Rebecca returned from her assigned errand, carrying a small paper bag. The lama nodded at her, placed the bag inside the fold of his robe, and scanned the room for fresh queries. I raised my hand. The Rinpoche nodded.
“What,” I asked, “is enlightenment?”
A few people chuckled, but I wasn’t offended. I suspected this was a query most of them had raised themselves in private, if not at the open teachings.
“Hmmm.” Chokyi Nyima elongated his lower lip. “Many people, all the time, say, ‘Enlightenment, enlightenment.’ But who knows what enlightenment is? Hmm?” He gestured to me. “What do you think?”
“Me?” I fumbled for words. “Well . . . On the one hand, I think it’s just a state of mind: the ability to see the world as it is, without preconceptions.” The Rinpoche nodded. “On the other hand, it seems like a kind of mental field goal . . .”
“A what?”
“. . . a prize. An explosion of light, and a dozen buddhas swooping out of the sky on flaming rainbows to shake your hand and buy you lunch.”
Chokyi Nyima nodded. He shifted his legs beneath him, rocking slightly from side to side. “Okay. Let’s make it simple. The Tibetan word for enlightenment is sang gye. Sang means ‘purified.’ All disturbing emotions and ignorance are purified. Then, gye. Gye means that all the qualities associated with enlightenment—wisdom and compassion—are perfected. So enlightened means ‘fully purified and perfected.’ Do you understand?”
I mumbled my consent, and the Rinpoche continued.
“Disturbing emotions, and ignorance: These are bad. Wisdom is good. So our main job, in this precious human lifetime, is to purify all our negative emotions, and fully develop wisdom. When this happens—when one is fully purified, fully perfected—one becomes a buddha.
“That is the meaning of enlightenment. Simple meaning!” The Rinpoche grinned. “Complicated meaning I have, also. But not right now.” He craned his neck and surveyed the other students. “Okay? Other question?”
No one responded, so I decided to make a nuisance of myself.
“Listening to your letters,” I said, “made me uncomfortable. You clearly have a lot of students who are trying to meditate and purify their emotions. But they’re miserable! All they want is to be happy, or relaxed. But something’s holding them back. What is it? What’s keeping them from becoming happy?”
“That’s a very good question. No?” Chokyi Nyima peered at Rebecca, who nodded eagerly. “The main obstacles to awakening,” he said, “are hope and fear. These arise directly from the ego: from the illusion that ‘I’ exists.” He held one hand palm-down over the coffee table, and pointed at the resulting shadow. “The hand is like the ego. This, the shadow, is hope and fear. Without the hand, no shadow. Without ego, no hope or fear. Understand?” I nodded. “Good! So. Hope and fear are big problems. The biggest problems. But they are not the enemy!” He paused. “Who? Who is our real enemy?”
Five people answered in unison. “Ego!” They looked so pleased with themselves that I had to laugh.
“Ego,” Chokyi Nyima affirmed. “The one who really disturbs us is our ego. And that is within ourselves.
“If you have an ego, you cling to me. Then, automatically, some kind of you is created. And you is not me! That duality creates a subtle fear—and a subtle anger arises, as well. Because the very idea of me creates a kind of selfishness. This is the cause of many types of negative emotion: anger, envy, greed. It can create extreme problems. So the root is right there, in me. It is not a small root!
“Buddha showed the truth: the cause of samsara, of rebirth and suffering, is ego. The cause of nirvana, of liberation, is wisdom, or egolessness. Wisdom is within us; ego is also within us. We are good; we are bad. We are demons; we are buddhas. We contain the cause of samsara; we contain the cause of nirvana. Both are within ourselves! Isn’t it?” He surveyed the group with raised eyebrows.
“Now enough. Time finished. Go enjoy yourself. Practice well, and don’t get drunk!” He grinned broadly, like a cartoon egg. “Lhosar comes, everyone drinks chang, falls down steps. Okay?” The students rose, favoring their knees.
The Rinpoche turned to me. “You! Stay one minute. The rest can go.” He waved them out. “Happy Lhosar!”
AS THE ROOM emptied, Chokyi Nyima picked up the bag that Rebecca had brought and removed a small stack of greeting cards. He flipped through them, finally finding the one he was looking for.
