Holy Cow! an Indian Adventure

by Sarah Macdonald

  ‘You may think you look beautiful in a meditative state but that’s not enough. To generate compassion, you have to get up and live it.’

  She grins wider, sways more and nods slowly and forcefully in agreement.

  I can see why Buddhism appeals to so many westerners. The Dalai Lama is a superb ambassador; always calm and smiling, he’s untainted by scandals and bad television shows. HH also practises what he preaches – non-violence, humility and compassion – and he teaches techniques that appeal to western minds. He even demands doubt, questioning and reasoning. It’s exciting to hear a preacher say, ‘Don’t take my word for it, you must question and question.’

  This is also a good faith for those of us oriented to individualism, as it offers a spiritual psychology of self-development. And its central tenet is the one thing us rich western kids can’t buy – happiness.

  The Dalai Lama tells us to stop expecting life to be easy. The first noble truth of Buddhism is that life is full of suffering and is ultimately unsatisfying; the only way to be happy is to want less and to train your mind to penetrate the ultimate reality. That Buddhist reality maintains that there is no God or no soul – we’re all just streams of consciousness that have existed since beginningless time in infinite bodies and six different realms. I can barely remember my childhood, let alone past lives. But apparently I have been a demi-god, human, animal, hungry ghost and hell dweller millions of times before. The Buddhist hell sounds as vicious as the Christian version – with torture by molten iron, fire and disembowelment. According to the Buddhist scriptures, hell is located on the other side of the earth on a spot directly opposite Bodhgaya – the town in India where the Buddha became enlightened. According to modern maps, that corresponds to America. The future of Tibetan Buddhism seems most assured in hell – there are more Americans in this lecture than I’ve seen in the rest of India put together.

  Buddhist teachings say that life is a prison and Tibetan Buddhists aim to be our jail breakers. They vow to forsake the pure realm to come back to earth as spiritual superheroes, called bodhisattvas, to enlighten others. Bodhisattvas are like the Jedi knights in Star Wars. They are brave, compassionate and love all creatures equally, while remaining unattached to anyone in particular. They are also extraordinarily powerful in their use of a ‘force’ for good. At the end of the Dalai Lama’s lectures he leads the vow of the bodhisattvas. I’m surprised, because I thought lamas (teachers), monks and ardent lay devotees would be the only ones allowed to make such a pledge. I can’t take the vow – I’m not feeling confident enough of my own spiritual salvation, let alone my ability to enlighten others as a good bodhisattva should.

  Many young travellers who do take the vow don’t seem to realise quite what it means. In a Mexican restaurant I watch a group celebrate their new spiritual status by toasting each other with warm Indian beer that tastes like hops mixed with metho. One guy sporting a ‘Free Tibet’ t-shirt and a halo of blond corkscrew curls demands a bodhisattva discount on the bill. The waiter seems used to such behaviour – he just giggles and walks off.

  Tibetan bodhisattvas don’t drink beer and they don’t show off. They’re supposed to humbly follow special secret tantric teachings to speed up the process of enlightenment and gain control over rebirth. We ordinary humans have no control over our reincarnations; our consciousness is blown by the winds of our karma to our next parents. In the tradition of lamanism, dying lamas direct their consciousness into another body; that child is recognised as a tulku (a reincarnated lama) and brought up to continue the work. The Dalai Lama is the most famous tulku of our time. Not only is he a bodhisattva, he’s also believed to be a manifestation of the Buddha’s compassionate consciousness. He’s Tibet’s spiritual saviour, superhero, political leader and living Buddha all rolled into one.

  As the biggest bodhisattva finishes his teachings, the town empties like a drain – buses full to the brim gurgle and belch down the hill and the mountain echoes back the sounds of slamming doors. The locals smile with sighs of relief.

  As I sit and sip chai and stare at the procession snaking its way down the valley, I hear a whoop and feel a hug. I’m wrapped up in the arms of the girl in my Vipassana course who spent her spare moments hugging trees with a Jesus-like crown of twigs on her head. Katarina still looks a bit like the Messiah with her dirty blonde shoulder-length curls, jet-black eyes and glowing clear skin, but she doesn’t look as miserable. In fact, she radiates ecstatic happiness. She’d given up a chance to be an Olympic athlete to come to India and says it’s been worth it.

