Namaste

“We do not have enough guts to realize that the phenomenal world is magical.”

— Chogyam Trungpa

~~~~~~~~~~

As our plane approached Tribuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, I knew this was where I was supposed to be. No clear reason why, just an ineffable certainty. The landscape looked open and wide. The sky was at my fingertips, and a sheet of humid, sultry air pressed against my face as I stepped onto the ladder for disembarking passengers.

In India, I was perpetually disoriented. In Nepal, upon arrival I felt at home. I was energized on first hearing Namaste! —a greeting voiced proudly by the Immigration officer after he took my thirty U.S dollars and handed back my passport, now stamped with a tourist visa. My plan was to spend three or four weeks in Nepal, and then fly to England in time for the spring retreat with Sogyal Rinpoche.

N. L. Drolma and cart with too much luggage, Tribuvan International Airport, Kathmandu, Nepal 1994

I found myself drawn to Dudjom Rinpoche’s monastery Urgyen Dongak Choling in Boudha Tusal, a small district of Tibetan shops and residences near the Great Stupa of Boudanath. As a novice in the “art” of sitting, I loved to meditate all alone in the spacious shrine room, whose natural light streamed in through its large decorated windows and melded with the plaintive light of butter lamps that flickered below the impressive, glass-enclosed statuary of Tibetan deities. The shrine’s gated chorten was an offering site that overflowed with draped and knotted white silk scarves.

Sacred statuary, Dudjom Monastery Kathmandu, Nepal

Subdued lighting in Dudjom Rinpoche’s monastery, Urgyen Dongak Choling, Boudha Tusal, Kathmandu, Nepal 1994 (Photo by N. L. Drolma)

The monastery was a brisk walk from the Bir Hotel, then the most popular hangout for Westerners, where I had a commodious room that looked out onto a lovely garden with a few tables and chairs loosely arranged for outdoor dining. The Bir Restaurant, only steps away from the Boudha Gate, was the informal hotspot for international dharma news and serendipitous meetings with lamas. Hanging out and nursing a cappuccino there was fun, but my daily sessions of dharma practice were way more satisfying.

Partial view of the Great Stupa of Bodhanath, Kathmandu, Nepal 1994 (Photo by N. L. Drolma)

I spent most time practicing in Boudha around the Great Stupa. The circular path, popularly known as the kora, is a spiritual compass that pulls into its orbit dharma practitioners reciting mantras, lighting butter lamps, and spinning prayer wheels as they circumambulate the Stupa. It is an ideal spot for making new acquaintances, and where one can sit on a bench and contemplate the Stupa’s distinctively painted, elongated all-seeing eyes.

Nepal was a buddhafield for me, its burning refuse in the streets and in the fields notwithstanding. There was no apparent garbage pick-up service run by the government, and it was not unusual to see residents of Boudha tossing plastic bags of refuse out their windows into a back alley or garden. The refuse only seemed to disappear when grass grew tall and green and covered it. But this didn’t cramp my delight in living and practicing there. The huge early morning gathering of birds on the white-washed dome of the Boudanath Stupa and the devout Tibetans prostrating at its base was the purest pageantry. Several impressive monasteries rimmed the Stupa. A cow sat nonchalantly in the middle of the road outside the Boudha gate, occasionally flicking its tail as buses, cars and taxis respectfully skirted her.

The environment was vivid, colorful, and over the top— a movie perpetually in the making that exhausted the mind’s attempt to figure anything out. Dharma was happening round the clock.

Fruit-seller, cow, motorcyclist, and Tibetan Buddhist monk at archway to the Great Stupa of Bodhanath, Kathmandu, Nepal 1994 (Photo by N. L. Drolma)

Winter 1994 had not yet turned to spring when I received word that Tulku Pema Kalsang finally arrived in Boudha. I greeted Rinpoche at Shechen Monastery where he was pleased to resume the English lessons we began during his two-week stay at my home earlier in the fall. At Lerab Ling some months prior, I witnessed the pomp and circumstance that surrounded him as a high lama who sits on a high throne, so hosting Tulku Kalsang in New York had been a sweet challenge and a dharma teaching 24/7. I accompanied him on various outings including a Hudson River boat tour; a shoe shopping spree through the glitzy maze at Macy’s; and an evening at the NYC Ballet, where the winning performance for me that night was during intermission as I watched Rinpoche (forty-five-ish and hefty) hop, skip, and scamper up and down the escalators of the New York State Theater. This was Tulku Kalsang Rinpoche’s first experience of a moving staircase. It would have been all too easy and inappropriate to drift into casualness with him. Now, here we were— in Nepal—circumambulating the Great Stupa of Boudhanath!

