His words recalled a memory, a scene I’d once witnessed in Lhasa. Dozens of novice monks filled the courtyard of Sera Monastery, engaged in a debate class. They paired off, arguing philosophy in high, shrewd tones. One monk played the devil’s advocate, and the other replied. Each point of logic was underscored with histrionic gestures: The monks smacked their palms together, tossed their robes over their shoulders, and swung their prayer-bead rosaries in yo-yo-like loops. Debating skills are an integral part of Tibetan monastic training. If Buddha’s teaching is robust enough to withstand objective scrutiny, the thinking goes, any doubts or denials can be met with rational, watertight replies.
The Rinpoche cleared his throat and shifted forward on the dais. “So. Thinking logically, here is what Buddha says.
“First: Everything—trees, birds, rocks, even world, even whole universe—is impermanent.
“Second: The mind, jumping between hope and fear, creates suffering.
“Third: emptiness. All phenomena are essentially empty; nothing actually exists, or has solid form.
“Fourth: egolessness. Even the ego does not exist! There is no I.
“This what the Buddha taught. But do we trust him? Hmm?” The Rinpoche scanned the room, eyebrows raised. “Okay. First, we listen. Then, we test: like science.”
I listened to this teaching, enthralled. It was one thing to read about Buddhist philosophy in texts, or on the little cards describing Buddhist statues in museums; it was a completely different experience to hear a lively, charismatic lama explain the teachings with humor and conviction. Most of all, though, the emphasis on logic fascinated me.
And on general principles, the notion of a spiritual philosophy that could be tested (and dismissed if proved untrue!) appealed to me immensely. Science had always been my strongest subject, and direct experience was its lodestone. When we were kids, my brother, Jordan, and I had combed the nearby woods for dead birds and squirrels, dissecting them with scalpels from the local hobby shop. It wasn’t enough to read about hearts, brains, and intestines; we needed to see them. Not only that; we had to pickle them, preserving the choicest organs in baby food jars on our bedroom bookshelves.
“First, Buddha says, impermanence. True, or not?” The lama peered around the room. “Whichever way we examine, we have no choice but to believe about impermanence! Why? Because everything is changing. Always. Everything is changing, very subtly, moment to moment. Everything is impermanent.”
I nodded, knowing this to be true. I’d read about it in physics books and seen it at work on my 1979 Datsun station wagon. Nothing, large or small, lasts forever. According to the laws of entropy, the entire universe is in a state of slow death: cooling, inexorably, toward absolute zero.
Chokyi Nyima continued, as if reading my mind. “The whole world will change. Even the sun. Even the moon. But our inner world—our thinking, hoping, fearing, all our emotions—also changes. Every day, many changes. There is nothing, nothing, that does not change. Right? Hmm?”
There was a brief interruption. Two Indian children walked right in, and casually approached the Rinpoche. The eldest, a young girl, carried a bouquet wrapped in cellophane. “Oooo!” Chokyi Nyima cried. “Really good flowers! But where is a vase?! Really good flowers need a vase!” He bounced up from his seat and abruptly left the room. Dan turned toward me.
“What do you think?”
“He’s wonderful,” I said. “Very cute. Is that it?”
“I don’t think so. This kind of thing happens all the time.”
Indeed, Chokyi Nyima returned a moment later with a porcelain vase. The tightly bunched stems cleared its narrow throat with a pop, splattering water everywhere. The Rinpoche set the vase on his table with a grin, placed his hands over his knees, and leaned forward again.
“So? What next? Suffering.
“To suffer means, what? Buddha says, where there is ego, there is emotion. Therefore there are also negative emotions, and hope and fear. True?” His rhetorical question hung in the air. “We have no choice but to believe about suffering! Suffering is here. We have suffering. Ego creates the dualistic mind, and a dualistic mind means you and me. And from this idea of ‘you’ and ‘me’ come hope and fear, and many other negative emotions.
“We know about suffering and impermanence very well,” the Rinpoche concluded. “We all have direct experience, so we don’t need to doubt these two points. We have some kind of trust in them. On the one hand, trust is faith; but it’s not blind faith, because it can be tested.”