  ‘I’ve won a gold medal for my heart from the Dalai Lama,’ she squeals. ‘I dream about him all the time. Last time I felt this boom of light on me, wham and whack, we started laughing. I just have to see it again, it seems I’ve been chasing him all my life.’

  Since I last saw Katarina, she’s met the Dalai Lama in two public audiences and travelled to Lhasa to pick him a rose from his former garden.

  But Katarina says I can’t meet the Divine Leader because he’s about to go overseas. Instead, she invites me to come with her to see another famous spiritual superhero, the Karmapa Lama. He is the spiritual head of the Kagyu sect of Tibetan Buddhism and fled to India last year. This high profile refugee’s rejection of Chinese rule greatly embarrassed the Chinese government – it’s put great pressure on India to contain the Karmapa and he’s now a virtual prisoner in a nearby monastery.

  The next morning Katarina and I catch a taxi down the mountain and across the valley to a white and yellow monastery called Gyuto. We wait cross-legged in a huge auditorium with about one hundred people, most of them western women showing inappropriate amounts of cleavage and wearing lots of red nylon scarves – blessed objects given to them by the Karmapa on previous meetings. The girl next to me has seven and is squirming and squealing with excitement.

  ‘I collect them, he’s so gorgeous, I just adore him.’

  The Karmapa walks into the hall and sits on a wooden throne in front of us. A few women wail and Katarina rocks in raptures. I look up hoping to see the divine soul. Alas I’m too ignorant to see the bodhisattva within – I see a heavy-set teenager in the midst of puberty with wide-set eyes and a wide protruding forehead. There’s none of the Dalai Lama’s panda-like joy and humour; the Karmapa is serious and sombre. We file past him, each give him a white prayer scarf and are given red scarves in return. After the Karmapa leaves, the girls tie their red scarves in Girl Guide style, smile, hug each other and skip from the room. Katarina tells me she winked at him when she bent down for her blessing.

  At the photo shop back up the hill, I hug Katarina goodbye and go inside to meet the far more cynical Angus – an Australian who wryly comments that Karmapa photos are now outselling the Dalai Lama two to one.

  ‘It’s that whole sexualisation of a young pristine monk thing. It’s pretty off, actually.’

  I don’t believe Angus, so he tells me to ask for opinions at the Namgyal monastery below the now empty auditorium. There, a slight pale British monk called Tenzin Josh beckons me into his small cold damp cell and leaves the door open as we talk (his vows forbid him being alone with a woman). In a quiet calm monotone he explains that he left London to find happiness within but believes some other travellers are just here for sensual pleasures and these tourists don’t respect his fellow monks.

  ‘They chat them up and touch them, which is strictly forbidden. About twenty monks a year are disrobing, they’re listening to western music which is designed to create attachment, they go to parties, restaurants, they see women in bad clothing.’

  A fellow student comes to call at Josh’s cell and he’s just as concerned. Rob reckons it’s a bit of a game for western women who love the idea of breaking a monk.

  ‘They drop them when they’ve made them violate the vows. But it happens the other way as well; monks who are just monks for a livelihood use the women for sponsorship or for visas and dump them when they get out of India.’

  That’s got to be
bad karma. And that’s the second noble truth of Buddhism: the cause of the suffering. As in Hinduism, Buddhists believe bad actions fester within our consciousness and are received back in kind in one of our millions of future lives. But purifying karma is hard work in this faith, involving endless education, prostrating, reciting prayers or repeating mantras. According to the Buddhists, my half-hearted dip in the Ganges has done bugger all. Josh tells me it’s best to start by trying to stop generating more bad karma, and to get rid of my delusions, and the best way to do this is to take the Tushita beginners’ course in Buddhism up the hill. It starts tomorrow morning.