“Okay!” The lama beamed with satisfaction. “You give a gift, I also give. This is for you.” He held the card out with both hands, ceremoniously.
I reddened. “Rinpoche, it’s really not necessary . . .”
“Take, take!” He pushed it into my hands and closed my fingers around it. “You keep in your room. Make frame, put on wall. Very beautiful!”
I looked at the card. It was a view of the African savanna. In the foreground, a giraffe nibbled at the high branches of a tree.
“If ever forget what you look like, look at this. Okay? Okay? Ha ha ha ha ha!”
I accepted the gift with thanks. Life was very strange. Who could have predicted that my initiation into Tibetan Buddhism would include this kind of mockery? I had no idea why the Rinpoche was lavishing his attention on me, or why it was taking this particular form. Still, I wasn’t going to discourage him. After only two meetings, we had developed a relationship. It delighted me. Shouldering a nickname (of a rather elegant and attractive animal, if the truth be told) was a small price to pay.
I stood up. Chokyi Nyima rose as well, taking his mobile phone from the couch. “Now lunch,” he informed me, adjusting his robes. “Then puja. Lhosar time, so many pujas! Giraffe . . . You come next Saturday, also. A little early, so we can talk. Maybe 9:30. Yes?”
“Yes.” I took his hand, affection welling through me. “Thank you, Rinpoche. Have a wonderful New Year.”
He smiled. “If you come to Boudha on Lhosar, after three days, please visit. Just to say hello. I give special blessing. Many people are coming. We’ll drink chang!” The Rinpoche released my hand and left for his quarters, closing the door behind him.
14
Swayambhunath
WHEN THE TEACHING ended I jumped onto my motorcycle, hoping to reach the American Express office before it closed for lunch.
My ride from Boudha to downtown Kathmandu passed in a giddy adrenaline rush. Cars wove between oncoming traffic; the lines in the road might as well have been painted by Jackson Pollock. Piles of garbage punctuated the intersections, grazed at by bulls and cows who could, at any instant, lumber into my path. Driving required the concentration of a complex pinball game, but a single mistake might spell death. I zipped along in a state of sublime awareness, eyes gazing straight ahead, my peripheral vision twitching: meditation at gunpoint.
The door to American Express was open. A single envelope awaited, addressed in a familiar hand. The arrival of a second communication from Jordan within one week spooked me; I hadn’t even responded to the first.
Normally, I’d trot over to the Nanglo and read the letter right away. This time, it seemed best to wait. I needed some spiritual protection, a layer of insulation to blunt my anxiety about Jordan’s condition and help me fashion a response. On an impulse I decided to drive up to Swayambhunath: the famous “Monkey Temple” on the northwest edge of town.
I TOOK THE crosstown route, circling the bandstand at Chhetrapati. The usually vibrant neighborhood was quiet. A teacher’s strike was in progress; people were lying low. I crossed the Vishnumati on a wooden bridge, climbed past the Vajra Hotel, and continued along a narrow, tree-lined road that led to the foot of the ancient temple’s stairway. The northern fields of the valley lay to my right, vivid green, ending abruptly at the foothills of the Himalaya. Swayambhunath loomed ahead: a high, wooded hill, crowned by the white snowball of the temple’s dome.
Two street urchins skipped toward me as I parked beside the temple’s arched gate. Their palms were out, demanding protection money. We agreed
on 5 rupees: 2 in advance, and 3 when I reclaimed my bike, with tires and mirrors intact.
The final approach to the temple is a climb of more than three hundred steep stone steps, worn into deep grooves by the feet of countless pilgrims. After eleven years I was intimate with the route and gratified by the unchanging procession of Buddha statues, mani stones, and shrines that lined the way. Seeing them reminded me of my first visit to Nepal, and the overwhelming mystery embodied by these sacred stones and their hand-painted eyes. I’d shot hundreds of photos in an effort to possess the place, somehow imagining that it could escape, or that I could somehow lose it.
Monkeys leaped through the trees, dropping down to pilfer discarded mango skins, pick lice from their coats, and generally terrorize each other. If these were Hanuman’s cousins, something in the gene pool had gone horribly awry. Despite their nasty, aggressive nature, the primates were usually harmless—as long as you didn’t try to sneak past them with a sack of bananas.