So far, I had followed his train of thought without a hitch. There was no need to apply the scientific method to impermanence, or to suffering, two facts that no one who’d ever owned a goldfish, or a human heart, could deny. But I was curious to know how the Rinpoche would “prove” the notion of emptiness. String theory, which holds that matter is a tangle of formless, energetic vibrations, had come to this notion fairly recently. Buddhist philosophers must have their own way of describing this abstract idea.
“Okay. Everyone okay? Everyone sharp?” Chokyi Nyima surveyed the room, clearly aware that the easy part of the teaching had come to an end.
“Next, Buddha says, everything is empty. Nothing is real!” The lama’s eyebrows flew up. “Now there’s trouble! Now we have trouble! But one good thing: Buddha says, ‘Please check well! Don’t trust only me. Don’t trust only what I say. Check yourself, to see if this makes sense or not.’ So, we are allowed to check! We are happy to check! Even if we trust Buddha, even if we respect the dharma, Buddha said, ‘Check.’ So, we check. We examine.
“The problem is this: Everything seems to exist. We say that everything is empty, but we have no direct experience of that. We need to have some kind of proof. But what is our proof? So far our proof is seeing, touching, hearing, feeling. This table . . .” He moved the vase of flowers onto the floor. “. . . is here. I see it; that’s proof it exists.” Chokyi Nyima leaned forward and banged the wooden surface with his fist, rattling his teacup. “Touching: second proof. And sound.” He banged the table again. “Third proof. And hurting!” He smacked the table sharply with his palm. “Aieee! Fourth proof that table exists!
“So! There’s many proofs that table exists. But these proof are very, very low proofs. Very, very, very gross proofs. Why? Hmmm?” He waited for an answer, but received none. “Because they rely on our senses.
“But there are other proofs; proofs that will show that the table does not exist. How? If we really check well, we find . . . what? That all things, all objects, are created of atoms. But the smallest atom itself does not exist! Why? Because everything that exists has at least six sides: east, west, north, south, up, down. To have size, must have sides. If no sides, then no size. And the atom, if we try to examine, ends up being size-less; point-less. Even the physicists say so: An atom does not really exist. Only if you look for it, then it seems to exist!”
Though not entirely convincing, I did find these observations intriguing. They recalled Fritjof Capra’s Tao of Physics, a reminder that Western scientists were not the first to plumb the subatomic world.
I was also aware that this teaching, all the Saturday teachings, were a superficial introduction to a subject that might take a lifetime, or many lifetimes, to master. This morning’s session was not designed to enlighten, but to stimulate. It was working; I was already thinking of this as the beginning of something, the first of many teachings that I would attend over the coming months.
“Finally,” Chokyi Nyima continued, “The Buddha says, egolessness. And this, maybe, is the most difficult of all. Because we really, really think ‘I’ exists. We are very sure ‘I’ exists. We think the ego is me, I. And that I am here . . .” (he pointed to himself) “. . . and not there.” (Pointing to a woman at the front of the room). “Isn’t it?
“But where am ‘I’? Can we pinpoint ‘I’? We think the body is ‘I.’ But no; the body is not me; it’s my body. Is my name me? No; my name is not me; it’s my name!” He glanced around ea
gerly, clearly enjoying this riddle. “I know! My mind is me! But wait…my mind is not me. It’s my mind. It belongs to me, but it is not me! So what’s me?!” Heads shook throughout the room, a silent chorus of befuddlement.
“It’s complicated,” Chokyi Nyima admitted. “But true! My body is not me. My name is not me. My mind is not me. These three things are mine.
“But where is the owner? We cannot find the me to which these things belong! Yes? No? Right? You!”
Chokyi Nyima looked directly at me, tugging the silk kata I’d given him with both hands. “You, with the neck like a giraffe! What is your name?”
“Jeff.” The room rollicked at my expense.
“Jeff. Even sounds like giraffe. No? Jeff. Gireff. Jaff. Giraffe. Right? Right? Ha ha ha! Very good!” He slapped his leg with delight. “If I say Jeff—or Giraffe!—you think, me. Oh, oh! Me! You don’t think, ‘Jeff is my name.’ You think, ‘Jeff is me. Me and Jeff are one.’ Same with the body. My body. Also, same with thinking. My mind. Today my mind is happy; today my mind is not happy. Isn’t it?” I nodded dumbly. “So it seems there is a me in there somewhere—hiding. But where? Can we find it? No! Very strange! Very complicated! But we cannot find! Whose name? Whose body? Whose mind? Who?!”