An excursion that pushed me to admit I was (somewhat like a schoolgirl) enamored of the lama was the long walk we took through the streets of Patan, a city famed for its metal works and exquisite statuary. Our meandering culminated in steps that led down to a craft shop which in turn led to a sequestered room crammed floor to ceiling with hundreds of Guru Rinpoche figurines. Tulku Kalsang motioned for me to sit down at his side and examine the figurine he was holding in his hands, and then to scan the room for the finest among the Guru Rinpoche look-a-likes. I looked at the figurine in Tulku Kalsang’s hands. I looked out over the sea of statuary. I looked directly into Rinpoche’s sparkling panda bear eyes. I looked back to the figurine and then said matter-of-factly that Rinpoche himself was by far the best choice among the lot.

Guru Rinpoche is reputed to have said of this sculpture, “It looks like me,” and upon blessing it, declared, “Now it is the same as me.”

Dzogchen Pema Kalsang Rinpoche, Khachod Dechen Ling, NYC 1993 (Photo by N. L. Drolma)

During the final hours of Tulku Kalsang Rinpoche’s stay in Nepal, Rinpoche’s sense of humor acknowledged my heart’s unspoken wish. “Coming?” he asked through the thick low hanging white mist of the wee morning hour as he playfully lifted a blanket in the station wagon’s back seat for me to hide under, along with his sister’s and nephew’s bags, packed tightly for the rocky pilgrimage back to Kham. I was fighting back tears and losing. To join Rinpoche on the road—without valid papers for crossing over the border to China and for travel to the Autonomous Region of Tibet—I would need to be hidden cargo.

I didn’t go to Tibet of course. The next day, I went to practice at Dudjom Monastery and ran into Namgyal Tashi, the head lama, who asked me what the point was in my being sad and shedding tears following Rinpoche’s departure. The question moved me to reflect on how clinging to a person or to an idea is just habit and futile. To see clearly and to love without attachment, that was an ongoing lesson.

Tulku Kalsang had given me a lovely plum red zen, a Tibetan shawl, of raw silk. When a European practitioner told me rather sharply that I shouldn’t be wearing a red zen unless I was a nun, I paid her words little heed. “Tulku Kalsang gave this to me, and I’m going to continue to wear it.” Ordination was nowhere on my radar and my fear that I would become a nun had dissolved. Tulku Kalsang, however, likely foresaw my nun’s wardrobe.

All my waking hours in Nepal were governed by dharma, so dharma practice was easy. This was far more agreeable and more satisfying than trying to fit dharma practice into the exigencies of life in New York. In actuality, I was sampling what life as a Buddhist nun could be like: Dharma morning, noon, and night. Dharma for breakfast, dharma for tea, dharma free of gossip—and no TV!

Nothing else to think about.

Late one morning, I took the popular walk from Boudha that many westerners take up the hill to Kopan Monastery and then followed feebly after a sprightly woman who alternately scrambled, crawled, and gamboled daringly across the mountaintop to reach Jamgon Kongtrul’s monastery at Pullahari. It was worth the effort, if only to be entertained by the antics of a mongoose in the retreat center’s rock garden. Tibetan thangkas of Jambhala, the deity of wealth, depict Jambhala holding a mongoose that spits out precious jewels. If my karmic vision had been more refined, I might have seen the mongoose’s repository of diamonds, rubies, and emeralds—the environment itself was that enchanting! Pullahari’s shrine room was impressive and packed with energy. I entered the hallowed space while the lamas were engaged in puja; the energy grew wild, my body stiffened, and I hastened back outside. The unobstructed, aerial vistas shimmered in the red hot, setting sun. Had I literally slipped and stumbled my way that day into a beyul (hidden land)? The dusk hour was hauntingly beautiful.

