls of a prison. Placing the red hibiscus on the shrine, I turned to walk away. My bare feet caressed the well-trimmed grass, making me mindful again of each step I placed on the surface of the big, round Earth. The pilgrimage to India had begun.
HIMALAYAN HIGH
I like maps. As a planetary citizen, I love thumbing through an atlas and dreaming of the whole wide world. One autumn day in Taos I emerged from the toilet, atlas in hand, and announced to James, “Did you ever notice that Nepal is between Thailand and India? In fact, Kathmandu is on the way from Bangkok to Delhi!”
“Right on the way, huh? Why is it I get the feeling Venus and Her Lover is going to Nepal?” James asked.
Before he could digress into the logical pros and cons of such a detour and consult a map that would reveal it was not exactly on the way from Bangkok to Delhi, I hastily added, “You know Tibetan Buddhism is one of the main streams of Tantra? Short of going to Tibet – which is being squelched by China anyway – don’t you think we actually have to go to a Tibetan Buddhist place... like Nepal?”
That is what got us onto the top of this hill above Kathmandu on a sunny, deep blue sky day in December, beholding the white-washed dome of Vasubandu Stupa, across which scampered tawny-haired monkeys. Frilly like a snazzily dressed teenager, the stupa was festooned with lines and lines of prayer flags in white, red, green, yellow, and blue that flapped enthusiastically in the nippy breeze, each flap dispatching a prayer across the valley and out into the world, or so the Buddhists believed. For spiritual technology, the Tibetan Buddhists are beyond compare, as I had learned by practicing the phowa prayers to accompany my dying father, but as for prayer wheels whose one spin was as good as you reciting the whole mantra, and prayer flags which emitted the prayer inscribed on it with every flap... well, I guess their efficacy depended on your intention. On this day, I was happy to broadcast, thro
ugh those little squares of color, my gratitude for being in Nepal.
While this little country was noteworthy for its peaceful mingling of the cultures of its giant neighbors (Tibet, China, and India), the pre-eminent authority that dictated the climate, history, architecture, endurance, and inventiveness of its people – as well as a sincere reverence (“Yes, Your Majesty!”) – was the Himalayan Mountains. Even through the choking smog of Kathmandu, the mountains made their presence felt. Mother Gaia’s flair for the dramatic was evident here, where the Indian subcontinent had been crashing into Eurasia for the past 130 million years (and was still crashing), with enough force to bend and fold seabed into the highest mountains on Earth. Rammed by underground upheaval, pummeled by monsoon rains and snowstorms, and continually jabbed by grinding glaciers, the young mountain range nonetheless crouched proudly on its jagged haunches, its regal white peaks trumping the horizon line with its imposing physique. Did its crystalline granite lend power to this legendary range? Quartz crystal is known to store, focus, transmit and transform energy, making it valuable for healing and balancing. The pyramid shapes of some of the mountains must be amplifying the effects; no wonder the Himalayas exude spiritual influence.
Traditional thought held that Lord Shiva dwelled on snowy Mt. Meru, and Mt. Kailash, just over the border in Tibet, dropped its weighty axis at “the center of the Universe.” Mt. Everest (named for a man), the highest mountain on Earth, stood in Nepal; it was called Sagarmatha in Nepali, or Chomolungma in Tibetan, named after the feminine “Goddess-Mother of the Universe.” Our whole time there, James and I felt the apus of the Himalayas bearing witness to our journey.
While I do not mind whiling away hours in the embrace of an atlas or history book, James and I generally do not plan an itinerary before visiting somewhere new; we enjoy receiving first impressions and discovering whatever appears in our path. So it was with Swayambhunath Hill. We did not know the story about it being the island that rose out of the primordial sea, the site where the Vipaswi Buddha sowed a lotus of a thousand petals. From the lotus flower arose a magical blue flame, called Swayambhujoti (“self-originating”), thereby attracting many pilgrims, including Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, who drained the inland sea to bestow the fertile Kathmandu Valley upon humans, or so the story goes. A stupa was erected to enclose the power of the magical blue flame, which still attracts Hindu as well as Buddhist pilgrims to this very day, making it one of the oldest and holiest shrines in Nepal.
We also did not know that because it embodied so many essential elements of Tibetan Buddhism, it was called “the cradle of Vajrayana” ...in other words, a perfect destination for our stated intention of the Nepal trip. We had simply begun our first day in Nepal by going to see “a monkey temple.”
Vajrayana (Tibetan/Tantric) Buddhism, whose emblem is a Buddha seated in yab-yum embrace with his female lover, regarded women as “bestowers of wisdom” and recognized that Tantric practice could benefit both sexes equally, and in fact, ideally a man and woman would be partners and co-creators in their mutual journey to enlightenment. Most Tantric texts from the eighth to twelfth centuries, in both Tibetan and Sanskrit, were written by women or by men who acknowledged they were disciples of female gurus.134 So while my concept of Vajrayana (Tantric/Tibetan) Buddhism was mostly populated by male lamas, rinpoches, and monks, the tradition was, in truth, thoroughly grounded in egalitarianism and balanced partnership values. Hurrah!