  The next day I wake early to walk up a steep path past mangy monkeys, piles of garbage and cliff-top hotels. As I reach the top, I feel like I’m entering a heavenly realm – the path is shrouded in a fog that blows in so swiftly it’s like Buddha himself has blown a smoke ring. The Tushita centre is a sweet collection of Tibetan-style buildings set among damp trees; inside its shrine room, or gompa, a massive brass Buddha looks down at twenty western travellers, and water bowls decorate an altar of photos of past and present teachers. A monk called David takes our class; an Aussie in this former life, he sits pale, shorn and orange-freckled in dark robes. He makes us meditate on the fact that we are going to die. We shut our eyes, David drones.

  ‘We are walking corpses, every breath brings you one closer to the grave. There are earthquakes due here any moment, Indian buses and planes are dangerous. Prepare for your death now, as tomorrow is too late. Your state of mind at death will determine your next rebirth. If you’re angry you’ll go to hell. It’s important to die calm and happy.’

  Tibetan Buddhists are big on death. It takes many years and possibly many lifetimes of tantric practice to be able to control the process of rebirth, but stage one involves learning to die calmly and with dignity. So, after accepting our death is inevitable, we practise dying. I imagine myself in a lovely bed above the sea with my not yet conceived but now elderly children standing around looking woeful. More experienced Buddhists imagine their flesh rotting and their bones decaying; something I don’t feel quite ready for.

  Yet, strangely, this death stuff is not depressing, it’s kind of liberating. While death is ever-present in India, most Hindus don’t talk about it for fear of attracting bad luck. They won’t even say the word, preferring ‘really not very well’ for ‘dying’, and ‘expired’ for ‘been dead for ages’. A year ago my brush with mortality made me feel vulnerable and scared and keen to search for answers, but in the peaceful shrine room I calmly accept the inevitable. I figure that if I can find peace in death, then perhaps I can find peace and a sense of grace in life.

  We then hear about the importance of loving all beings equally – one of the greatest challenges for Buddhists to face. It is extraordinarily difficult but I can see the need to try. I’m growing weary of the way the tourists here in Dharamsala idealise Tibetans and demonise Indians. I overhear horrible comments about the people who have so generously shared their overcrowded country with the refugees of Tibet. But there’s no doubt Tibetans are beautiful-looking and easy to like. One morning I circle the Dalai Lama’s Palace with some geriatrics. They shuffle bent double, their faces creased into deep smiles, their big hands spinning their prayer wheels. They all stop mumbling their mantras to say hello and laugh at my Tibetan reply of tashi delek, the only phrase I know. Their giggles seem to come from a different place than the Australian cynical chuckle; it’s as if they are laughing with me and not at me. It’s highly contagious and attractive.

  However, beneath the smiles Tibetans obviously are not perfect. It’s not all loving kindness here; I see a monk beat a dog, another one smokes and while Buddhist texts forbid meat, the fleshy bodies of sheep hang in roadside butcher boxes attracting swarms of flies and shoppers galore. I’ve kept up my Kumbh Mela vow not to eat meat – it just feels wrong to me now. I know the Dalai Lama has tried to turn vegetarian but so long as he and other Tibetan Buddhists continue to eat meat, the tinge of hypocrisy will remain. The meat-eating Buddhists do not kill, but it seems unfair that they get Muslims to kill animals for them. While Muslims don’t think the killing is sinful, surely the Buddhists must worry about the Muslims bringing bad karma upon themselves for the sake of Tibetan tummies? What’s more disturbing, though, is the violence towards people. A local tells me one of his female staff was being bashed by her husband, but when he reported it to the Tibetan welfare office, they told him it was dangerous to hurt her husband’s pride.

  ‘They said if we couldn’t cope looking at her bruised face all the time then to sack her.’

  He also tells me some young boys got into a knife fight recently and a monk was murdered last year after condemning the worship of a spirit. This is obviously not a community of saints but a population of refugees facing problems of displacement and distress.

  I climb down the slippery slope to visit the Tibetan government-in-exile to research an article I’m considering writing about the town. The Information Secretary, Thubten Samphel, talks about violence, depression and health problems and how he wants western visitors to be more aware of this reality.

