The class is growing more intense, or maybe my brain is filling up.  I am getting a glimmer of understanding, though.  It’s less necessary to suspend disbelief about the practice.  I just bring my teachers to mind.  It’s not even necessary to be in their presence.  Their experience of the world is different.  They’re kinder and happier.  I’m a little closer to understanding how they achieved that.  It’s hard work!

This afternoon, we go to Phakchok Rinpoche’s room.  He wants to see how we’re getting on and give us encouragement.  He asks each of us about something we should have learned.  First, the monk from New Zealand.  “What are the four nails?”  That’s one I could answer.  He says the first three but can’t remember the fourth.  Maybe I’m doing better than I imagined.  Next the monk from Colorado.  I can’t even understand his question.  I can at least partially answer the next few questions.

Now it’s my turn.  “What are the three samadhis?”  I’m utterly baffled.  I’ve asked about them and failed altogether to understand.  I don’t even understand what samadhi means.  First I do bad prostrations, now I can barely begin to answer Phakchok Rinpoche’s question.  “I have not yet been able to understand about samadhis, Rinpoche.  Maybe they are related to the three kayas?”  

Rinpoche is not fierce this time.  I think he realizes that while my sincerity is not as great as my ignorance, it is genuine.  He talks about something else while I pacify my agitation then patiently explains.  I still don’t understand.

Later, I remember binary arithmetic being explained in High School.  I couldn’t understand it at all.  Then I got a job as a computer programmer and it was immediately obvious.  Presumably, my mental block that makes samadhis invisible will also disappear.

We’re now starting a little before 9.  I have just enough time after the monastery gong wakes me at 4:30 to write up the previous day’s notes, meditate and have noodles and coffee.  We get a long lunch break then continue until around 7, ending the day by practicing the long version of the ritual.  By that time I have just enough energy to cook a few more noodles before conking out.

More detail is revealed each day.  Knowing when to do the hand gestures (mudras), remembering which one goes with what chant, even just remembering the sequence of movements for each one is hard.  I’ll do a simpler practice at home, a subset of what we’re learning, but I don’t yet understand enough to know which parts I will do.  I’m trying to learn them all, at least to some extent.

A most auspicious thing happens today.  We have a second session with Phakchok Rinpoche.  He blesses our prayer beads (malla) and mine break while he rolls them between his palms.  That in itself is auspicious.  Then he directs one of his lamas to restring my malla and add a “root bead” of the special kind.  Now I must use it only in private, so I will buy another one to use in class.

Rinpoche (it means Precious One) does not ask questions today.  He explains many things.  I listen with windows open, mind transparent, as clear as I can, anyway.   The Zen master said about his paradoxical teachings: “Just let it all in.  Don’t evaluate, don’t worry if you will forget, don’t think.  If you do, you will not hear. “

Pointing to his cup, Rinpoche says something about equality.  For just a nanosecond I glimpse what he is pointing out.  I’m so happy!

Tomorrow is the end of week two, our free day.  I’ll review my notes and try to clarify my questions.  Our translator will tell me the names of the mudras so I can annotate my texts with which one goes where.  She will also get us video of them all.  I may now have the visualizations that go with each chant clear enough so I can practice on my own but it’s very hard to remember what they mean while also remembering what to do.

There is no class today, the third day, because it’s the 49th since the death of the head of the Nyingma, the oldest of the four major Tibetan Buddhist orders.  They wear the red hats.  The Dalai Lama’s Gelug wear yellow ones.  The 49th day after the heart stops beating is very important but I don’t know why because I don’t yet understand about reincarnation.

I prepare for tomorrow’s class then go to buy my bell, vajra and hand drum.  The vajra is held in the right hand, the bell in the left.  I don’t yet know about the drum.

Vajras have a central sphere representing the underlying unity or connectedness of everything.  From it come two eight petaled lotus flowers that represent the world as it appears and as it really is (I don’t yet understand how it really is).  At the center of each lotus are half-fish, half-crocodile creatures from whose mouths come tongues that meet in a point.  Those on one side represent mental states that obscure our mind, those on the other side aspects of enlightened mind.

