Buddhist Studies and Beyond

Yesterday marked exactly two weeks that I’ve been in India, and yet I feel settled in Dharamsala. People have remarked that I seem so well adjusted. I guess a lot of that has to do with the great fortune I’ve had with meeting a lot of friendly people. Over the past week, I’ve met people from all over the world who have come here to study Buddhism, or who have come for HH the DL’s teachings. It’s astounding. There is a substantial population of Israelis and Germans studying Buddhism or working at different Free Tibet NGOs. There are also a lot of Dutch, Australians and Britons. I even met people from Scandinavian Europe and Latin America. People come to Dharamsala, from seriously, all over the world.

The traveler’s circuit is really interesting, especially when I run into people that have been in Dharamsala for a long time. The other day I was walking up from Lower Dharamsala and I was starving. I stopped by a small café where I saw a man and woman in yellow robes. I’d heard that they were a couple of Vietnamese monks and nuns here, but I hadn’t seen them yet. I wanted to order green vegetables, but that’s not very common around here. The nun saw that I was struggling to communicate my question so she came over to help. I asked her if she was Vietnamese, and she was so pleasantly surprised to discover that I was the new Vietnamese girl that she’d heard about, she grabbed her monk friend and they took me back to his room where she whipped up a quick stir-fry or green veggies. It was so nice! She’s been studying in Delhi University for seven years and every summer she comes to Dharamsala to escape Delhi’s heat. Lightly cooked green veggies are a rarity around here and it had been a while since I had them to eat. I seriously feel like I must have been a monk or nun in a past life, because I always find myself hanging out with, or being taken care of my monks and nuns.

Yesterday started at the crack of dawn. I was up out the door by 6:15am to Nechung Monastery. There are four state oracles in this area, and one of them lives at Nechung. I have to do more reading on the history, but what I know is that there are four spirits that protect the Dharma. One of these spirits chose a monk at Nechung Monastery to be its medium. That monk is known as the oracle. I’ve heard about oracles in Vietnam, but have never seen one myself. The monasteries don’t usually announce when they an oracle takes place so only people from the nearby community attend. From what I know, they are always planned and there is a lot of preparation that happens for the monk to go into trance. Since I was with Choedar, and Choedar used to work at Nechung and is friends with all of the monks there, I got to go inside the temple with other important people in the community to see the trance firsthand. It’s a truly special opportunity to see the oracle. There is a whole ritual that takes place before, which seems like it prepares the oracle for the spirit to enter his body. There is a line of monks that play different instruments used in meditation including 7 or 8 feet long horns, trumpet-like horns, bass drums and symbols. While playing the instruments they also chant. The oracle wears elaborate clothing including a huge headdress that they have to tightly tie to his neck because it’s so heavy. The room felt tense and everyone was holding their katas (white offering scarves) and praying. The oracle went into deep meditation with his eyes closed for a long time until suddenly we saw the sprit enter his body. His facial muscles completely changed, his whole body shook as if in seizure, and he began hissing. There is only one monk that can understand what the hissing means and he stands next to the oracle writing down what’s being said. Then the oracle stood up, still with his eyes closed, he did a ritual dance. The attending monks wiped his sweat and held him down. Then the whole room got up and formed a line to offer the spirit katas and receive his blessing. One by one we passed by the oracle, bowing and offering our katas. The oracle tossed blessed red grains into our open palms and as we walked out of the temple we each received a thin red rope that he also blessed.

After visiting the oracle, a small group of us took a trip to the other side of the mountain to visit our friend’s nunnery, Norbulinka Institute and HH the Karmapa. The local buses here are really cheap. It only cost 4 rupees, or 10 cents to get to our stop. Boris, one of the people in our group, has a friend who’s living at the nunnery for the summer. This nunnery is unique because it’s especially for Western foreigners. From the bus stop we walked about a half hour past into the village. There’s nothing out there except for fields and cows. On the way to the Karmapa’s monastery, we stopped by Norbulinka Institute, a center for Tibetan woodcarving, thangka painting and Buddhist studies. It’s a beautiful facility and looks like a little paradise with lots of trees and shade, streams, waterfalls, slate rock, Tibetan prayer flags, and old monastic architecture. There are 5 sects of Tibetan Buddhism. The DL is head of the Gelug order, and the Karmapa is head of the second most important order. HH the Karmapa is only 21 years old and escaped from Tibet just a few years ago. He’s the 16th reincarnation of the Karmapa, so he’s older than the DL. We thought there was a teaching, but instead it was a blessing. We got into an offering line where we bowed, holding up the kata and had it placed back onto our neck. The idea behind this is that when you offer the kata, you are offering the purity of your body and soul, and it is put back on your neck by HH because your purity belongs to you.

It was truly a fully blessed day.