1. I would walk into the gates of the gompa
at the latest moment, right before the gates
were closed, tired from a long day of being
a socialite in Boudha, roaming the restaurants,
looking with French ex-aghoris at the life-stories of eccentric Tibetan
saints reknowned for their sexual exploits and
magical powers, maybe becoming a little bit like
those anti-heroes as my life turned clockwise, swept
up in the rotational currents of the Great Stupa,
perhaps being swirled into transmogrifying into some different
sort of creature, the type of man with a
penchant for everything, a man with a palpable
fire of forty different facets burning inside his heart and other chakras, with the kind of flame
that works like a magnet for strangeness —
a superconductor for auspicious connection.
:::perhaps I was already like that:
but those currents that took me for that ride
would land me weary into those
gompa gates.
2.
On His Holiness’ birthday
at the gompa
I was asked to sit at the head of the table.
The soda poured unceasingly. The feast was
one hard on my stomach — every variety
of Pringles, matched w/ t’hugpa, rice and
hardy Tibetan rebel food. These monks were
Golokpas — “rebels” — from Golok. Their language
made almost no sense. They had so much
warmth, so much hospitality, so much joking,
so much light. An old monk from a story-book
sat close to me, with a classic beard like a soft wizard, and
sparkles in his eyes. He’d done 12 years of
solitary retreat. On a large TV the well-loved forty
little monks watched blaring music videos
of Amdo singers, who sang pop songs in
warbly voices about their root lamas, while
psychedelic visuals glowed around their
heads, and
heads, and
beatific images of buddhas
flashed on the screen. The monks and a few
laymen dressed in chubas and shepherd-minstrel garb
kept talking in their impossible dialect.
“This ain’t no Lhasa talk, boy.”
3.
The young monks I taught were
the closest things to throngs of little male
angels I’d ever encountered. Mostly Nepalis
from the Tibetan-like tribes of Nepal — Tamangs, Sherpas —
they glowed like copper-colored cherubs of wonder ,
made even warmer by their maroon gowns
which seemed jut a little bit too big for them, like so many young monks
–priests at the age of 6, they have all the innocence that a
good monk needs.
In the morning these darting flames of smiling
copper would shout their sutras right outside my room
rising me up early .
And as I came out from my room, they would
look at me, maybe stopping recitations even for a second or so
— and smile. It seemed like the boys saw their recitations like a
sport, the kind of energetic morning ritual
that can get your blood flowing,
some good competitive holy-words-shouting
tunefully yelling the words of the Victorious One
seeing who could be the loudest
the fastest
or the most rhythmic.
Darjeeling, Gorkhaland, India
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