The final section pitched steeply upward, more a ladder than a stairway. Statues of the five divine vehicles—a bird-woman, peacock, horse, elephant, and lion—watched impassively as I clung to the metal handrail, pulling myself upward.
Reaching the summit, I paused to catch my breath, staggered a few steps forward, and touched my forehead to an enormous bronze vajra: a highly stylized thunderbolt that, symbolizing the indestructible clarity of the awakened mind, rested on a circular pedestal at the crest of the stairs. The vajra’s base was surrounded by a group of Nepali teenagers wearing designer jeans and smoking Yak cigarettes. Behind and above them, the great white dome of Swayambhunath’s stupa rose into the sky. Deep inside are the sacred relics of revered lamas, and perhaps cremation bones from the Buddha himself. No one knows for sure. The stupa is inviolable; there is no access to its innermost chamber.
Swayambhu (the nath adds “place of worship”) truncates in a broad, flat plaza, dominated by the gigantic white stupa: the oldest relic of the valley’s creation. After Manjushri had raised his sword and drained the primordial lake (the surface of which had been graced, you will recall, by a flaming lotus), the flower’s root system condensed to form a hill. Atop the hill sat Swayambhu: the flower’s inner flame, now crystallized into a radiant gem. The Newars who settled the valley became the jewel’s custodians. One of their first gestures was to cover it with a white stupa, sometime around the fourth century. The point was to protect the gem from a predicted “Age of Confusion”—an era that, I strongly suspect, is currently in progress.
Swayambhu’s dome isn’t as big as Boudha’s. But its location, commanding a view of the entire valley, is stunning. On clear days the Langtang and Ganesh Himalaya tower above the northern foothills, blinding white against the shimmering sky.
To the left of the big bronze vajra is a flagstone courtyard. Pilgrims and visitors can relax in the plaza, eat peanuts, and take in the view. Today there was something new: a local entrepreneur had set up a small telescope and was charging 5 rupees for a look through the lens. I paid the fee and swung the scope away from the mountaintops. After a minute I located Nag Pokhari, a few arc-seconds beyond the palace. My neighborhood shrine seemed inconsequential at this distance: a tiny square of gray-green felt, with a spark of gold teetering in its center. A slight nudge upward was my house, all but hidden behind quivering trees. Familiar blips of color hung on the clothesline.
And there was Grace’s flat. Or was hers the one with two water tanks on the roof?
A pair of Indian honeymooners waited behind me; the groom cleared his throat. I readjusted the scope and stepped off the viewing platform. Jordan’s letter crinkled in my pocket, feeling like something alive.
Swayambhu is covered with a maze of buildings, temples, and shrines. I began my circumambulation, walking clockwise around the stupa. Burnished prayer wheels snaked around the perimeter of the dome, punctuated by small niches containing figures of buddhas and various saints. I spun the heavy drums—creaking copper cylinders as plump and warm as Thanksgiving turkeys—and tossed coins into the laps of the gods.
HALFWAY AROUND THE dome is a compact, two-story temple built in typical Nepali style, with gilt pagoda rooftops and carved wooden lintels. The little Hariti temple is usually packed; despite its small size, it’s the most popular temple on the hill.
Hariti was an ogress who lived during Buddha’s time. She had five hundred children, and in an effort to feed them, she routinely kidnapped other children and added them to her menu. The population appealed to Buddha, who agreed to help. One day, while Hariti was out hunting, Buddha turned the table: He abducted the ogress’s youngest baby and hid him in a begging bowl.
Hariti returned home to find her baby gone. Mad with anguish, she searched the world for him . . . but in vain. Finally she, too, appeared on Buddha’s doorstep. Buddha returned her child, but pointed out that the parents of Hariti’s victims had suffered the very same way. The abashed Hariti pledged to reform.
Within the week, though, Hariti ran out of food. The ogress again accosted Buddha, demanding he find her an alternate source of provisions—or else. Buddha solved the problem by placing Hariti at the head of his retinue, giving her the pick of the abundant offerings passed his way.