  ‘We want the world to take our struggle seriously and the Shangri-La thing damages us; this is a real political issue with real suffering. We are of this world with the same weaknesses and faults as the rest of people.’

  As I puff back up the hill pondering his words I let go of my tendency to judge the western groupies and the Tibetans. Harsh thoughts have always been one of my weaknesses. I’ve always been too angry, using this emotion as an active alternative to depression and hopelessness. To embrace Buddhism I’ll have to transform my fury about injustice, poverty, environmental destruction and negative relationships into detachment and compassion.

  Back at Tushita, David explains how the Dalai Lama shows the way – he doesn’t get angry at the Chinese, he acknowledges some good things have come out of their invasion and he feels sorry for them because they’ve created bad karma. I practise applying this Buddhist practice. I imagine the stalker who freaked me out during my last year at Triple J and begin to pity him for his problems and the punishment he will receive in some future life. But Buddhism is easier to practise in the mind than in reality. An hour later when a bloke deliberately bumps into my breast to cop a feel, I’m only up to stage one of the rationalisation when I’ve spun around, whacked him and called him a bastard. I’ve stuffed it. Now we will both suffer in another life.

  The third noble truth is the cessation of suffering: freedom from rebirth, and Buddhahood. The fourth noble truth is the Buddhist path to get there. My reaction to the breast-bumping incident in the street makes me realise I have a long way to go. I’ve made a start in India along my path to personal transformation and inner peace. The Sikhs have shown me how to be strong, the Vipassana course taught me how to calm my mind, India’s Muslims have shown me the meaning of surrender and sacrifice, and the Hindus have illustrated an infinite number of ways to the divine. But right now the Buddhist way of living attracts me most. It complements my society’s psychological approach to individual growth and development, my desire to take control and take responsibility for my own happiness and it advocates a way of living that encourages compassion and care.

  Also, Buddhism is proving it can move with the times. For one thing, it’s confronting its sexism, largely thanks to one of the first western women to become a Buddhist nun. Over Christmas I read the book Cave in the Snow, which tells the incredible tale of Tenzin Palmo (formerly a British woman Diane Perry) who spent years meditating in a cave above Manali and now runs a nunnery not far from Dharamsala. I’d love to meet her. Tenzin Palmo’s Australian assistant, Monica, agrees to let me visit and I take a teeth-chattering, bone-bashing taxi ride down the mountain, past the Buddhist temples, prayer flags and stupas or shrines, past an abandoned tank and some army barracks, across a small waterfall and into another valley to her nunnery. When Tenzin Palmo met the Dalai Lama she bluntly told him of the difficulties
of being a nun in the Tibetan tradition and made him cry; he then supported her work in setting up the nunnery here at Tashi Jong.

  The world’s second western Buddhist nun emerges from a small office. Tiny and humble, calm and composed, stooped and steely strong, Tenzin Palmo’s shorn scalp has three circular scars caused by candles burnt at initiation ceremonies. She sits and patiently tells me her tale over tea, while her students work outside, giggling as they gather water and prepare to make their dinner. These twenty-five nuns are from around India’s northeast border – Ladakh, Lahaul, Spitti, Nepal and Bhutan. There, as in Tibet, nuns often became household servants to monks. But Tenzin Palmo speaks without bitterness.

  ‘While there were some nunneries, there was no educational program for nuns, they effectively had no voice. Religious texts were written by monks and so naturally were one-sided. Nowadays this situation is being slowly redeemed as more and more nunneries are being founded and many include a study program, sometimes using the same curriculum as the monasteries. In the next few years we certainly hope to see women study to become teachers. In the meantime, our nuns still believe that monks are naturally more intelligent and pray to be reborn in a male body.’

  Tenzin Palmo raises money so the nuns can learn Tibetan writing, English, philosophy and debating. It’s wonderful and rewarding work but she would rather be shut up in a little cell and meditating. Eventually this nunnery will contain little huts for women from all over the world to do just that. In quiet hills away from cares and worries, it will become a safe space for consciousness-cleansing in long retreats. Maybe when I’m more disciplined I’ll return. I can’t imagine being able to meditate for months – I still shudder at some of the recollections of my ten days at Vipassana.