As instructed, I tell the man in the recommended shop that my friend Lama Tenzin sent me.  That means I get a reasonably good price for my carefully chosen low-end but not bottom-end instruments.  When I arrive the man is carefully examining brocade altar mats that he’s buying from a Muslim man who brought them from Varanasi in India, a famous center of Buddhist studies.  I ask if my bell was made by Muslims.  Some are, he says, others are made by Tibetans.

All around this part of Kathmandu very young boys work in tiny shopfronts making Tibetan Buddhist ritual instruments, hammering designs into copper alloy with a nail punch.  They look like the extremely poor Indians who come here as transient laborers to do the lowest paid work.

Our full-time translator comes on the fourth day, but we continue on the abbreviated schedule with one theory session and one practical each day.  I don’t know if that will change or that I want it to.  It’s hard enough to absorb the material even at this pace.

In the theory sessions we learn what the practice elements mean, what to have in mind at each moment, how to do everything and in what order.  In the practical sessions we’re learning how to make barley dough tormas that represent what we should have in mind at particular stages of the practice.  We will learn hand gestures, bell-ringing and drum-beating to accompany the chants later.

The lama explains everything in detail (but there is an enormous amount more) and he is clear about what is most important.  This learning experience is new for me.  Always before I just wanted to be shown the material and left to dive in but that can’t work for Tibetan Buddhism because this is mind-training.   I could read every text ever written and still not know how to train my mind using them.  It would be like trying to master tennis just by reading books.

On the fifth day we practice the entire ritual.  It takes over an hour and a half.  We’re going to do it every night from now on and lama says we’ll be able to do it on our own by the end.  I’m glad I bought my own bell and drum instead of borrowing them.  I’m starting to feel why it’s considered so important to respect the texts and instruments.  It’s like a craftsman respecting his tools.  It keeps you aware of your sincerity about what you’re doing.

We chant in Tibetan.  Written and spoken Tibetan are very different.  Pronunciation continued to evolve after the written form was fixed with 30 consonants in the 11th century.  There are different transliteration standards using only the letters on an English language keyboard for how Tibetan words are written and how they sound.  The one for the written word has many silent consonants.  Our texts use the one for sound so I have some hope of getting the pronunciation reasonably right by the end of the class.

The overall ritual has many sections and the chants are assembled in three separate texts.  We have a page and a half cheat sheet that shows the sequence of sections and what page of which text to go to when we switch from one text to another.  It’s very confusing.

Last night I lost track altogether of what the sections mean but I did stay on track with the transitions.  The other students seem to be somewhat familiar with the overall flow of the practice.  I guess there must be a standard structure.  I ask why the chant isn’t published in one text.  Lama says in that case we might not realize we need a teacher to explain the practice.

We do the entire practice again on days five and six.  Lama has taught us some hand gestures and what to do when with bell and drum but I haven’t yet attempted to do any of that.  Maybe I’ll try tomorrow.  It’s hard enough just following the text.

Every so often I try to remember what I should have in mind but then I lose focus on the transitions between texts.  That’s a disaster because I can’t yet associate the sound of the chants with what I see on the pages, which means I can’t find where we are in which text.

Everyone is feeling a bit overwhelmed, even the monks who already know the hand gestures and so forth.  I’ve entirely lost interest in world and financial news and am even losing interest in Nepali news.   I’m beginning to feel that I can change myself for the better with this practice.  I’m pretty sure I’m not heading toward becoming a monk, however.

Tantric Buddhism developed for lay practitioners, not just monastics.  Like Protestant Christianity in Europe, Tantric Hinduism and Buddhism were born in India in opposition to long established forms of practice that were controlled by a too often corrupt priestly elite.

Throat chanting in great dark rooms surrounded by Hieronymus Bosch-like murals of wondrous deities and terrifying devils, eight foot long trumpets, giant conch shell trumpets, human thigh bone trumpets, Arab-style clarinets, brass cymbals, yoyo-like hand drums and hand bells, Catholic-like rosaries and censors, it is beyond exotic.

