Conversing With The Ancients

My position in the drab Spitian market town of Kaza could not be maintained forever. Anywhere where a mainstay of the local economy is the import and distribution of exotic goods such as "wood" is usually not very exciting to begin with. As soon as I saw the righteous victory of Dutch soccer prowess over Danish iniquity I no longer felt attached to the sweet, sweet flypaper of the FIFA World Cup that kept me trapped in the stewing, impatient pot of resentment that the snowbound tourist community in Kaza had become. It was time for a trip. "I say," I said, "let's go to somewhere I can spell for once. What's this? A monastery called 'Ki'? Fantastic." And off I went.

Of course, I didn't go immediately. This was after all a town that had to wait days for gasoline and chicken to make it up the highway. I spent quite a while on the edge of town waiting for a tractor heading the right way to pass. Since you can count the number of roads in the Spiti valley (including town streets) on your fingers, I felt pretty confident that something would head my way soon enough. I got a ride to Ki, and when we arrived at the village on the valley floor the driver helpfully pointed out the way to the monastery.

Not that it would have been possible to miss it. The Spiti valley is one big wide gap in the mountains dominated by the seasonal battles between the colors white and brown. Presently, most of it was a smooth brown with a layer of glistening white at the top, not unlike a glazed chocolate pound cake, though this would perhaps only be appetizing if you digest in the manner of Jurassic herbivores by swallowing rocks. The monastery, by contrast, is a bright white towering pile of monastic cells and Buddhist temples on a conical spike of hillside striking out directly above a cliff. It looks like some sort of Buddhist answer to Minas Tirith from Lord of the Rings, which makes sense given its location and my belief that China is Mordor (However, despite the occasional Buddhist monk who immolates himself to protest oppression, there were no flaming figures flailing their arms and jumping off of citadels).

With some effort --because the back stairs are steep and one doesn't feel like stopping to catch one's breath when the back stairs also happen to lead through the cowshed-- I reached the prayer hall at the top, where a very old and shaky monk waved me in. As I entered I heard a lot of garbled chanting. There were some seven monks within, being supervised in prayer by their head lama. All evidence indicated that they had been repeating their mantras for a very long time, but none of the evidence suggested that these were all the same mantras. The effect was that of a particularly busy afternoon in a grumpy assistant headmaster's detention period with half a dozen delinquents each being forced to wearily but rapidly recite their particular offenses until the bell. I sat silently in a corner because at that moment anything besides prayers was clearly going to be the subject of intense fascination and the head lama gave me a look that said "Ahhh, Mr. Buddha, --if that's the title you really think appropriate for yourself-- have you come to observe our little correctional session or have you come to...participate? I should think any wrong moves on your part would suggest the latter."

I remained awkwardly still for a very long period of prayers, but couldn't take my eyes of the chief lama. I knew I'd seen his bespectacled mug somewhere before. Then, somewhere in between recitations of "Om padme I will not throw erasers during tantric meditation Bodh Bodh om", it hit me. He was in little framed photographs all over Spiti and Kinnaur, usually off in a corner somewhere giving pride of place to the Dalai Lama and the local abbots. He is without question a figure of some authority in these parts. For instance, I am told that the village of Tabo is essentially a theocratic village-state run by the monks of that order, with the unacknowledged crutch that half the villagers are on the government payroll for "jobs" they spend several moments a year performing. According to some people (a qualification I make because it seems like the sort of thing people would give me faulty info on), this bald bloke with the glasses is the current reincarnation of Rinchen Zangpo, a Buddhist monk and scholar of the 10th century who is credited with, among other things, translating a zillion Sanskrit texts and establishing half the monasteries in Tibet, and is revered as a sort of Deputy Buddha. When the ceremony finally concluded and the monks dispersed with great haste to go do anything else, the lama, reincarnated soul of the Propagator of Tibet, shared a few words with me...

They were "Where are you from?... No. Don't go back there. Room is closing now."

With great humility and great gratitude, I have received Wisdom from the sages. In life, one must go forwards, never backwards, no matter from where one may have come. For the one certain thing in the great prayer room of life, which we cannot delay with backwards reminiscences, is that the Prayer Room of Life will one day close, and Death will drawer a Frilly Ceremonial Ribbon of Mortality across the door, and one must put back on the Shoes Of The Transmigration Of The Soul and tie the Shoelaces of Eternal Rebirth to walk along the Chilly Stone Pathways of Earthly Existence until we reach the Dingy But Warmish Noodle Shop of Nirvana.

Or you're Mormon and you enter into either the Celestial, Terrestrial, or Telestial Kingdom for a thousand years of Christ's rule until you a reborn in an immortal body in heaven, which is possibly on another planet. Who's to say.