Today, Hariti is known as Ajima: great-grandmother of the world. She is revered as the goddess of pediatrics and the protector of all children. And—after twenty-five hundred years—she still gets first dibs on Buddha’s bounty. Before any offering is made at Swayambhunath, a portion must be left with Grandma Ajima.
All myths are parables, and I unraveled this one for a while. Despite the colorful touches, its main point seemed to be the importance of empathy: the shared experience of sadness and suffering, even when it’s not our own. The insight made me draw a deep breath. Jordan had tried, often through bizarre means, to arouse his own sense of empathy. I liked to think it came to me naturally. But I’d fallen short when my own comfort zone had been threatened.
LAST MARCH, JORDAN had decided to abandon the East Coast and spend the spring in California. He’d been enrolled in Cornell’s Department of Classics—a long-awaited return to his formal studies—but conflicts with the administration had forced him to leave the program. He needed to clear his head in a nonacademic setting. I invited him to stay with me at my Oakland apartment. He agreed.
My flat was spacious and bright, and I relished the prospect of sharing it with my brother. I’d introduce him to the marvels of the modern world: Zakir Hussain concerts, Italo Calvino novels, Pedro Almodóvar films. We’d talk politics over Vietnamese coffee; we’d rent mountain bikes and ride down the Bear Valley Trail at Point Reyes. Maybe we’d even double-date, escorting our girlfriends to virtuoso gigs at Yoshi’s legendary jazz club.
Hell, yes! We’d be buddies! We’d borrow each other’s shirts! We’d drink pale ale and drive to Lake Tahoe at two in the morning!
The truth was, I knew little about him. When I’d returned to America in 1984, after sixteen months in Nepal and Southeast Asia, I moved directly to the Bay Area. My contact with Jordan was limited to brief phone calls and the occasional visit home. His life during those past five years was a mystery to me. We’d been separated, as we were now, by great distances. There were letters and phone calls, but Jord was hard to read this way. The virtuoso missives and clipped conversations seemed more like caricatures than genuine engagement. It took face-to-face contact, and a real commitment, to get under his skin.
What I had learned, from my annual visits to the East Coast, was that his physical crisis had begun to overwhelm him. His interest in books, music, even language had flagged. He consulted urologists and neurologists, spending a small fortune in an effort to pinpoint his affliction. But these specialists found nothing wrong with him.
Jord’s westward move struck me as an unconscious stroke of genius, an intuitive gravitation toward a cure. Even if he was suspicious of psychotherapy, the translucent air of the Bay Area would fix whatever ailed him. And if good fun and sea breezes weren
’t enough, I knew plenty of alternative healers who could poke, massage, or needle Jordan’s chi back into shape.
At first, Jord’s visit put me in high spirits. I bounced around the flat with ionic excitement, working under the assumption that a noisy, lively environment would act as a tonic. Friends dropped in constantly; popcorn exploded on the stove; bebop and Indian ragas spun through the air.
Jordan tolerated these activities, but he rarely joined in. He pined for the comfortable and familiar: a monastic cell in which to continue his studies. He was adrift in California, held captive by his manic brother. He’d snatch up his texts and retreat into my bedroom, mumbling with annoyance when the phone rang. The door slammed shut at the sound of my music.
My attempts to interest him in my literary world, the books I loved, hit a wall. He would not touch Kurt Vonnegut, Salman Rushdie, or Gabriel García Márquez. On one occasion I handed my brother a copy of Wedding Song, by Naguib Mahfouz. “You might enjoy this,” I said. “This guy’s an Egyptian. He just won the Nobel Prize for . . .”
“Please.” Jordan held up his hand in an arresting gesture. “There is no such thing as a translation.”
My notions of brotherly camaraderie had been absurd. Jordan had no interest in my life and made no effort to include me in his. He was mired in self-pity. A pall of ill-will infected our shared space. Worse, it was contagious. Was my existence as vacant as his behavior suggested? I began to suspect my own life. Maybe Cheerios were unhealthy, my towels too plush, my love for Alfred Hitchcock pedestrian.
One weekend morning, while cooking breakfast, I put John Coltrane on the stereo. A Love Supreme: an incredible album, the essence of reverence and invention. Jordan walked in from the living room and stood by the doorway of the kitchen. He inclined his head with curiosity. “Is this what your people call ‘music’?”
Snake Lake Page 13