It’s more than half a century since I was first fascinated by “Seven Years in Tibet”.  Now I’ve been among Tibetan lamas doing these practices in monasteries in Sikkim, Nepal and Tibet and met teachers whose extraordinary kindness results, inevitably they say, from doing these practices all their life.

It’s the meditation, they say, not so much the colorful rituals, that really makes the difference.  So I tried to meditate.  I read books about how to meditate.  But nothing happened, nothing changed.  Perhaps if I go somewhere where people meditate, I thought?  I went for two very long days of silent meditation at a Zen Buddhist monastery and did notice flickers of something positive.  I went back for a week of silent sitting.  Moss beside a path, pollen exploding from sun-drenched pines, a sudden breeze…  Toward the end of the week, just for a moment, I did see their beauty fresh.

Surprised by that sense of sacredness, I think maybe I really can learn how to live more alertly.  But  the Zen way feels too hard for me.  I’ve been so habituated to thinking for so many years.  Maybe I could unlearn I’m not sure what with a different training program, one with more structure and detail that would give my over-active brain something to chomp on?  Perhaps that’s the point of the Tibetan rituals?  They might be preparation for meditation that really works?

So now (October/November 2011) I’ve come for a month-long class at a Kathmandu monastery.  I’ll be taught the details of a ritual practice but beyond that, I have no idea what to expect.

The first two days remind me of mountain treks when the crew is getting organized.  Each day starts with a destination and a plan.  Nothing goes as planned but the destination is reached.

We are scheduled to get “empowerment” at 8:30 on the first morning.  Empowerment means being authorized to learn a practice.  We hear periodically about changes to the schedule as 8:30, 9:30, 10 and 11 come and go, then we’re told we will be empowered at noon by Phakchok Rinpoche.   I know nothing about him but the other 11 students are very happy.

At noon we file into a large inner chamber where Phakchok Rinpoche has for more than an hour been preparing.  I’m nervous.  I don’t know what I may have to do later but I do know to prostrate to Phakchok Rinpoche before I sit.  I would never have prostrated to a boss in the world of business and it felt odd the first time I prostrated to a teacher but it’s a very different situation.  I could not prostrate to someone just because they had been granted power over me.  Showing respect for the qualities teachers have worked so hard for, however, feels entirely natural and right.

Phakchok Rinpoche watches us closely.  As I sit he says: “Your prostrations are no good.  Have you learned nothing?”   I wonder what I did wrong?  He’s very fierce.  In a business context I would feel attacked but here I don’t.  He’s just telling me there’s something I must learn.  He is equally direct and very clear for two hours of explanation of what we are promising to do while we study and after.  I’m happy that I can understand most of what he says, to some extent.  What I understand completely is the approach he’s pointing out, total sincerity.

“People told me Western people are practicing Buddhism very well these days,” he says.  “I thought, that’s good news, I will go to see them.  But I found them saying: ‘Ritual is not important.  We do not need to do that.’  They are practicing one-legged Buddhism!  They think it is OK not to do ritual but who am I to say it is OK not to practice the way people practiced successfully for two thousand years?”

Our first teachings from 3:30 to 5 are not by the scheduled lama because he was suddenly given a different assignment.  We are told we are “so lucky” to get the one who teaches folks doing three year retreats.  He’s very methodical, proceeds in a structured way and is clear.  Indeed, we are lucky!

We can’t start at 8 on the second day because the nun who is scheduled to be our translator for the whole four weeks is sick.  We can only get teachings when one of the senior translation students is free.  We start at 10:30 and go to noon.  Again I understand, at some level, almost everything.  Our translator yesterday was outstanding.  Today’s is not quite so clear but is very good.

In today’s second session, from 3:30 to 5, we begin learning how to make tormas, statues of barley flour paste that are placed on the altar to represent offerings to deities or malign spirits.  They’re not deities or spirits as we normally think of them but representatives of particular virtues or vices like greed and hatred, habits so to say that we are aiming to strengthen or quell.

Our scheduled translator hopes to be back the day after tomorrow.  We can then follow the regular 8 – 5:30 schedule, learning the meaning of the ritual each morning and how to perform it in the afternoon.  It is all very odd but I can study with sincerity because this has been so effective for so many people for so long.  I don’t need to worry about which parts are “true” and which are not.