I was unable to reply. Fortunately, I didn’t have to. The monk who had poured my tea approached the lama and whispered something. Chokyi Nyima looked at his watch, nodded, and turned back to his students.
“Today we talked so many things,” he concluded. “Talked God; talked Buddhism. Talked logic; talked faith. But most important, we talked about the basic conditions: Impermanence, Suffering, Emptiness, Egolessness. Hmm?”
No one could disagree.
“So, please: Think well; examine well. Test well! And we will discuss more, later. Okay?” He adjusted his robes again. “Finished. Now, necessary to perform puja.” He tapped his wrist. “Good watch. Very important. These days, we can time our puja exactly. Start at the exact right second. Split second,” he added wryly. “What did we do before watches? Maybe everything went wrong! One second early! Split second late! Oh! Oh!”
He stood up, but his students remained seated.
“Lhosar, Tibetan New Year, is coming. Many pujas! So next Saturday, no teaching.” There was a collective sigh of disappointment. “Maybe Monday. Call and see.” He looked at me. “You have my number?” I shook my head. “No? Get it from this monk. Giraffe is always welcome. Free from the zoo, always welcome! Right? Ha ha ha!” With that, he left the room.
“You’re a hit,” Dr. Dan said.
We left to find our shoes. A few students cast me amused smiles. My own feelings were bittersweet. Though it was flattering the Rinpoche had noticed me, I couldn’t pretend to enjoy hearing my schoolyard nickname revived.
3
Black Armbands
THE MORNING WAS clear, cold, and fogless. Barefoot devotees filled the sidewalks, returning from their morning pujas at the neighborhood shrines. A small crowd thronged the vermilion-smeared Ganesh next to the Candy Cane Cold Store, lighting incense and offering flowers and fruit.
I hit a pothole, and my Nikon bounced against my back like a sharp-nosed papoose. After a short uphill climb, Maharajganj Teaching Hospital appeared to my left. It was a high brick edifice with few architectural pretensions and a dry, trampled lawn. Dozens of doctors, nurses, and orderlies stood in front of the main entrance, holding signs. All wore stethoscopes—as if to prove, touchingly, that they really were doctors. An instant later I guessed the real reason: The stethoscopes were stage props, for the benefit of the press. Trained in the Western world, these doctors understood the power of images. Though it was unlikely many newspapers would run a story on the strike, a captioned photo might make the cut.
News of this historic strike, the first by the doctors and staff of Nepal’s most prestigious hospital—by any urban professionals in Kathmandu—would appear in the San Francisco Examiner within twenty-four hours. Filing that report was my job—though at the moment, it felt more like a privilege.
The events that provoked the doctors’ action had stunned the entire valley. They’d begun two weeks ago, when thousands of university students in Pokhara, a lakeside town in central Nepal, gathered to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. Armed police troops arrived. The scene descended into violence: Six teenagers were shot, and hundreds arrested.
And last Sunday—February 18, “Democracy Day”—the crisis reached a head. The holiday was created to honor Tribhuvan, the present king’s grandfather: a worldly ruler who’d pledged reforms, but died before he could deliver. Far from celebrating his legacy, the day was a flash point for passionate demonstrations across the country.
Undaunted, the police had cleared the streets for the official parade. A cardboard cutout of the waving King Tribhuvan bounced along Durbar Marg in a horse-drawn cart, its right arm pulled up and down by a string. When the figure was pelted with stones, the troops charged the crowd. By nightfall, half a dozen demonstrators and a policeman lay dead.
I PARKED MY bike by a wall where, in the event of another riot, it might be protected from bricks and tear gas canisters. Shrugging my left shoulder forward swung the Nikon around my torso and into my hands. There was an interesting photo shaping up near the police truck. I could get the silhouetted soldiers, wearing olive green riot gear, in the foreground. The doctors, dressed in white lab coats and holding their protest signs aloft, formed a human chain beyond.