Not glued to my meditation cushion in Boudha, I chose to do day-long pilgrimages. How could I not? Dharma beckoned everywhere I turned.

Swayambunath Stupa, Nepal 1994 (Photo by N. L. Drolma)

When I found myself at the bottom of the seemingly endless stairs that led to the ancient Swayambunath Stupa—a staircase evocative of fairytale ladders to heaven, except for the aggressive, screeching monkeys on its steps—I naïvely wondered, Why did they build the Stupa all the way up there? On that excursion, I was enjoying the company of a California artist who had just returned from eight days in Tibet. Hanging out with this western fellow was a nice break from my intensive sessions of meditation and mantra recitation.

At the base of the stairway to the Swayambunath Stupa, Nepal 1994 (Photo by N. L. Drolma)

I had yet to learn how to relax while maintaining alertness in formal practice. Grasping at the practice was truly counter productive, much like gorging on food without chewing properly. I resolved to temper my seriousness and enjoy more breaks.

It was liberating to dress in rubber flip flops, a simple cotton skirt and T-shirt, and wander with no fixed aim through the winding streets of windowed shops that displayed Tibetan paintings and were chockablock full of Tibetan jewelry, banners, statues and books. It was fun, too, to secure a seat to downtown Kathmandu in one of the ubiquitous yellow tin three-wheeled box cars (called tempos or Put-putts). Traveling in a put-putt was like touring a child’s playland in a toy car, except for the occasional upwind noxious belching of fuel. I was usually crammed together with five or more Nepalis who alternately stared or smiled in amusement at this lone American woman during the bumpy, dusty ride to Thamel. That was the place to shop till you dropped if you were a tourist, but if you were a dharma practitioner it was the popular hub for booking air tickets, foreign money-exchange, good food, and Visa renewal. I loved being footloose in Nepal and living in its dharma-friendly environment. How could I bring myself to leave Nepal for retreat in England?

The message that came back from Sogyal Rinpoche was, in a nutshell: Wonderful! Stay as long as you like in Nepal, and just come to France for the summer.

Lama Khyenno! Lama, you alone know.

The blessings were nonstop in Nepal. I, along with my Dutch sangha sisters, Joos and Eva, piled into a taxi with a Nepali dharma student named Buddha. (That birth name, I later learned, is common in South Asia.) I sensed Buddha was sweet on Eva who he met during puja at Sakya Trizin’s gompa not long after our arrival in Nepal. He was most solicitious and offered to be our guide for a drive to Pharping to see the self-arisen stone image of Tara, the Goddess of Compassion. Nearing our destination, Buddha announced that he wanted to make a stop first to see his guru, Chatral Rinpoche. Did we want to meet him? Buddha was certain that if his guru wasn’t napping, he would agree to see us.

“Your guru is Chatral Rinpoche?” I asked in disbelief. This was more than a stroke of good luck for us Western dharma girls. HH Chatral Sangye Dorje Rinpoche enjoyed a reclusive, ascetic lifestyle and he was notoriously hard to meet. His monastery, Rigzin Drubpe Ghatsal, nestled in the mountain village of Yanglesho, overlooks sacred pools of turquoise waters populated with exotic fish and, is just steps above the cave in which Padmasambhava, the 8th century Indian saint and mystic who brought Vajrayana Buddhism to Tibet, attained the siddhi of Mahamudra. It is a magical place of immense spiritual power that attracts lamas, dharma practitioners, and countless pilgrims.

HH Chatral Sangye Dorje Rinpoche (Photographer and year unknown)

We joined Buddha for his audience with the great lama. Speaking in his native tongue, Buddha was engrossed in a one-on-one with the master. As the minutes wore on, it seemed unlikely there would be much time, if any, set aside for us to have a formal audience with Chatral Rinpoche. I took the opportunity to direct silent prayers to Rinpoche, certain that to do so in his presence would be meaningful.

Chatral Rinpoche eventually looked in our direction. He wanted to know if we spoke Tibetan.

None of the colloquial phrases I learned came to mind. Sheepishly, I uttered “Tashi Delek.” We bowed respectfully to Rinpoche in the awkward silence that ensued, and then were led by Buddha to the door, and down the monastery’s steep staircase to continue our exploration of Pharping’s lore.