Ancient Mariner poet Coleridge called the approach we must adopt a “willing suspension of disbelief”.  We must give our intuitive faculty the opportunity to sense what’s being revealed.  We’d miss important aspects of what we’re shown if we let our rational faculty focus on details.

My fellow students include monks from Brazil, New Zealand and Colorado, a very serious German man and a French woman who live together in France, a beautiful young Mexican woman and an older Danish man with dreadlocks and white robes who live together in India, a fellow from Glasgow, a fellow from New Orleans and one from LA, all of whom spend a lot of time on the road.

What else?  The monastery guesthouse where I’m staying is fine.  My room faces the monastery so I’m woken at 4:30 by the clangor of bells, bray of trumpets, clash of cymbals and whatnot.  It’s surprisingly pleasant.  There’s also an evening practice but after that it’s very quiet, so much better than being blasted by rock bands in Thamel, the tourist part of Kathmandu.

Oh, the monk from Brazil explained about prostrations.  “Did you go to a Zen monastery?”  he asked with a kindly smile.  “Yes?”  “I thought so.  We do prostrations differently.”  It’s a subtle difference that makes all the difference.

A deep question to which I offer a prosaic answer: I’m circumambulating Boudha stupa.  I wrote about circumambulation at here.  Where is Boudha and what’s a stupa?

Stupa is Sanskrit for “a knot or tuft of hair”.  In ancient Hindu texts it signifies “tree trunk” because mounds of dirt around a tree were tombs for kings and heroes.  Later, it came to mean a pyramidal or dome-like monument containing relics of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni  (563-478 BC) or other revered figures.  Buddha Shakyamuni is often depicted as having a topknot that symbolizes his attainment of enlightenment.

Boudha stupa is one of the world’s largest.  It is on the ancient trade route from Tibet and was probably built in the 14th century when Buddhists fled from Mughal invasions of northern India.  It is said to entomb the remains of Kāśyapa Buddha, the third of the five Buddhas of the present ‘Fortunate Aeon’ and the last of six Buddhas prior to the historical Buddha.  Kāśyapa was born in India to Brahmin parents (i.e., Hindu priestly caste) and is said to have been over 30 feet tall, perhaps accounting for Boudha stupa’s great size.  It is now a pilgrimage destination for both Buddhists and Hindus.

Here’s how it looked when it was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site:

Just over a century earlier, Rana Prime Minister Jung Bahadur invited Taipo Shing, a Buddhist who had come on pilgrimage from Szechuan in China and settled in Boudha, to interpret in peace negotiations after war with China.  He was made head man of Boudha and granted the income from extensive farmland as a reward for his services, married the daughter of one of Jung Bahadur’s concubines and was entitled the First Chini Lama.  His successors grew wealthy and powerful (they were consuls of the Dalai Lamas to the Kingdom of Nepal) until the Ranas fell.  Land reform in 1961 following restitution of the monarchy stripped the stupa of much of its supporting lands.

The influx of refugees from Tibet starting in the 1950s brought new wealth to the area.  The stupa is now surrounded by more than fifty Tibetan monasteries, which are themselves surrounded by housing for the enormously increased Kathmandu population.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution started by Mao Tsetung in 1965 to destroy: “old thinking, old culture, old habits and old customs” led to the destruction of over 6,000 monasteries in Tibet and more than one in six Tibetans starved to death or was killed.  Some Tibetans say their protector deity was reborn as Chairman Mao to force them from a familiar world where they could no longer progress spiritually.  Those who died and what was destroyed were, they believe, necessary casualties of spiritual progress; they were dispersed to grow again and make their wisdom available to all.

Regret for the loss of Boudha’s peaceful surroundings is in any case a mistake.  Better to truly accept that everything is changing in every moment.  The thought may arise in our mind that increased availability and popularity of Tibetan Buddhism’s beneficial teachings is good but ideally we will just notice our thoughts and feel no need to make judgments about them.  As a wise man said: “If you have one foot in the past and one in the future, you’ll only hurt your crotch”.