This would need a long lens: I wanted everything flat and sharp. Moving toward the anemic flower bed that would provide my angle for the photograph, I saw I wasn’t alone. A determined, dark-haired woman wearing a khaki photographer’s vest and three cameras slung around her neck beat me to the position. She pulled a shot, grimacing as she focused. I guessed she was with Reuters, or the AP; she had the earnest, entitled posture of someone who intrudes on other people for a living.
It would look like I was stealing her shot, but there wasn’t a lot of choice. She bristled when she saw me, but it was more a “don’t-bother-me-I’m-busy” scowl than a territorial snarl. She was quite pretty, I thought. Or, if not pretty, attractive—if you went for women with lipstick stains on the backs of their Nikons. I liked her shoes: red Converse All Stars with yellow laces, a dash of color in her otherwise functional uniform.
I felt an urge to make conversation, but decided to let her be. We had pictures to take and, for my part, interviews as well. I snapped a 135-millimeter lens onto my camera’s bayonet mount, narrowed the aperture, and advanced the film with my thumb. The lever moved without resistance, and when I looked at the frame counter I realized why: There was no film in the camera. My vivid memory of loading a camera the previous night was accurate—but I’d loaded my point-and-shoot, not my Nikon. The clamshell Olympus was still sitting on my night table, atop a pirated edition of The Bonfire of the Vanities. I was screwed.
There was nothing to do but ask the woman. She performed a quick double-take as I approached.
“Hi, excuse me. Can I ask you a favor?”
“What might that be?” She gave me a slightly wolfish appraisal, then glanced at the settings on her camera.
I took her in. She was on the tall side, slender but sturdy, with vivid hazel eyes and thick chestnut hair looped through a dark green scrunchie. Up close, high cheekbones and a wide, animated mouth lent her face a larger-than-life, celebrity quality. I felt I’d seen her somewhere—on a news broadcast, or a late-night comedy special. Or maybe I’d just sat across from her at Mike’s Breakfast. People start to look familiar fast in Kathmandu.
“I’m shooting f8 at 125,” she offered, “if your meter’s broken.”
“No,” I said. “You’ll never believe this, but I forgot to load my camera. Or bring extra film. Incredibly stupid.”
“It happens.” She grinned. “Or so I’ve heard.”
“Right. So . . . Have you got an extra roll I can borrow? Or buy?”
“Or beg?”
�
�I am begging.”
“Black and white, or color?”
“Black and white would be perfect.”
She fished through the pockets of her vest, probing half a dozen before she found a stash of Plus-X. “Here, take two.”
“Thanks a million. Listen, let me pay you for these.”
“Forget it. I appreciate the opportunity to even out my karmic debts.”
“I’m going to run over there and load this,” I said, raising my chin toward the shadow of a brick wall. “Will you be here awhile?”
“I live here. My name’s Grace.” She extended her hand, which was small and cool.
“Jeff.”
“Yeah. I’ve seen you around. Didn’t you write that book, with the great title? What was it?”
“Mr. Raja’s Neighborhood.” Recognition is the ultimate aphrodisiac. I was suddenly eager to know this woman. “I’m surprised you’ve read it.”
“I haven’t,” she shrugged. “I just like the title.”
This seemed the appropriate moment to end our conversation. I made the ritual noises and moved away to load up.
THE MORNING PASSED without incident. The doctors walked in a wide circle, joined by scores of laypeople and patients, and chanted political slogans. The soldiers slouched in their flatbed truck, smoking cigarettes and annoying each other with their bayonets. I shot a full roll and decided to call it a day, as far as picture-taking was concerned. There wasn’t a big story here—no violence—but there was someone I wanted to meet before I left.
He was leaning against a brick column near the hospital doorway, talking to a local reporter. Dr. Mishra was unusually tall for a Nepali, with graying hair and a calm, paternal air. He wore a quilted black topi—the traditional soft, brimless Nepali hat—and fiddled with the bell of his stethoscope. A cardboard sign tacked to a stake leaned on the wall behind him, upside down, like a discarded shadow puppet. The reporter paused in his questioning as I approached, acknowledging with a nod the priority given to foreign press. Such behavior had initially embarrassed me, but I had learned to accept it gracefully.
Snake Lake Page 3