On the climb up the stairs to the hilltop, I went ahead of James, and the first place I wandered into was a small, dark room at the back of a whitewashed building. None of the pilgrims or tourists stopped there, but I felt drawn in. Once my eyes accustomed to the shadowy interior, I marveled at one thing after another... flanked by stone statues of apparent garuda bird-gods, a large brass niche or door carved with facial features – big black eyes with a third eye above encrusted with offerings of vermillion powder, and at the mouth (or was it a yoni?) were inscriptions in Tibetan and a garland of decapitated heads, the old symbol for triumph over the ego. At the base of the niche, people had laid offerings of poinsettias, yellow marigolds, and rice. Inscribed on a raised brass platform was a gleaming six-pointed star, indicating the interpenetration and balance of the Masculine and the Feminine. On the walls were faded but still colorful paintings and carvings of seated Buddha figures and snakes – lots of snakes... kundalini energy! This was a Tantric sanctuary!
Indeed. I had stumbled into the Shantipur Temple, a Tantric sanctum used by Vajrayana Buddhist priests. I felt so at home there, surrounded by familiar imagery, I dropped to my knees in humility and appreciation. This solemn chamber was not like the fine-lined thangka paintings showing Buddha and consort in sublime yab-yum embrace... no – here felt more like Kali’s lair, a place of Tantric initiation where attachments were cut away and old identities sacrificed to clear the way for union with the Divine. As I kneeled there, a knot of sorrow unwound in my chest and filtered down into the cold earth. I allowed myself to be cradled by the terrible, bittersweet joy of reality, as I comprehended how much māyā (illusion) I still had to surrender before I could truly go home. At the same time, I felt like I was already there.
Eventually I heard James’ voice talking with someone outside the door, convincing them to leave me alone. It was a Nepali tour guide wanting to show us around. When I emerged into the sunlight, James and I walked on to take in the further wonders of Swayambhunath Hill.
The five elements are represented at various statues and shrines on the hill, but a focal point for them is the Swayambhunath Stupa. The main stupa at the top of the hill made a striking presence, with its softly rounded, white hemisphere onto which yellow paint was flung in the shape of flower petals. On top of it rested a yellow cube-shaped structure on which were painted the famous “Buddha eyes,” which was topped by thirteen concentric gold rings rising into a cone (representing the thirteen steps you must master to attain enlightenment), which was in turn topped by a golden parasol that symbolized nirvana.
Since Venus and Her Lover had unfolded through five elements, we found it quite synchronous that we were beginning the fifth element (our pilgrimage to India) here at Swayambhunath in Nepal, a physical representation of the five energies of the Kosmos. According to the Guhyasamaja Tantra, an early Buddhist text, the Buddha, while in meditation, projected himself into five different apparitions. Every one a different color, these dhyani Buddhas were seated on thrones, each one with a lover in his lap; in other words, each energy divided into its masculine and feminine aspects. In thangka paintings, the five dhyani (meditation Buddhas) appear arranged in a circle around a central Buddha, allowing the Buddhist practitioner to contemplate the corresponding energies and carry them into meditation to resolve within their own egos and habits. This was the great spiritual power of the mandala.
When James got into friendly conversation at a school of Tibetan thangka painters, aside from sharing their artist stories, we learned that the stupa is actually a three-dimensional representation of the mandala. Wow! Suddenly my concept of the mandala leaped off its flat surface and loomed, larger than life, as a huge round mansion with grand halls and dark corners, wherein dwelled distinctly different Buddhas with whom I could converse about my issues, trials, and realizations. Or the mandala could be a whole planet, with diverse regions that shaped the perceptions and creations of the people dwelling there, and by my pilgrimages there, I could pull together all the parts of myself – the trusting, fearful, egotistical, compassionate, joyful, angry, and so on... To give just one example from the Buddhist Tantra mandala: in the north sat the Amoghasiddhi Buddha making love with the goddess Tara. Their color was green, and the attendant creature was the garuda bird. In the element of air, they were dealing with the concept of jealousy – you could say they were “green with jealousy” – and their spiritual lovemaking was aided by the presence of the dakini Rajaki (Vajri) whose talents of strength, mental concentration, and spiritual intuiti
on, would allow them to attain an all-pervading wisdom.
Presented simply, here are the five elements that the Vajrayana (Tibetan/Tantric) Buddhists built into the Swayambhunath Stupa:
The central dome houses the Vairocana dhyani Buddha (with consort White Tara), whose symbol is the wheel and whose sound is Om. His color is white and he embodies space, or the void or aether, from wherein emerges the impulse of the Creative Force. It is his eyes that are painted, as if with a huge eyeliner brush, on the four sides of the golden structure above the dome; they send forth waves of wisdom and compassion to the four directions, to finally conquer the world’s delusions. Below his eyes is a squiggle where his nose would be, in the form of the Nepali number one, representing unity.
In the east sits the blue Buddha Aksobhya and consort Locanā, whose element is water (or sky), and through which anger and hate can be conquered. With nondualist wisdom and humility, consciousness is realized.
On the south face is the shrine of the yellow Buddha Ratnasambhava and consort Mamaki. With their grounding energy of earth, egoism, pride, greed, and emotional attachments can give way to equanimity and generosity.
The western niche holds the red Buddha Amitabha and consort Pandara; their fire can burn away attachments. Selfishness is defeated through inquisitive perception and meditation.
In the north sits the green Buddha Amoghasiddhi and consort Green Tara, who use the power of air to prevail over jealousy and envy. The power to pacify and accomplish releases the mind from rigid concepts and opens the way to fearlessness.
Venus and Her Lover Page 29
